Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Category: Bioethics/Biotech
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An excellent op-ed piece on the way reporting of biotechnology is often reduced, unhelpfully and dangerously, to a “promise” vs. “peril” dichotomy. To do so ignores the many different positions that arise from competing (and misunderstood) values in the interactions with biotechnologies, as well as how the application of such developments shape not only those…
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With my ongoing interest in the area of bioethics and transhumanism an email mentioning this free eBook from the University of Chicago Press piqued my interest today. Will load it up on the eReader and have a skim through it. “The Longevity Seekers: Science, Business, and the Fountain of Youth” by Ted Anton. The book…
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A really interesting article by biochemist Jennifer Doudna about how she became aware of the ethical dimensions of developing a method for genome-editing and how it affected her. Moves from just ‘doing’ science, to the need to ethical reflection as part of that – as well as the ability to communicate the implications of the…
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I’m looking forward to the book launch next week of “Spirituality and Cancer: Christian Encounters”, edited by my friends and colleagues Caroline Blyth (University of Auckland) and Tim Meadowcroft (Laidlaw College). The book is a collection of papers delivered at a ‘Spirituality, Theology and Cancer’ Laidlaw/University of Auckland symposium held at the University of Auckland…
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The blog’s been pretty quiet while I’ve been concentrating on other things. One of those other things is a research project looking at post- and transhumanism in popular culture, and particularly in film. One of those projects has been the development of a couple of blogs to track that. The first of these is underway…
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Hat tip to New Life From Old for this link through to the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s resources for schools and young people, including Stem cells – science and ethics – BBSRC. The other week I was looking for this sort of thing for a homework project one of my children was doing…
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It’s been a while since I looked at anything related to cryonics, having been more preoccupied lately with things related to religion, popular culture and/or new media, so I was interested to see this article on cryonics in the NY Times. Discussion about cryonics has tended to get subsumed in the hype about super-longevity research…
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3D printing has always intrigued me, but potentially using a 3D printing system to make replacement body parts is really interesting. See Printing body parts: Making a bit of me | The Economist.
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Terry Pratchett on why ‘assisted death’ should be seriously considered – see Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal | Society | The Guardian. Of all the topics in ethics class last year, this one was the one most hotly debated by the students. Touches nerves on so many levels, I think, and not…
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Quick visit to Christchurch for an ICBC meeting. Main item on the agenda was discussion of the following: ERMA200223 – Application to develop in containment genetically modified goats, sheep and cows to produce human therapeutic proteins, or with altered levels of endogenous proteins for the study of gene function, milk composition and disease resistance You…