Top of the Lake may sink as a procedural, but look beneath the surface
The implausibilities of this series ought not to detain us too long. For there are deep and troubling questions that the series raises. What is it to be a 'real' mother?...
Dr Iain Brassington
Dr Iain Brassington was previously a Volunteer Writer at BioNews, and is a Lecturer in Bioethics at the University of Manchester's School of Law, where he is also Programme Director of the Intercalated MSc in Healthcare Ethics and Law. He has taught at Keele University's Centre for Professional Ethics and School of Medicine, at the University of Birmingham's Department of Philosophy and College of Medical and Dental Sciences, and at the University of Warwick's Department of Philosophy. Previously, he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Hull, and went on to obtain an MSc in Healthcare Ethics and subsequently his PhD from the University of Birmingham. He is author of Truth and Normativity: An Inquiry into the Basis of Everyday Moral Claims (buy this book from Amazon UK) and Public Health and Globalisation: Why a National Health Service is Morally Indefensible (buy this book from Amazon UK). He tweets as @Dr_Enzyme
BioNews Articles by Dr Iain Brassington
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Should Parliament vote to allow 'three-parent babies'?
It seems to have happened very quickly: it was only in 2012 that the public consultation process about allowing mitochondrial donation to be used on humans was underway; and now — if you'll allow the pun — the first child to have benefitted from them could be conceivable in the next few months...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Event Review: Have Your Say on Mitochondria Replacement (Manchester)
Under the law as it stands in the UK, only 'permitted' embryos may be implanted into a woman. Permitted embryos are those that have not been genetically modified, and are not formed from genetically modified gametes...
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Book Review: Future Human Evolution - Eugenics in the 21st Century
Back in my bar-tending days, we had as regular customers a small group of men who would spend the evening huddled around a table talking at volume about current affairs. We used to eavesdrop on their conversations: it was hard not to. For the most part, what they tended to say was robustly weird, with essays into the profoundly bizarre. Reading John Glad's 'Future Human Evolution', I couldn't help but think of them...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
A small solution to a big problem
There's a part of 'Gulliver's Travels' where Gulliver visits the grand Academy at Lagado and finds one of the academicians trying to derive sunbeams from cucumbers. It's tempting to wonder at first glance whether there's something of the Academy to Liao, Sandberg and Roache's proposed strategy for combating climate change: that we could engineer human beings so they would be less of a drain on the environment...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Book Review: It Takes a Genome
I'll admit right from the start that I'm a bit of a waste of time when it comes to science: I dropped most of it at 14 in favour of Latin, and the remainder of my school science was taught by an ageing physicist who spent most of the following 18 months telling a very involved shaggy-dog story about an octopus and some bagpipes...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Book Review: Choosing Tomorrow's Children - The Ethics of Selective Reproduction
To what extent is it permissible for people to choose for or against certain desired characteristics in their future children? There's a range of ways in which we might do this - for example, we might attempt to insert or delete a particular gene into or from a gamete prior to conception, or we might choose embryo C from the petri-dish over embryos A, B and D...
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Book Review: Enhancing Evolution - The Ethical Case for Making Better People
Quite understandably, eugenics got a bad name during the 20th century; and, in many people's minds, it is still associated with programmes of mass forced sterilisation and industrial killing. On the other hand, the project of 'improving' humanity - which is what eugenics is really about - doesn't have to demand these measures...
