The silent seed
A person's death need no longer spell the end of his or her future reproductive possibilities. A dead or dying person can have their reproductive tissue removed to enable someone else to have a child...
Professor Anna Smajdor
Practical Philosophy at the University of Oslo
Professor Anna Smajdor was previously an Adviser to the Progress Educational Trust (PET) and is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Oslo. Previously, she was a Lecturer in Ethics at the University of East Anglia. She has a longstanding interest in the ethical and regulatory aspects of science, medicine and technology. She has written and spoken widely in connection with this research, as well as on broader philosophical and ethical questions. She is coauthor (with Baroness Ruth Deech) of 'From IVF to Immortality: Controversy in the Era of Reproductive Technology' (buy this book from Amazon UK), and of 'The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethics and Law' (with Professor Jonathan Herring and Robert Wheeler buy this book from Amazon UK).
BioNews Articles by Professor Anna Smajdor
Book Review: The Ethics of Pregnancy, Abortion and Childbirth - Exploring Moral Choices in Childbearing
Academics have written at length on the ethics of reproductive technologies, abortion and speculative possibilities such as reproductive cloning. But pregnancy itself up until recently has been a somewhat neglected topic...
Pig-human organs: policing the moral boundaries
The recent of creation of pig embryos with human DNA blurs the boundaries between animals and ourselves, giving us a chance to consider whether our moral categories are correct...
Will organs from GM pigs save our bacon?
The new gene-editing technique CRISPR/Cas9 could remove one of the toughest barriers to the transplantation of pig organs to humans. And it has been suggested that the production of genetically modified (GM) pig organs could end the anguish of those waiting for suitable donors. But is it really a panacea?
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
Do women have a right to freeze their eggs?
From a Western perspective, China may seem excessively restrictive in preventing citizens from paying for egg freezing services but we have failed to use the democratic space we have to negotiate state policies in reproduction...
Can I be my grandchild's mother?
The Daily Mail recently reported that a 59-year-old woman is seeking to give birth to her own grandchild...
Beyond the harm threshold
Underlying many controversies in reproductive technology is an assumption that there is a 'harm threshold' — a point at which a child would suffer so much that it would have been harmed by coming into existence. This idea has an intuitive appeal, but the questions it raises are very difficult to answer...
The sperm harvest
Dilemmas relating to the perimortem retrieval and posthumous use of sperm have featured in a number of recent BioNews articles. These cases show us how variable attitudes toward consent may be in different countries...
Report Review: Eugenics and the Ethics of Selective Reproduction
The prospect of eugenics has re-emerged in multiple new guises. The polarising power of this concept is part of its fascination, but this is not necessarily fruitful for debate or policy-making. In their booklet, Stephen Wilkinson and Eve Garrard address this problem...
Whose sperm is it anyway?
A woman whose husband became a sperm donor without her knowledge is seeking to change the law. Her claim is that a husband's sperm constitutes a 'marital asset', over which a wife should have some legally enforcable rights...