UPDATE Summer 2008

The supposedly quiet summer months have been another busy period for the Council, with a new Working Party under way and a number of evidence gathering activities taking place for our Working Party on dementia.

New project on personalised healthcare

The Council has decided to take forward a new Working Party on the ethical issues raised by new technologies that have the potential to deliver highly individualised healthcare services, such as personal genome mapping. We are delighted to announce that Professor Christopher Hood, Professor of Government at the University of Oxford and Director of the ESRC's Public Services Research Programme, has agreed to chair the Working Party. A full announcement about this project will be made in the autumn.

Consultation on dementia

We had a huge response to the Council’s consultation on the ethical issues raised by dementia, with 200 people and organisations sending in evidence and views on the consultation questions. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.

In addition, fifty members of the public deliberated the issues at a workshop hosted by the Council in Birmingham in August. The participants considered issues such as whether you should ever restrain people with dementia, and how decisions about treatment and care should be made. The workshop was organised by Opinion Leader, a research and consultancy company.

The outcomes of all these activities will be invaluable to the Working Party as they begin to formulate recommendations for policy and practice. A report setting out the group’s findings will be published in autumn 2009.

Public lecture 2009: speaker confirmed

We are delighted to announce that Professor Thomas Murray, President of the Hastings Centre in the US, has agreed to give the Council’s 2009 public lecture, to be held in London in spring 2009. Further details will be circulated nearer the time.

Job opportunity: Communications Officer

The Council is looking for an enthusiastic, self-motivated individual to help disseminate and promote the work of the Council to a wide range of stakeholders, including policy makers, healthcare professionals, journalists and young people. This new post will be extremely varied and provides an exciting opportunity for someone looking to further their career in communications.

Closing date: 19 Sept 2008 / Interviews: 7 Oct 2008. 

Thank you to interns

We are very grateful to two interns who have been helping to prepare background material on potential new projects over the summer. Suzy Evans, a medical student at the University of Bristol, and Michael Morrison, who is completing a PhD on human enhancement at the University of Nottingham, have been an asset to the team over the past six weeks and we wish them well in their future careers.

Recent consultation responses

The Council has recently submitted the following responses to the consultations of other organisations:

  • The World Medical Association’s consultation on the Declaration of Helsinki

  • The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies Roundtable on ethical aspects of modern developments in agricultural technologies