By Ellen Arkfeld In recent years, doctors in the UK have noted that younger women are more frequently opting to conceive through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF). For some, this process provides the opportunity to have children while remaining virgins. The National Health Service (NHS) only covers IVF treatment for heterosexual women who have been trying to [...]
By Farzana Paleker California joined Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont as the fifth state to legalize physician-assisted death when Governor Jerry Brown signed the End of Life Option Act on October fifth. The legislation was propelled to the top of California's public consciousness following the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard. In 2014, 29-year-old Maynard moved [...]
By Kaitlyn Schaeffer Independent experts of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee released a report calling for a temporary moratorium on edits to the human genome that could be inherited by future generations. A new genome editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 has made it possible for scientists to manipulate DNA easily and efficiently. While these manipulations can treat and [...]
By Bobby Thomas The United States currently does not fund research-involving genetic editing of embryos. Yet given the rate of progress in the field of genetics, many feel the time to act is now. The Hinxton Group—an international consortium of policy experts, bioethicists, and researchers that conduct research on stem cells, and ethics and the [...]
By Richard Balagtas In what seems like a dream, the cure to cancer may soon be a reality. For the first time, scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida have been able to turn aggressive breast, lung, and bladder cancer cells back into harmless benign cells. The solution: discovering a way to stop cancerous cells [...]
By Bobby Thomas Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), or Planned Parenthood for brevity, is a nonprofit organization founded by Margaret Sanger that provides multiple health services, reproductive health care, and health education. Additionally, the organization advocates for affordable health care and lobbies for pro-choice legislation. Recently, new incriminating video footage brought forward by The [...]
By Nicole Fenghea China suffers from a huge organ shortage and chances for its citizens to obtain a transplant are very low. For many years their organs were acquired from executed prisoners to help meet demands. However, after international condemnation, Beijing said that they ended that practice at the beginning of this year, although officials [...]
By Remy Servis In a fascinating Huffington Post article by Jonathan Moreno, Ph.D., an advisory board member for Global Bioethics Initiative, the interaction between the American conservative “right” and liberal “left” and their representations of the bioethics field in the modern day is explored. Moreno begins his article with the belief that most highly publicized [...]
By Remy Servis This week, a team of doctors at The Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania announced that they had completed the world’s first pediatric dual hand transplant on Zion Harvey, an eight year old from Maryland, earlier this month. After he lost his hands and feet to an infection at the age of two, Zion [...]
We are pleased to inform you that Global Bioethics Initiative has been granted special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the United Nations' central platform for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development. It serves as the main mechanism for the activities of the United Nations system, and facilitates collaboration between [...]
