In an age of new biotechnologies, from gene editing to neural enhancement, is there a tension in the idea that humans have special value because they’re somehow different or exceptional in nature? Dwelling on the idea that there’s something extraordinary about being human – and ignoring our kinship with life on our planet – is becoming a problem, says Melanie Challenger, an award-winning British writer and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics who has been a visiting scholar at The Hastings Center in November.

What does it mean to live well on a warming planet? And as the climate changes, how might health care, education, and other sectors support, or obstruct, our ability to respond? The answers to these profound, and profoundly bioethical, questions will critically influence human well-being in this century and beyond. A group of scientists, educators, and bioethicists convened at The Hastings Center recently to consider these questions and begin an interdisciplinary conversation on how bioethics might address the challenges posed by climate change.

How might bioethics help address the threats posed by climate change? A Hastings Center meeting scoped out the options.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided that female athletes with atypically high levels of testosterone must take testosterone-lowering medication in order to compete in certain events. I'm troubled by the precedent this sets.

If virtuous perfection of natural talents is what sports is all about, sports needs more people like Caster Semenya, the South African runner. But she is now ineligible for competing in middle distance events unless she takes medication to suppress her naturally high testosterone levels. Is this fair?

The new indie movie William explores the question, What would it be like if a Neanderthal were born and raised in a modern, industrialized society today?

With funding from the National Science Foundation, a new Hastings Center project will examine the rationale and challenges of public deliberation on the release of genetically modified insects, mammals, and other organisms into the environment.

On May 8, the New York Court of Appeals denied an appeal to have two captive chimpanzees, Kiko and Tommy, recognized as legal persons with the right to bodily liberty and released to a chimpanzee sanctuary. The Court of Appeals allows only about 5 percent of appeals, so the legal outcome was not surp...

Last month, a group of 17 North American philosophers (myself included) filed an amicus curiae brief with the New York State Court of Appeals on behalf of Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees. The brief, informally known as “Chimpanzee Personhood: The Philosophers’ Brief,” supports a legal a...

In the wake of Olympic doping scandals and just before the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February, a new book by Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray explores the use of biomedical enhancements in sport and the ways in which they can subvert the values that are fundamental to athletic co...

Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the advancement of gene editing and other transformative biotechnologies pose enormous global challenges. How can we promote responsible science, good governance, and opportunities for public engagement at time when anti-intellectualism on the rise and socie...

Is there a parental obligation to create “better” babies? Now that scientists can genetically edit plants and animals for agricultural and other purposes, what can we learn from the longstanding international debate over GMOs?

Using gene editing to modify genes responsible for devastating illnesses such as cystic fibrosis seems overwhelmingly desirable, but could there be unintended consequences? Might the ability to select for certain traits in human embryos increase discrimination or merely reflect it? These were two of ...

Possibly as many as half of the coral reefs that existed 100 years ago have been destroyed, sometimes by removing them, covering them up, or blowing them up, but mostly just because of climate change, which is gradually heating the water and making it more acidic. The solution everyone who cares abou...

Natalie Kofler, a postdoctoral research scientist at Yale University, visited The Hastings Center earlier this summer to explore the ethical questions surrounding the use of gene editing technologies in the environment. Kofler shared insights from the Editing Nature summit, which brought together a m...

After years of fluctuating and troubled efforts, the nations of the world in December of 2015 came to the remarkable agreement to work together to reduce global warming. On June 2, President Trump announced that our country will withdraw from that agreement.

Hastings Center research scholar Gregory Kaebnick participated in a multidisciplinary workshop at the University of Montana in Missoula on May 25 – 26 to examine the potential for using genome editing to conserve plants and animals that are threatened with extinction. The meeting addressed scie...

What do scientists and engineers owe to their creations? What responsibility do they bear for harms that their creations cause? How does being responsible for our creations change us? These are the central questions in an essay by Josephine Johnston, The Hastings Center’s director of research, in �...

Seated on a stage with a museum model of a dodo and a pair of mammoth tusks, a panel of experts debated what is exciting and what is frightening about scientific efforts to bring back extinct species — particularly those lost because of human activity.

