Clinical trials on artificial wombs, organ transplant ethics, autonomous AI
June 6, 2024
Too Soon for Clinical Trials on Artificial Wombs Society must first address the ethical and legal implications.
“Artificial wombs are moving from the realm of science fiction to possible trials with severely premature babies,” write Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky and Louise King, a surgeon and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School, in Scientific American. “We are excited about the great potential benefits of this technology; however, with fetal rights now a political front in the abortion debate, we believe that society must address the ethical and legal issues before those trials begin.” Read their Scientific American essay.
Neither Ethical nor Prudent Recommendation against objectionable practice in organ transplantation.
“NRP” and “NMP” are acronyms for two procedures that can be used to maintain the quality of human organs intended for transplantation. But there are profound ethical and legal differences between them, discussed by six leading bioethicists in the Hastings Center Report. NRP—normothermic regional perfusion—is objectionable because it restores blood circulation in a donor who has been pronounced dead, thus invalidating a death declaration based on the permanent cessation of circulation. NMP—normothermic machine perfusion—should be used instead because it avoids this problem and, thus, doesn’t jeopardize trust in transplantation’s legal and ethical foundations. Read the Hastings Center Report article.
How Much Autonomy Should AI Have in Health Care? Ravitsky discusses this question on radio show.
Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky was a guest this week on Doctor Radio Reports on SiriusXM, discussing AI and other bioethics issues. She anticipates health care providers being "seduced" to give AI increasingly complex tasks and autonomy, including taking notes during medical appointments, offering diagnoses, and proposing next steps. But for AI to do these things "without any supervision of a human eye, that's where I think we need to be really careful." Listen to a clip of her interview with host Marc Siegel and guest co-host Art Caplan.
Geneticization of Education: On Consumer Interpretation of DTC Genetic Reports for Educational Outcomes. a talk by Hastings Center presidential scholar Lucas Matthews.at the Sixth ELSI Congress (ELSICon) at Columbia University.June 10.
Rethinking the Rule Against Testing Children for Adult-Onset Conditions: A New Zealand Case Study, a talk by Hastings Center senior research scholar Josephine Johnston at the Sixth ELSI Congress (ELSICon) at Columbia University. June 10.
What Can AI Ethics Learn from Gen-Ethics? ELSI Lessons for the Coming Wave, a talk by Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky at the Sixth ELSI Congress (ELSICon) at Columbia University. June 11.
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