essay
Animals 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
essay
Consciousness 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
essay
Animals 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
essay
Bioethics
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
video
Ethics
How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?
6 minutes
essay
Animals 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
essay
Animals 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
essay
Animals 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
essay
Animals and humans
Against human exceptionalism
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong
Jeff Sebo
video
Family life
A son of China’s former one-child policy remembers the sibling he never had
8 minutes
essay
Bioethics
We are all frail
We should be able to acknowledge that disabilities can cause pain and suffering without disabled people feeling dehumanised
Tom Shakespeare
essay
Animals and humans
The posthuman dog
If humans were to disappear from the face of the Earth, what might dogs become? And would they be better off without us?
Jessica Pierce
essay
Oceans and water
Defend the deep
Instead of letting waves of exploitation sweep through the deep ocean, we could choose to protect this vast living realm
Helen Scales
essay
Bioethics
Don’t farm bugs
Insect farming bakes, boils and shreds animals by the trillion. It’s immoral, risky and won’t resolve the climate crisis
Jeff Sebo & Jason Schukraft
video
Biology
When medicine offers no relief, a biohacker begins a radical self-experiment
12 minutes
essay
Space exploration
Do we send the goo?
The ability to stir new life into being, all across the Universe, compels us to ask why life matters in the first place
Betül Kaçar
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Consciousness regained
After years of deep therapeutic pessimism, emerging therapies offer hope for patients trapped between coma and wakefulness
Aurore Thibaut
essay
Public health
It didn’t have to be this way
A bioethicist at the heart of the Italian coronavirus crisis asks: why won’t we talk about the tradeoffs of the lockdown?
Silvia Camporesi
video
Bioethics
For some, animal testing is ‘just science’. For others, it’s just not right
17 minutes
essay
Medicine
No patient is an island
How a concern to protect the autonomy of patients leads to the exclusion of families just when they are needed the most
Anita Ho
idea
Bioethics
Whose limb is it anyway? On the ethics of body-part disposal
Esmée Hanna
essay
Animals and humans
Rats are us
They are sentient beings with rich emotional lives, yet we subject them to experimental cruelty without conscience. Why?
Kristin Andrews & Susana Monsó
essay
Bioethics
Neither person nor cadaver
The body is warm, but the brain has gone dark: why the notion of brain death provokes the thorniest of medical dilemmas
Sharon Kaufman
video
Animals and humans
How does Norman, a 16-year-old Shih Tzu, see the pet cloning dilemma?
8 minutes