Playing God with Frankenstein

"Playing God" and bioethics.

Playing God? Owning God?--Patenting and the human genome.

It is just over 50 years since James Watson and Francis Crick published the news of their discovery of the structure of DNA1 – the molecule that encodes the genetic information present in all living organisms. Their letter, published on 25 April 1953, signified the beginning of the modern age of biology.2 In 2001, as a result of the activities of public and private sector bodies working on the ...

Playing God: Mary must die so Jodie may live longer.

In 2000, conjoined twins were born in England. What made this case unique was the fact that if the twins remained unseparated, medical opinion held they would die; if they were separated one twin would live, and one twin would die; the parents refused to consent to separation; and the hospital charged with their care brought the matter to court. The trial court and court of appeal approved of t...

Playing God with guppies – informing tough conservation decisions using a model experimental system

With human-induced extinctions and population declines accelerating worldwide (Dirzo et al., 2014), it is more important than ever to foster dialogue among researchers, conservationists, and the public at large about the costs and benefits of potential management actions. We are therefore grateful for the insightful commentaries provided by Mills (2017), Grueber (2017) and Tallmon (2017) on our...

Frankenstein restored

When Ilya Prigogine carried off the Nobel Prize for network thermodynamics the science editor of a great English daily newspaper was on hand with guidance for the perplexed: “Professor Prigogine,” he explained, “is an expert on the chemical make-up of human beings.” Frankenstein, for once, did not rear his head, but he is no stranger to the headlines. As Jon Turney reveals in his dense treatise...