News and blogs

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) are working together to gain a clearer understanding of the bioethics landscape in the UK.

Our ethical compass – proposed in our report on global health emergencies as a way of using shared values to work through ethical dilemmas – is to be adopted as a guide for Research Ethics Committee processes in the Philippines.

With ‘exit day’ behind us, the Nuffield Council wanted to explore how Brexit could affect the UK’s relationship with European and global bioethics institutions.

Following a consultation held by Defra earlier this year, the Government has announced plans to reform the regulation of genome-edited organisms, beginning with plants and then extending to animals and microbes at a later date.

A new public dialogue exploring the ethical and social considerations of COVID-19 has found that addressing the societal inequalities worsened by the pandemic, building trust and transparency into government policies, and involving the public more in policy making are key areas of public concern and interest.

It’s organ donation week and the NHS are encouraging families to get together and talk about organ donation, a message we wholeheartedly support. It is also 10 years since we published our major report on the donation of human bodily material, which included substantial discussion about the ethics of organ donation.

The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator is currently looking to commission research reviews on four topics related to the unequal impacts of the pandemic, self-reported data collection and international aid, and is recruiting a Communications and Public Affairs Manager.

The news that 12 to 15 year olds are to be offered Covid vaccines has led to a flurry of commentary about the question of consent. Around the UK, lawyers have been shouting at their phones, tablets and televisions, as people express surprise that children aged under 16 might be able to make their own medical treatment decisions, even though that has been the undisputed position for 35 years.

With the UK Government due to announce its Covid winter plan, Danielle Hamm, Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, provides a bioethics perspective on recent and expected policy developments relating to covid vaccination.

The findings of a dialogue exploring people’s views about the adoption of genome editing technologies into animal farming have been published by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.