Hastings Center research scholar Gregory Kaebnick is the lead author of an article in the November 11 issue of the journal Science that discusses the benefits of precautionary approaches to governance of emerging technology.

When Woody Allen said he was “at two with nature,” perhaps he had in mind insects that sting or bite. Who can argue with that, and who hasn’t taken a swat at one in self-defense? Right now the creature we would like to get rid of is one common species of mosquito called Ades aegypti. Unfortunat...

We have long had the ability, we humans, to work outside the bounds of evolution. Dairy cattle, maize, and all sorts of dog breeds attest to that. It is unlikely that natural evolution alone would have produced these things. They depended on human intervention. However, in the past, the scope of huma...

The scientific consensus that food containing genetically modified organisms is safe seems ever stronger, yet the social controversy about GMOs seems only to grow as well. “Unhealthy Fixation,” a long article published this summer in Slate and reporting on what author Will Saletan says was cl...

“If you look through the red-tinted glass, you will see the radioactive pig,” said the director of animal laboratories at my university–let’s call her Susan–near the start of my tour of the facility. There on a concrete floor, within a steel cage, was a large solitary sow, lying on her side...

At the end of April, the biotech firm Amyris announced that it was launching its own line of skin emollient under the brand name Biossance. The product is based on a hycrocarbon known as squalane that Amyris produces from sugarcane using genetically modified microorganisms and has sold to cosmetics m...

One of the long-term contributions of Earth Day is that it offers a regular, semi-official reminder that a sense of the sacred is a vital part of environmentalism. The spirit of John Muir lives on in the notion of “Respect for the land” that was emphasized in the famous Keep America Beautiful pu...

An article in the New York Times last week suggests that the genetic engineering of humans is only just around the corner. A recently developed gene editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas9 has finally made it possible to easily and accurately make genetic alterations to human cells, which could make it pos...

For several years, a British company called Oxitec has been proposing a strategy for controlling a species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti, that humans have accidentally carried from Africa to other parts of the globe, thereby also spreading a risk of dengue fever and other diseases for which A. aegypti i...

Perhaps the biggest challenge in talking about something like de-extinction is simply being clear on what it is you’re really talking about. Emerging technologies can be surrounded with so much hoopla that one can lose sight of what the technologies actually accomplish.

In October, the federal Office for Human Research Protections issued a “Draft Guidance on Disclosing Reasonably Foreseeable Risks in Research Evaluating Standards of Care.” It follows the controversy that erupted in 2013 over the SUPPORT study of oxygen therapy for premature babies. The draft g...

Is the end in sight for wilderness? A recent opinion piece in the New York Times, by the science journalist Christopher Solomon, says it is. “There’s a heresy echoing through America’s woods and wild places,” writes Solomon. “It’s a debate about how we should think about, and treat, ou...

A team of scientists announced this week that it had successfully created one of the sixteen chromosomes found in yeast cells, marking a meaningful step forward in that part of genetic engineering dubbed synthetic biology. This is the first time an entire chromosome has been synthesized. Moreover, th...

A remarkable set of essays appeared recently in Grist, a nonprofit dedicated to “dishing out environmental news and commentary,” about the warring claims over genetically modified organisms. In the inaugural piece last July, the author, Nathanael Johnson, said his goal was to proceed with humil...

This past November, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature declared the western black rhinoceros of Africa, last seen in 2006, officially extinct. It also concluded that most other rhino species are in danger, even “teetering.” Yet at the same time, over the past year, some scient...

Australia passed legislation in September giving transgender and intersex passport holders the option to identify themselves with an X for “indeterminate sex.” Navi Pillay, the United Nation’s high commissioner for human rights, called it “a victory for human rights.” Although other nations...

Kudos to Australia for recognizing that some people might not be well served by a passport system that marks you only as either “M” or “F” and does so on the basis of your birth certificate. But, oh, what have they stepped in, as they’ve tried to step forward?

The first time the Dr. Oz show called me, I was simply too tired to deal. The story of Caster Semenya — the track athlete whose sex had been called into question — had hit the international news the week before, and since then, as an expert on atypical sex, I had done 25 media interviews....