News and blogs

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.

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.