Bioethics News

April 24, 2024

Top Headlines

Are Lab-Grown Brain Tissues Ethical? There Is No No-Brainer Answer

Apr. 8, 2024 — Researchers offer insights into the ethical dilemmas and legal complexities surrounding brain organoids, especially those derived from human fetal tissue. Their findings advocate for thorough regulatory frameworks to ensure that scientific and ...

A New, Comprehensive Roadmap for the Future of Biomedical Engineering

Feb. 26, 2024 — Experts published a detailed position paper on the field of biomedical engineering which lays the foundation for a concerted worldwide effort to achieve technological and medical ...

Under Pressure -- Space Exploration in Our Time

Feb. 16, 2024 — A new paradigm is taking shape in the space industry as the countries and entities accessing space continue to grow and diversify. This dynamic landscape creates both competition and potential for scientific collaboration, as well as the challenges ...

Planetary Commons: Fostering Global Cooperation to Safeguard Critical Earth System Functions

Jan. 22, 2024 — Tipping elements of the Earth system should be considered global commons, researchers argue. Global commons cannot -- as they currently do -- only include the parts of the planet outside of national ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:57pm EDT

Low Social Status Increases Risk of Health Problems from Alcohol Problems

Mar. 20, 2024 — Men and women with lower income or education levels are more likely to develop medical conditions related to alcohol abuse compared to similar individuals with a higher socioeconomic status, ...

New Simpler and Cost-Effective Forensics Test Helps Identify Touch DNA

Mar. 14, 2024 — Research has found a less expensive and easier to use test to learn more about forensic touch DNA. This research has important implications for forensic investigations and being able to identify DNA ...

Researchers Overestimate Their Own Honesty

Feb. 26, 2024 — The average researcher thinks they are better than their colleagues at following good research practice. They also think that their own research field is better than other research fields at ...

War on Superbugs Can't Be Won, Researchers Declare

Jan. 9, 2024 — From a wartime spread of antimicrobial resistant disease in Ukraine, to superbugs in China causing 'white lung' pneumonia in children, 2023 brought no shortage of new evidence that antimicrobial ...

Studying Cells to Improve Medulloblastoma Treatment

Jan. 8, 2024 — Research is shedding light and potentially expanding options for patients living with medulloblastoma, an aggressive childhood ...

Influencers' Vulnerabilities: A Double-Edged Sword

Jan. 2, 2024 — New research finds that social media platforms and the metrics that reward content creators for revealing their innermost selves to fans open creators up to identity-based ...

Evaluating the Truthfulness of Fake News Through Online Searches Increases the Chances of Believing Misinformation

Dec. 21, 2023 — Conventional wisdom suggests that searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation would reduce belief in it. But a new study by a team of ...

Can AI Be Too Good to Use?

Dec. 12, 2023 — Much of the discussion around implementing artificial intelligence systems focuses on whether an AI application is 'trustworthy': Does it produce useful, reliable results, free of bias, while ...

A Study Unveils the Link Between Musical Preferences and Our Inner Moral Compass

Nov. 29, 2023 — A new study provides compelling evidence that music preferences can serve as a window into an individual's moral values. It has uncovered an ...

To Help Autonomous Vehicles Make Moral Decisions, Researchers Ditch the 'Trolley Problem'

Dec. 1, 2023 — Researchers have developed a new experiment to better understand what people view as moral and immoral decisions related to driving vehicles, with ...

Less Obesity in 3 And 4-Year-Olds After the Pandemic, Swedish Study Finds

Mar. 25, 2024 — The prevalence of overweight and obesity in the group of 3- and 4-year-olds in Sweden has decreased after the pandemic. The increase during the pandemic thus appears to have been temporary, according ...

AI Ethics Are Ignoring Children, Say Researchers

Mar. 21, 2024 — Researchers have called for a more considered approach when embedding ethical principles in the development and governance of AI for ...

Laws That Punish Drug Use During Pregnancy Likely Lead to Worse Health Outcomes for Families, Study Finds

Mar. 18, 2024 — Contrary to some claims, laws that criminalize or otherwise punish drug use during pregnancy are more likely to worsen rather than improve health outcomes. The study is the first to systematically ...

