NIPT for adult-onset conditions: Australian NIPT users' views.

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has become widely available in recent years. While initially used to screen for trisomies 21, 18, and 13, the test has expanded to include a range of other conditions and will likely expand further. This paper addresses the ethical issues that arise from one particularly controversial potential use of NIPT: screening for adult-onset conditions (AOCs).

Unconditional access to non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for adult-onset conditions: a defence.

Over the past decade, non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has been adopted into routine obstetric care to screen for fetal sex, trisomies 21, 18 and 13, sex chromosome aneuploidies and fetal sex determination. It is predicted that the scope of NIPT will be expanded in the future, including screening for adult-onset conditions (AOCs). Some ethicists have proposed that using NIPT to detect severe autosomal AOCs that cannot be prevented or treated, such as Huntington's disease, should only be offered to prospective parents who intend to terminate a pregnancy in the case of a positive result.

Palliative Farming.

Billions of animals live and die under deplorable conditions in factory farms. Despite significant efforts to reduce human consumption of animal products and to encourage more humane farming practices, the number of factory-farmed animals is nevertheless on an upward trajectory. In this paper, we suggest that the high levels of suffering combined with short life-expectancies make the situation of many factory-farmed animals relevantly similar to that of palliative patients.

Genome Editing in Livestock, Complicity, and the Technological Fix Objection.

Genome editing in livestock could potentially be used in ways that help resolve some of the most urgent and serious global problems pertaining to livestock, including animal suffering, pollution, antimicrobial resistance, and the spread of infectious disease. But despite this potential, some may object to pursuing it, not because genome editing is wrong in and of itself, but because it is the wrong kind of solution to the problems it addresses: it is merely a 'technological fix' to a complex societal problem. Yet though this objection might have wide intuitive appeal, it is often not clear what, exactly, the moral problem is supposed to be.

Gene Editing, Identity and Benefit.

Some suggest that gene editing human embryos to prevent genetic disorders will be in one respect morally preferable to using genetic selection for the same purpose: gene editing will benefit particular future persons, while genetic selection would merely replace them. We first construct the most plausible defence of this suggestion-the benefit argument-and defend it against a possible objection. We then advance another objection: the benefit argument succeeds only when restricted to cases in which the gene-edited child would have been brought into existence even if gene editing had not been employed.

The Ethics of Creating and Using Human-Animal Chimeras.

Rapid advances in gene-editing and stem-cell technology have expanded the range of possible future applications in human-animal chimera research. Most notably, recent developments may allow researchers to generate whole personalized human organs in pigs for the purpose of transplantation into human patients. Though human-animal chimera research in small animals, such as mice, is routine, human-animal chimeric techniques are now increasingly being applied to larger animals.

Discriminatory Conscientious Objections in Healthcare: A Response to Ancell and Sinnott-Armstrong.

Aaron Ancell and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (A&SA) propose a pragmatic approach to problems arising from conscientious objections in healthcare. Their primary focus is on private healthcare systems like that in the United States. A&SA defend three claims: (i) many conscientious objections in healthcare are morally permissible and should be lawful, (ii) conscientious objections that involve invidious discrimination are morally impermissible, but (iii) even invidiously-discriminatory conscientious objections should not always be unlawful, as there is a better way to protect patient rights.

No Pain, No Gain? In Defence of Genetically Disenhancing (Most) Research Animals.

Every year, around 12 million animals are used for the purpose of scientific research in the European Union alone. The procedures performed on them often cause significant pain and suffering. Despite regulations aimed at reducing this suffering, we can expect millions of research animals to continue to suffer in the near to mid-term future.

Regulating Genome Editing: For an Enlightened Democratic Governance.

How should we regulate genome editing in the face of persistent substantive disagreement about the moral status of this technology and its applications? In this paper, we aim to contribute to resolving this question. We first present two diametrically opposed possible approaches to the regulation of genome editing. A first approach, which we refer to as "elitist," is inspired by Joshua Greene's work in moral psychology.

A conception of genetic parenthood.

We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood-one invoking genetic resemblance and the other genetic inheritance-and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes' second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.

The epistemic costs of compromise in bioethics.

Bioethicists sometimes defend compromise positions, particularly when they enter debates on applied topics that have traditionally been highly polarised, such as those regarding abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research. However, defending compromise positions is often regarded with a degree of disdain. Many are intuitively attracted to the view that it is almost always problematic to defend compromise positions, in the sense that we have a significant moral reason not to do so.

Euthanasia for Detainees in Belgium.

