bioethics

Articles

• Artificial wombReproductionA device that sustains fetal development outside a body by perfusing the umbilical circulation while the fetus remains immersed in fluid, tested so far only in animals.TRL 52030sExperimental
• BioconservatismSocietyThe position that biotechnological modification of human beings should face a strong presumption against it, grounded in dignity, precaution, or the value of the given.presentEstablished
• Bioethics of enhancementSocietyThe philosophical and policy debate over whether biomedical means may legitimately be used to push human capacities beyond species-typical function.presentEstablished
• Designer babiesReproductionA popular term for children whose traits are chosen before birth, covering a real but narrow practice of embryo selection and a largely hypothetical practice of embryo editing.presentContested
• Disability rights and enhancementSocietyThe disability-rights critique of selection and enhancement, centred on the expressivist objection, the social model, and the difference between curing and accommodating.presentEstablished
• EctogenesisReproductionThe development of a mammalian embryo or fetus outside a body, either for part of gestation or for all of it, and the ethical arguments the prospect generates.2040sSpeculative
• Embryo selectionReproductionTesting embryos created by IVF and choosing which to transfer, a routine clinical practice for single-gene disease whose extension to complex traits remains disputed.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Governance of human genome editingSocietyThe patchwork of national law, professional norms, funding rules, and international soft law that determines what may be done to a human genome and by whom.presentEmerging
• He Jiankui affairGeneticsThe 2018 announcement that twin girls had been born from CRISPR-edited embryos in Shenzhen, and the scientific condemnation and criminal prosecution that followed.historicalHistorical
• Human cloningReproductionProducing a human genetically identical to an existing person by somatic cell nuclear transfer, demonstrated to the blastocyst stage and never taken to a pregnancy.TRL 4indefiniteContested
• Human enhancementEnhancementThe deliberate use of biomedical or technical means to extend human capacities beyond what is needed to restore or maintain ordinary health.presentContested
• Human germline editingGeneticsModification of human embryos, eggs, or sperm so that the genetic change is inherited by the resulting child and by all of their descendants.TRL 42040sContested
• Humanity+OrganizationsThe main international transhumanist membership organization, founded in 1998 as the World Transhumanist Association and now largely dormant as an institution.presentEstablished
• In vitro fertilisationReproductionThe routine clinical procedure in which eggs are fertilised outside the body and an embryo is transferred to a uterus, and the platform every other embryo technology is built on.TRL 9presentEstablished
• In vitro gametogenesisReproductionMaking functional eggs or sperm from pluripotent stem cells in culture, achieved end to end in mice and still short of the meiotic stages in humans.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Julian SavulescuPeopleAustralian bioethicist who formulated procreative beneficence and, with Ingmar Persson, the argument for moral bioenhancement; the leading academic advocate of human enhancement.presentEstablished
• Leon KassPeopleAmerican physician and bioethicist who chaired the President's Council on Bioethics and made the strongest philosophical case that mortality gives human life its meaning.presentEstablished
• Moral enhancementEnhancementThe proposal to improve human moral motivation by biomedical means, argued for as a response to technologies that outpace evolved moral psychology.indefiniteSpeculative
• Organ shortageBodiesThe persistent gap between the number of people who need a transplant and the number of usable donated organs, which drives most work on engineered and animal-derived replacements.presentEstablished
• OrganoidsBodiesSelf-organizing tissue cultures grown from stem cells that reproduce some of the architecture and function of an organ, used mainly for disease modelling rather than transplantation.TRL 5presentEmerging
• Personal identity and continuityMindsThe question of what makes a person at one time the same person as at another, and what — if anything — must be preserved for that person to survive.indefiniteContested
• Polygenic embryo screeningReproductionThe ranking of IVF embryos by polygenic risk scores computed from their inferred genotypes, sold commercially since 2019 and rejected as unvalidated by professional genetics bodies.TRL 7presentContested
• Procreative beneficenceSocietyJulian Savulescu's principle that prospective parents have moral reason to select, among the children they could have, the one expected to live the best life.presentContested
• Right to die and the duty to liveSocietyHow the law and ethics of assisted dying interact with radical life extension, and whether an indefinitely extendable life could still be voluntarily ended.presentContested
• Stem-cell-based embryo modelsReproductionStructures grown by aggregating stem cells that reproduce stages of early embryonic development without fertilisation, and the regulatory categories they fall outside.TRL 3late 2020sExperimental
• TranshumanismPeopleThe intellectual and cultural movement holding that human beings can and should use technology to overcome the biological limits of the human condition.presentEstablished