Stem cells: science, policy, and ethics

Human embryonic stem cells offer the promise of a new regenerative medicine in which damaged adult cells can be replaced with new cells. Research is needed to determine the most viable stem cell lines and reliable ways to promote the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into specific cell types (neurons, muscle cells, etc.). To create new cell lines, it is necessary to destroy preimplantation blastocysts. This has led to an intense debate that threatens to limit embryonic stem cell research. The profound ethical issues raised call for informed, dispassionate debate

Domestic violence and mental health: Correlates and conundrums within and across cultures

Gender-based violence, only recently emerging as a pervasive global issue, contributes significantly to preventable morbidity and mortality for women across diverse cultures. Existing documentation suggests that profound physical and psychological sequelae are endemic following intimate partner violence. The presentation of domestic violence is often culture specific. A new lexicon, prompted by the expansion of human rights analysis, describes particular threats to local women including dowry deaths, honor murder, sati, and disproportional exposure to HIV/AIDS as well as globally generic perils including abuse, battering, marital rape, and murder. While still fragmentary, accruing data reveal strengthening associations between domestic violence and mental health. Depression, stress-related syndromes, chemical dependency and substance (ab)use, and suicide are consequences observed in the context of violence in women's lives. Emerging social, legal, medical, and educational strategies, often culture specific, offer novel local models to promote social change beginning with raising the status of women. The ubiquity, gravity, and variability of domestic violence across cultures compel additional research to promote the recognition, intervention, and prevention of domestic violence that are both locally specific and internationally instructuve.domestic violence gender-based violence spouse abuse pregnancy cross-cultural studies dowry death HIV/AIDS rape mental health human rights ethics

Science-Based Ethics: A Scientific Approach to Bioethical Decision Making

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Creating a Three-Parent Child: An Educational Paradigm for the Responsible Conduct of Research

The field of assisted reproduction is renowned for its remarkable advances and constant pushing forward of research boundaries in an effort to offer innovative and effective methods for enhancing fertility. Accompanying these advances, however, are physiological, psychological, and bioethical consequences that must be considered. These concomitant advances and consequences make assisted reproduction an excellent educational paradigm for inculcating responsible conduct in both research and clinical practice. Ultimately, responsible conduct rests on the ethical researcher and clinician. Here, we present the as-yet unapproved, contentious assisted reproductive technology of mitochondrial replacement transfer (MRT) as an ideal educational platform to foster the responsible conduct of research by advancing dialogue among multidisciplinary scholars, researchers, and students. Using a likely future case, we present the basic science, legal, and ethical considerations, and the pedagogical principles and strategies for using MRT as an effective educational paradigm. Society will benefit when the ethical issues inherent in creating children with three genetic parents as well as germline interference are discussed across multiple academic levels that include researchers, legal experts, bioethicists, and government-appointed commissions. Furthermore, undergraduate and graduate students should be included because they will likely determine the ethical fates of these biotechnologies. While emerging assisted reproduction technologies such as MRT are highly complex and will take years to be readily available for patients in need, now is the time to consider their scientific, legal, ethical, and cultural/religious implications for ensuring the responsible conduct of research