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Bioethics

Essays and videos on philosophy, the history of ideas, ethics and life’s big questions

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A crocodile underwater with mouth open wide showing teeth in a cloudy green environment.

essayThe environment

Beyond food and people

Nietzsche shows us how to embrace our connection with nature – without denying its essential conflict, strife and suffering

Nicholas E Low

Photo of two polar bears exploring a decaying wooden building, one looks out a window, the other stands on the porch steps.

essayAnimals and humans

Humanlike?

Interpreting the emotional lives of animals requires a subtler and more nuanced understanding of anthropomorphism

Mike Dacey

A cheetah cub playfully interacts with a brown dog on grass, with a toy in the background.

essayBioethics

Why the cat wags her tail

Here’s a puzzle: how could evolution favour such a costly, frivolous and fun activity as animal play?

Mathilde Tahar-Malaussena

A cupcake with pink icing topped with mealworms, surrounded by other cupcakes.

essayFood and drink

Adjust your disgust

The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion to insects and lab-grown meat

Alexandra Plakias

A masked nurse in scrubs sitting in a hospital waiting area.

essayBioethics

Moral resilience

Nurses experience deep suffering when they can’t act according to their moral compass. Our research shows a way forward

Cynda Hylton Rushton

Cartoon of three surgeons wearing scrubs and masks performing surgery on a patient, with surgical lights overhead.

videoBioethics

What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’

6 minutes

Illustration of a child holding a shell to their ear with a bird singing on a branch amidst abstract greenery and flowers.

essayBioethics

The cochlear question

As the hearing parent of a deaf baby, I’m confronted with an agonising decision: should I give her an implant to help her hear?

Abi Stephenson

Two children hugging on the floor, one in a white shirt smiling with eyes closed while the other wears a red jacket.

videoBioethics

Is it ethical to have a second child so that your first might live?

10 minutes

Two embryos, colourised in shades of pink, orange, and purple, against a black background. The embryos have distinguishable head, body, and tail regions.

essayBiology

Building embryos

For 3,000 years, humans have struggled to understand the embryo. Now there is a revolution underway

John Wallingford

A team of surgeons in blue scrubs and surgical caps operate under bright surgical lights in an operating theatre. Medical instruments and equipment are arranged on tables around them, while one team member adjusts another’s mask. Shelves in the background hold medical supplies.

essayMedicine

Last hours of an organ donor

In the liminal time when the brain is dead but organs are kept alive, there is an urgent tenderness to medical care

Ronald W Dworkin

Pig walking down a narrow aisle between rows of stalls in a farming facility, with dim lighting and metal structures.

essayBioethics

The dangers of AI farming

AI could lead to new ways for people to abuse animals for financial gain. That’s why we need strong ethical guidelines

Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert & Jonathan Birch

Portrait of a man in a red coat, seated, with his chin resting on his hand, an open book, and anatomical specimens in jars and bones in the background.

essayHistory of science

The rights of the dead

From the Irish Giant to the Ancient One, is it ever ethical for scientists and museums to study bodies without permission?

Anita Guerrini

A yellow orchid flower in a vase is lit by sunlight from a side window in a living room. The background is out of focus

essayPsychiatry and psychotherapy

Psychosis and psychedelics

In the 1960s, psychedelic research was driven underground. Now it’s re-emerging – with lessons for the study of psychosis

Phoebe Friesen

A black and white photo of a man in doctor’s clothing posed next to a lab bench with a microscope looking directly at the camera

essayMedicine

Physician, invade thyself

Eager for medical breakthroughs, some doctors take enormous risks experimenting on themselves. Should we celebrate them?

Tom Doyle

In the foreground a European mother cradles a newborn baby as an Indian woman looks on from the right

essayBioethics

Reproductive technologies

Infertility treatments aim to improve women’s lives. But they risk tying womanhood to the toxic expectation of motherhood

Gulzaar Barn

Illustration of a foetus inside a red orb, floating in space with a small satellite nearby against a starry galaxy background.

videoSpace exploration

Would children born beyond Earth ever be able to return to humanity’s home planet?

5 minutes

A dog sleeping on a street near a vegetable market stall, with people and bicycles in the background.

essayAnimals and humans

The free dogs of India

These canines have independent, peaceful, happy lives without a pet’s constraints. Why are they being persecuted and culled?

Krithika Srinivasan & Chris Pearson

Abstract artwork with geometric shapes, organic forms and pastel colours intersecting in a mandala-like pattern, with gold and blue swirls on a dark background.

essayConsciousness and altered states

Animal, vegetable, mineral

Cruel and unscientific, the ‘vegetative state’ diagnosis stems from a hierarchical and bigoted view of all living things

Ben Platts-Mills

Close-up of a pug with expressive brown eyes and wrinkled features against a dark background.

essayAnimals and humans

Where went the wolf?

The very attributes that make small dogs cute and popular are slowly strangling their ability to function as real animals

Jessica Pierce

A close-up image of a human embryo at the eight-cell stage, viewed under a microscope with a red and dark background.

essayBioethics

Selected before birth

Embryo risk screening could lower the odds of illnesses ranging from depression to diabetes. Can it be ethically done?

Todd Lencz & Shai Carmi

Illustration of various animals surrounding a human figure wearing a crown, including a whale, dolphin, fox, owl, and more.

videoEthics

How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?

6 minutes

An elephant standing near trees, with its trunk extended towards the ground in a grassy, fenced enclosure.

essayAnimals and humans

Happy the person

She has deep emotions, complex social needs and a large, elephant brain. Her legal personhood should be recognised too

Lori Marino

A woman in a hat sitting on a bench with a small dog in a wicker basket on her lap. People and benches are in the blurred background.

essayAnimals and humans

Semiotics of dogs

In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of both human hopes and foibles

Katrina Gulliver

A gloved hand holding a small white mouse lying on its back, against a blurred background.

essayAnimals and humans

Freefall into darkness

Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives of our caged subjects?

Garet Lahvis