There have been several recent high-profile cases of healthcare teams and parents fundamentally disagreeing about the care of critically ill children in the UK.

This short project explores the social and medical factors that might be contributing to how disagreements about the care of critically ill children develop in the UK, and how they are being resolved. We have published a Bioethics briefing note that summarises the evidence and the potential challenges for policy makers.

In July 2018, we published a report into the social and ethical issues raised by the use of genome editing as a technology that could influence inherited characteristics in humans.

The potential development of genome editing applications in human reproduction was one of the areas identified as requiring urgent ethical scrutiny in our 2016 report Genome editing: an ethical review.

Recent global health emergencies have highlighted how uncertainties about what is ethically acceptable during emergencies can impede progress of potentially valuable research, or alternatively contribute to the risks of unethical practice passing undetected.

This project will explore how research may be conducted ethically in global health emergencies.

Bioethics briefing notes are a different type of output from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Each briefing note will focus on new scientific and medical developments and the ethical and social issues raised around a particular topic.