Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have altered various human gene frequencies by inhibiting the fertility of people and groups they considered inferior, or promoting that of those considered superior.
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning, which is the reproduction of human cells and tissue. It does not refer to the natural conception and delivery of identical twins. The possibilities of human cloning have raised controversies. These ethical concerns have prompted several nations to pass laws regarding human cloning.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Arthur L. Caplan is an American ethicist and professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.
A designer baby is a baby whose genetic makeup has been selected or altered, often to exclude a particular gene or to remove genes associated with disease. This process usually involves analysing a wide range of human embryos to identify genes associated with particular diseases and characteristics, and selecting embryos that have the desired genetic makeup; a process known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Screening for single genes is commonly practiced, and polygenic screening is offered by a few companies. Other methods by which a baby's genetic information can be altered involve directly editing the genome before birth, which is not routinely performed and only one instance of this is known to have occurred as of 2019, where Chinese twins Lulu and Nana were edited as embryos, causing widespread criticism.
Gerald Schatten is an American stem cell researcher with interests in cell, developmental, and reproductive biology. He is Professor and vice-chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Professor of Cell Biology and of Bioengineering in the Schools of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is also Director of the Division of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine at the university's School of Medicine. Additionally, he is deputy director of the Magee-Women's Research Institute and Director of the Pittsburgh Development Center.. He is a member of the NCI-designated University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Gregory Stock is an American biophysicist, best-selling author, biotech entrepreneur, and the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. His interests lie in the scientific and evolutionary as well as ethical, social and political implications of today's revolutions in the life sciences and in information technology and computers.
Lori B. Andrews is an American professor of law. She is on the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law and serves as Director of IIT's Institute for Science, Law, and Technology. In 2002, she was a visiting professor at Princeton University. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Andrews is a Fellow of the Hastings Center.
Rosario Isasi is a health and human rights attorney, whose research and work focuses on the regulation of human genetic technologies.
Glenn E. McGee is the Dean of Admissions at Salem College and Professor of health sciences at Salem College. He has been noted for his work on reproductive technology and genetics and for advancing a theory of pragmatic bioethics, as well as the role of ethicists in society and in local and state settings in particular.
The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future (IBHF) is an affiliate of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and is housed at IIT's Chicago-Kent College of Law. The IBHF was founded in 2004 by Lori Andrews, J.D., and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., to discuss and analyze the ethical, legal, and social implications of biotechnologies.
In bioethics, the ethics of cloning concerns the ethical positions on the practice and possibilities of cloning, especially of humans. While many of these views are religious in origin, some of the questions raised are faced by secular perspectives as well. Perspectives on human cloning are theoretical, as human therapeutic and reproductive cloning are not commercially used; animals are currently cloned in laboratories and in livestock production.
The International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of UNESCO is a body composed of 36 independent experts from all regions and different disciplines that follows progress in the life sciences and its applications in order to ensure respect for human dignity and human rights. It was created in 1993 by Dr Federico Mayor Zaragoza, General Director of UNESCO at that time. It has been prominent in developing Declarations with regard to norms of bioethics that are regarded as soft law but are nonetheless influential in shaping the deliberations, for example, of research ethics committees and health policy.
Richard Hayes is visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley College of Natural Resources / Energy and Resources Group. He was founding executive director of the Berkeley, California-based Center for Genetics and Society, serving from 1999 through 2012. In the early 1990s he chaired the Sierra Club's Global Warming Campaign Committee. In the 1980s he served on the national staff of the Sierra Club, first as assistant political director and then as national director of volunteer development. He was previously executive director of the San Francisco Democratic Party.
Jan Deckers works in bioethics at Newcastle University. His work revolves mainly around three topics: animal ethics, reproductive ethics and embryo research, and ethics of genetics.
Human germline engineering is the process by which the genome of an individual is edited in such a way that the change is heritable. This is achieved by altering the genes of the germ cells, which then mature into genetically modified eggs and sperm. For safety, ethical, and social reasons, there is broad agreement among the scientific community and the public that germline editing for reproduction is a red line that should not be crossed at this point in time. There are differing public sentiments, however, on whether it may be performed in the future depending on whether the intent would be therapeutic or non-therapeutic.
Judit Sándor is a Hungarian lawyer, bioethicist, and author, as well as full professor at the Department of Political Science, Department of Legal Studies and the Department of Gender Studies of the Central European University (CEU), Budapest. She had a bar exam in Hungary before she conducted legal practice at Simmons & Simmons in London. In 1996 she received Ph.D. in law and political science at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Human Genetics Alert is a secular, independent watchdog group based in London, England. It advocates against uses of reproductive technology and human genetics research that it considers harmful.
John F. Kilner is a bioethicist who held the Franklin and Dorothy Forman endowed chair in ethics and theology at Trinity International University, where he was also Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture and Director of Bioethics Degree Programs. He is a Senior Fellow at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) in Deerfield, Illinois, where he served as Founding Director until Fall 2005.
Vardit Ravitsky, an Israeli-Canadian, is a bioethicist, researcher, and author. She is president and CEO of The Hastings Center, a senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and past president of the International Association of Bioethics. She is a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, where she chaired the COVID-19 Impact Committee. She is also a Fellow of The Hastings Center and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Previously, she was a full professor at the University of Montreal, and director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics.
