News and blogs

The Government has announced plans to introduce a licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures including botulinum toxin (Botox) and fillers.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) set out to better understand how the ethical implications of biological and medical research are considered by people and organisations in the UK.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with Rethink Mental Illness to explore the ethical issues raised by the use of digital technology in mental healthcare.

What then does ethical preparedness mean? There is still a great deal of work to do to explore the full scope of such a concept. However, drawing on the lessons from COVID, we suggest the following three elements are likely to play an important role.

Our new infographic illustrates a wide range of developments related to biological and medical research that are likely to raise ethical issues in the near or far future.

We had a virtual consultation with GP and Council member Dr Selena Stellman to triage and diagnose her thoughts on…virtual GP consultations.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics warmly welcomes new guidelines by UKRI and UNICEF that aim to help grant reviewers consider ethical issues when reviewing proposals for research in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

Recent announcements that advertisers will be restricted from aiming ads for cosmetic procedures at under-18s, and that practitioners can no longer administer botox or fillers to under-18s, are clear causes for celebration. But the buck doesn’t stop when someone turns 18.

We welcome the decision of the World Health Assembly to develop an international agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response under the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is calling on the Government to put animal welfare at the heart of plans to approve new breeding technologies in farming and food production, in a new report ‘Genome editing and farmed animal breeding: social and ethical issues’, published today.

We welcome the announcement that COVID-19 vaccination will not become a condition of deployment for all healthcare workers in England until the spring.