Ethical challenges in bioscience and health policy for the UK Parliament

Today (9 October) members of both houses of the UK Parliament received a document setting out four key ethical challenges in bioscience and health policy identified by the Council, with suggestions as to how each can be addressed.

Over the last quarter of a century, we have achieved an international reputation in advising policy makers and stimulating debate in bioethics. We have published more than 30 influential reports – and other diverse outputs – and established a network of more than 100 experts within academia, the media, policy and clinical practice, whose work helped to inform this document.The four challenges, which are explored in more detail in our new publication, are to:

• Build and maintain trust in medical research and the life sciences
• Ensure research and innovation address the needs of society
• Promote responsible health policy and research
• Promote international leadership in bioethics

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These challenges draw on our current and previous projects, including our work on genome editing, cosmetic procedures, non-invasive prenatal testing, biological and health data, the culture of scientific research, children and clinical research, donor conception, emerging biotechnologies, mitochondrial DNA disorders, organ donation, biofuels, personalised healthcare, dementia, public health and bioinformation.

This publication, along with short summaries of our recent reports, policy briefing papers and responses to policy consultations, is available at www.nuffieldbioethics.org/policy