Blog

The Consensus Study Report of the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing convened by the US National Academies of Medicine and Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society was published on 3 September.

The introduction of compulsory mask policies in the UK has prompted a mixture of compliance and contention.

Guest post: This blog is an extended version of a presentation given by Professor Bobbie Farsides at last week’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ webinar “Ethical implications of antibody testing and 'immunity certification'."

Global health emergencies aren’t restricted by language. As we see with the current COVID-19 pandemic, the virus isn’t limited to one country or continent – it affects everyone.

In most emergencies, affected communities play a key role in initiating and leading response activities – in stark contrast to the stereotype of people overwhelmed by the emergency waiting helplessly for help from outsiders.

For a week or so now the public discourse on the UK’s COVID-19 epidemic has been shifting from the horror of the daily death count to the hope that there may be a way of relaxing the restrictions that have been placed on citizens’ freedom of movement and assembly.

In their recent statement on digital contact tracing, NHSX, the NHS Unit leading digital transformation of the NHS, acknowledge that the public will need to trust this new technology for it to be effective in tackling COVID-19, and that NHSX will seek to earn that trust by working with ‘transparent standards of privacy, security and ethics’.