News and blogs

In relation to pandemic policy in England, the absence of sustained ethical discourse at the level of government has created fundamental challenges to establishing how responsibility should be understood—practically, and as a matter of principle.

In the wake of the announced ending of most COVID restrictions the talk is inevitably of what the new normal will look like. Prominent in these discussions is the idea that there might be an ‘acceptable level of deaths’.

Guest post from Paquita de Zulueta, former Council member and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London

We are delighted to welcome Danielle Hamm who joins us this week as our new Director.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics welcomes the findings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report, ‘Direct-to-consumer genomic testing’, published today.

Hugh Whittall has retired as Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, after 14 years.

We are delighted to announce the start of a new public dialogue to explore people’s views on the ethical implications of genome editing in farmed animals.

We are delighted to announce that Professor David Archard, Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, has been appointed to the National Genomics Board.

Guest post from Shaun Griffin and Hugh Whittall, UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is seeking contributions to an inquiry on the ethical issues relating to the role of science and technology in helping people live well in old age.

Just over a year ago we closed our 2-year long in-depth inquiry and published our final report ‘Research in global health emergencies: ethical issues’.

It has been one year since we published our briefing note on fair and equitable access to COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. A great deal has changed in the year since – we now have several COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out across the world, but issues around equitable access to them remain.