In 2011, Frank Van Den Bleeken became the first detainee to request euthanasia under Belgium's Euthanasia Act of 2002. This article investigates whether it would be lawful and morally permissible for a doctor to accede to this request. Though Van Den Bleeken has not been held accountable for the crimes he committed, he has been detained in an ordinary prison, without appropriate psychiatric care, for more than 30 years.

Intra-Family Gamete Donation: A Solution to Concerns Regarding Gamete Donation in China?

Gamete donation from third parties is controversial in China as it severs blood ties, which are considered of utmost importance in Confucian tradition. In recent years, infertile couples are increasingly demonstrating a preference for the use of gametes donated by family members to conceive children-known as "intra-family gamete donation." The main advantage of intra-family gamete donation is that it maintains blood ties between children and both parents.

U.S. Complicity and Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Time for a Response.

Shortly before and during the Second World War, Japanese doctors and medical researchers conducted large-scale human experiments in occupied China that were at least as gruesome as those conducted by Nazi doctors. Japan never officially acknowledged the occurrence of the experiments, never tried any of the perpetrators, and never provided compensation to the victims or issued an apology. Building on work by Jing-Bao Nie, this article argues that the U.

Procreative altruism: beyond individualism in reproductive selection.

Existing debate on procreative selection focuses on the well-being of the future child. However, selection decisions can also have significant effects on the well-being of others. Moreover, these effects may run in opposing directions; some traits conducive to the well-being of the selected child may be harmful to others, whereas other traits that limit the child's well-being may preserve or increase that of others.

Coercion, incarceration, and chemical castration: an argument from autonomy.

In several jurisdictions, sex offenders may be offered chemical castration as an alternative to further incarceration. In some, agreement to chemical castration may be made a formal condition of parole or release. In others, refusal to undergo chemical castration can increase the likelihood of further incarceration though no formal link is made between the two.

Lifespan extension and the doctrine of double effect.

Recent developments in biogerontology--the study of the biology of ageing--suggest that it may eventually be possible to intervene in the human ageing process. This, in turn, offers the prospect of significantly postponing the onset of age-related diseases. The biogerontological project, however, has met with strong resistance, especially by deontologists.

Embryo deaths in reproduction and embryo research: a reply to Murphy's double effect argument.

The majority of embryos created in natural reproduction die spontaneously within a few weeks of conception. Some have argued that, therefore, if one believes the embryo is a person (in the normative sense) one should find 'natural' reproduction morally problematic. An extension of this argument holds that, if one accepts embryo deaths in natural reproduction, consistency requires that one also accepts embryo deaths that occur in (i) assisted reproduction via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and (ii) embryo research.

Hydrops fetalis and pulmonary lymphangiectasia due to FOXC2 mutation: an autosomal dominant hereditary lymphedema syndrome with variable expression.

Unlabelled: Non-immune hydrops fetalis may find its origin within genetically determined lymphedema syndromes, caused by mutations in FOXC2 and SOX-18. We describe a newborn girl, diagnosed with non-immune hydrops fetalis at a gestational age of 30 weeks. Family history revealed the presence of an autosomal dominant late-onset form of lymphedema of the lower limbs in her father, associated with an aberrant implantation of the eyelashes in some individuals.

Complicity in stem cell research: the case of induced pluripotent stem cells.

Many who object to human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research because they believe it involves complicity in embryo destruction have welcomed induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research as an ethical alternative. This opinion article aims to show that complicity arguments against hESC research are prima facie inconsistent with accepting iPSC research as it is currently done. Those who oppose hESC research on grounds of complicity should either (i) oppose iPSC research as well, (ii) advocate a radical change in the way iPSC research is done, (iii) demonstrate that complicity arguments against iPSC research are weaker than those against hESC research or (iv) reject complicity arguments against both hESC and iPSC research, either by adopting a more limited conception of complicity that allows acceptance of some hESC research, or by accepting that destroying embryos for important scientific research is not wrong.

To be, or not to be? Are induced pluripotent stem cells potential babies, and does it matter?

Are induced pluripotent stem cells potential babies, and does it matter?

Human embryonic stem cell research: why the discarded-created-distinction cannot be based on the potentiality argument.

Discussions about the use and derivation of pluripotent human embryonic stem cells are a stumbling block in developing public policy on stem cell research. On the one hand there is a broad consensus on the benefits of these cells for science and biomedicine; on the other hand there is the controversial issue of killing human embryos. I will focus on the compromise position that accepts research on spare embryos, but not on research embryos ('discarded-created-distinction', from now on d-c-d).