When pregnancy is a research risk.

A published study reported by Munné using uterine lavage to retrieve in vivo blastocysts for preimplantation genetic testing has been the subject of several technical and ethical critiques. None of these critiques has been based on a review of the study's IRB-approved informed consent. This commentary seeks to do that, examining the Munné (and related Nadal) consent forms for their conformity to existing requirements for a full and informed consent.

COVID-19 and Religious Ethics.

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.

Religion and medical ethics.

Religious traditions of medical ethics tend to differ from more secular approaches by stressing limitations on autonomous decision-making, by more positively valuing the experience of suffering, and by drawing on beliefs and values that go beyond empiric verification. I trace the impact of these differences for some of the world's great religious traditions with respect to four issues: (1) religious conscientious objection to medical treatments; (2) end-of life decision-making, including euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and the withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatments; (3) definitions of moral personhood (defining life's beginning and end); and (4) human sexuality.

Political interventions in U.S. human embryo research: an ethical assessment.

For more than 30 years, beginning with the Reagan administration's refusal to support and provide oversight for embryo research, and continuing to the present in congressionally imposed limits on funding for such research, progress in infertility medicine and the development of stem cell therapies has been seriously delayed by a series of political interventions. In almost all cases, these interventions result from a view of the moral status of human embryo premised largely on religious assumptions. Although some believe that these interventions are valid expressions of religious values in the public sector, it is argued here that they, in fact, contradict Rawls's conception of public reasoning. Both the prohibition of research involving the human embryo as well as bans on federal funding for embryo-related research place the particular religious views of some citizens above the pressing health needs of almost all, and thus violate the ideal of civility implicit in the Rawlsian standard.

Are babies by design in our future?

Advances in genomic science and reproductive medicine are hastening the day when parents will be able to select or design desired traits for their children. This possibility raises a series of challenging questions: will our ability to choose our children's biological inheritance deform parenting? Will it diminish children's freedom by making them creatures of their parents' whims? Will it widen social divisions, creating a 'genobility'? Will it recreate the horrors of early twentieth century eugenics? In this perspective article I reply that while these are all important questions, the answers do not necessarily rule out the judicious use of human genetic engineering.

Can we develop ethically universal embryonic stem-cell lines?

Human embryonic stem-cell (hESC) research faces opposition from those who object to the destruction of human embryos. Over the past few years, a series of new approaches have been proposed for deriving hESC lines without injuring a living embryo. Each of these presents scientific challenges and raises ethical and political questions. Do any of these methods have the potential to provide a source of hESCs that will be acceptable to those who oppose the current approaches?

Last word: imagining the future.

H.G. Wells warned, in 1895, not to allow economic injustices to become so acute that they ultimately transform human biology. Wells's warning is all the more pertinent today as society contemplates the use of biotechnologies to manipulate or "enhance" the human genome.

Benefiting from 'evil': an incipient moral problem in human stem cell research.

When does benefiting from others' wrongdoing effectively make one a moral accomplice in their evil deeds? If stem cell research lives up to its therapeutic promise, this question (which has previously cropped up in debates over fetal tissue research or the use of Nazi research data) is likely to become a central one for opponents of embryo destruction. I argue that benefiting from wrongdoing is prima facie morally wrong under any of three conditions: (1) when the wrongdoing is one's agent; (2) when acceptance of benefit directly encourages the repetition of the wrongful deed (even though no agency relationship is involved); and (3) when acceptance of a benefit legitimates a wrongful practice. I conclude by showing that, because of the ways in which most embryonic stem cell lines come into being, people who oppose embryo destruction may use human embryonic stem cells without incurring moral blame.