New Study Reveals Unintended Ethical Faultline in Team-Based Reward Systems

Mar. 14, 2024 — Employers who have introduced team-based rewards systems to foster creativity, collaboration, productivity and sales may want to look again at a system that new research shows can create an ...

Why Politics Bring out the Worst in Us

Feb. 8, 2024 — In a survey involving a total of 2,472 respondents, researchers asked participants about nonpolitical and political moral behavior and nonpolitical and political moral tolerance. They found people ...

Asthma Rates Climb for High School Students as Cannabis Use Increases

Jan. 30, 2024 — Asthma is more common among high school students who use cannabis, relative to those who do not and the prevalence of asthma increases with the frequency of its use among the students, according to a ...

Nuclear Expansion Failure Shows Simulations Require Change

Nov. 16, 2023 — A team of researchers looked back at a model that predicted nuclear power would expand dramatically in order to assess the efficacy of energy policies implemented ...

Rewarding Women More Like Men Could Reduce Wage Gap

Nov. 6, 2023 — Addressing the shortage of women in STEM fields such as computer science is not enough to close the gender gap: Treating women more like men, especially on pay day, is more important than ...

Cat-Ching Criminals With DNA from Pet Hairs

Oct. 30, 2023 — Cat hair could be the purr-fect way to catch criminals, according to ...

Brain Injury Expert Says Important Changes Still Needed to Law Defining Death Despite Reform Pause

Oct. 25, 2023 — After surveying the views expressed by 41 advocacy, medical, and transplant-focused organizations on the Uniform Determination of Death Act, a brain injury expert is calling for much-needed reforms ...

Harsh Workplace Climate Is Pushing Women out of Academia, Review Finds

Oct. 20, 2023 — In the largest-ever review of faculty retention in the United States, researchers reveal how harassment, a sense of not belonging and other factors contribute to a lack of gender diversity among ...

Keeping a Human in the Loop: Managing the Ethics of AI in Medicine

Oct. 20, 2023 — Increasingly used in medicine, AI raises both hopes and concerns. An international task force has laid out recommendations to ensure AI medical devices help patients and avoid worsening health ...

Ensuring Fairness of AI in Healthcare Requires Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Oct. 20, 2023 — New perspective argues pursuing fair AI for healthcare requires cross-disciplinary collaboration to translate methods into real-world ...

Familiarity Breeds Contempt for Moral Failings

Oct. 17, 2023 — People judge members of their own circles more harshly than they judge individuals from other groups for the same transgressions, new research has ...

Metaphors for Human Fertilization Are Evolving, Study Shows

Oct. 1, 2023 — In a common metaphor used to describe human fertilization, sperm cells are competitors racing to penetrate a passive egg. But as critics have noted, the description is also a 'fairy tale,' ...

Curiosity About Religion Is Viewed as Morally Virtuous, New Research Finds

Sep. 21, 2023 — People from diverse religious backgrounds in the United States view curiosity about religion as morally virtuous, according to new research. Atheists also view this curiosity as moral, although less ...

Why Childhood Adversity Impacts How a Person's Behavior Is Judged

Aug. 22, 2023 — It's human nature to be judgmental. But why do we place less blame on someone, or give more praise, if we find out that person had a history of suffering in childhood? In a recent study, ...

With Advances in in Vitro Models, Group Proposes Refined Legal Definition of an Embryo

Aug. 17, 2023 — Thanks to continuous advances in human stem cell research, studies that make use of embryo models are progressing quickly. This research offers both a scientific and ethical alternative to the use of ...

Managing Domestic and Wildcats Is Likely to Remain Fraught, New Research Warns

Aug. 8, 2023 — Current efforts to protect and restore native biodiversity is being threatened by difficulties in identifying wild and domestic cats, and categorization is likely to remain fraught for the ...

Researchers Discuss the Ethical Challenges of Studying DNA from a 18th--19th Century African American Community

Aug. 3, 2023 — A population genetics team recently identified the genetic relationship between over 40,000 23andMe users and a population of enslaved and free African Americans that lived in Catoctin Furnace, ...