Principles of Biomedical Ethics: Marking Its Fortieth Anniversary

NCER Notes:

Forty years ago, Bioethics was born out of the collaboration between Beauchamp and Childress, two ethicists with very different moral approaches- one based on obligation and duty, the other on the goodness of outcomes. They were able to merge the best elements of prominent philosophical theories on morality to create a new approach called Principlism. This new approach was widely accepted in the medical community due to its ease of practical application in …

Products That Use Aborted Fetuses

NCER Notes:

Is it ethical to use aborted fetal tissue in research? The practice of using aborted fetal tissue has been in the news lately with the trial of journalist David Daleiden, who filmed Planned Parenthood abortionists admitting they change their procedures in order to sell the “freshest” aborted fetal tissue to researchers. This kind of research has been ongoing for decades in a shroud of secrecy within a medical community that has become unfazed …

The newest gene editor radically improves on CRISPR

NCER Notes:

Research has shown that the CRISPR gene editing tool (which cuts out and replaces diseased DNA) holds great potential for healing disease, but currently poses a significant risk to humans due to frequent unintended mistakes, or “off-target” mutations in DNA. A solution is being pursued, but in the meantime, a new kind of gene editing, called “Prime Editing” has just been announced this week. Prime Editing uses much of CRISPR technology, but appears …