Literature&ScienceDiscussionSpace
What does it mean to be human? What technologies, medical advanced, research, etc. may change our understanding of what it means to be human in the 21st century? Review the detailed assignment expectations for posting an article review and commenting on other stories in the full handout on the website and posted here.
Should Sick People Be Paid to Risk Their Lives?
Should there be monetary rewards for participants in life-risking experiments? Why or why not? Do the benefits of the experiments outweigh the risks for the patients?
Why Not Artificial Wombs?
Should there be artificial wombs? Why or why not? Why would people want to use them?
The National Endowment for the Humanities
Do you think its right for a research program to get this much money, than feeding the poor and hungry, or donating it to food banks?
Medical examiner gives unclaimed bodies to science
A medical examiner's office in Chicago set a two-week deadline for bodies to be claimed at the morgue, or risk their being donated for medical research. People claim that the time frame is short, but in response, people have argued that holding bodies for longer than two weeks becomes really complicated, which include identification, investigation, embalming, etc.
Do you agree with this policy? If someone doesn't claim a corpse in two weeks, it will be donated to science?
US mothers participate in clinical trials to make ends meet
German ethicists can’t agree on humanized animals
The German Ethics Council (Deutscher Ethikrat) has recommended that researchers be allowed to insert human genes into mice in a major report on human-animal mixtures. But special permission will be needed to insert human genes into apes. Some practices should be banned, it says: introducing animal material into human germlines, producing human sperm or eggs in an animal, and implanting animal embryos into humans.
However, on the highly controversial creation of cybrids (or chimeras), or growing embryos by inserting the nucleus of a human cell into an animal egg, the Council failed to reach a consensus. No German laws appear to cover the procedure, which some researchers hope to use to produce embryonic stem cell lines. Thirteen members of the council recommended that scientists should be allowed to do it; 11 were opposed.
Students' Meningitis Shots Should Be Required
Do you believe meningitis vaccines should be a requirement? Do you believe it is ethical mandate vaccinations or should it be one's choice to get the vaccine or not?