SPECIAL REPORTS
Ethics of authorship in scientific articles: The case of Rosalind Franklin
On April 25, 1953, Nature published the discovery of the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). James Watson and Francis Crick deciphered the genetic material of living beings from photograph 51 taken by X-ray [...]
A volunteer dies after participating in a gene editing trial against LDL cholesterol
A study published in Nature reports the results of research conducted by a team of scientists led by Ritu Thamman of Pennsylvania State University, who have managed to drastically reduce the level of LDL cholesterol [...]
One more step in the production of animal chimeras. The first chimeric monkey is born
A recent study reports the generation of a fetus and a chimeric monkey born alive using homologous pluripotent cells of embryonic origin (ESC), in which up to 90% of chimeric cells have been obtained in [...]
The case of Indi Gregory: The bioethical dilemma between the right to die and the right to life
Indi Gregory has passed away in the hospice where she was taken off life support on Saturday, November 12. The eight-month-old British baby died after the legal battle that her parents had undertaken months before [...]
Human embryo genome editing: is it possible or acceptable?
Improvements in gene editing tools and the steady advance in the knowledge of how the human genome works have opened up the possibility of performing modification-editing processes in the DNA sequence of the early human [...]
Anthropological reflection after watching the movie Barbie
Greta Gerwig, director of the film Barbie, formulates a reflective proposal on the postmodern environment of today's society and some of its symptoms such as the slavery of the image, the culture of comparison that [...]
Juan Pedro Núñez: “Humans will be a new species with chips implanted in their brain”
The message of transhumanism is very simple: thanks to science and technology, people will become beings far superior to modern humans and will live forever. Although there is quite a lot of science fiction in [...]
The new European Union regulation on substances of human origin: reflection from a bioethical perspective
Introduction On Wednesday, 13 September, a proposal from the European Parliament on the regulation of “substances of human origin” (SoHO) was approved. The initiative aims to establish a legal framework for action with all those [...]
A transsexual requests euthanasia after suffering complications from her sex reassignment surgery
This is not the first time that we have treated in our Observatory the case of transsexual people who, after undergoing gender transition treatment, regret having done so. Unfortunately, there are more and more of [...]
Roberto Andorno: “Let’s put limits on neurotechnology before nothing can be done”
Rapid advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology have opened up an unprecedented set of possibilities “for accessing, collecting, sharing and manipulating information from the human brain”, announced Roberto Andorno, professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), [...]
Humanized kidneys in human-pig chimeras. One more step towards the possibility of obtaining human organs from animals
Scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, in China, together with the Spanish doctor Miguel Ángel Esteban, have managed to obtain for the first time a rudiment of a human organ in an [...]
A woman has given birth to a child in Alabama after a uterus transplant outside a clinical trial
For the first time, in May a woman with a transplanted uterus gave birth via uterus transplant outside of a clinical trial. Spokesmen for the Hospital of the University of Alabama at Birmingham where the [...]
Embryos and embryonic models: new possibilities, new dilemmas
An article recently published in the journal Cell, raises the need to assign a legal status to new embryonic models - human embryos - obtained from pluripotent cells, coming from embryonic cells (human Embryonic Stem [...]
Do scientists bet…? More than you think
Doubt is a key feature of scientific progress that consists of a constant reevaluation of hypotheses. This constant doubt and proposal of new theories often leads the research community to controversy and conflict. This is the [...]
An air of optimism in the face of climate change
The transition to a world with zero CO2 balance is surely the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. It requires a complete transformation of the way we produce, consume and get around, replacing the polluting [...]
More evidence on the risks of oral hormonal contraception
A recent study provides worrying evidence on the relationship between the use of certain contraceptive treatments and the prevalence of depression in women who use them. The authors of the paper say that “[their] findings [...]
The creation of synthetic human embryos: overstepping the limits
As we previously explained in an article published by our Observatory, artificial embryos (also called embryoids, embryonic models or blastoids) are cellular aggregates obtained from what are popularly known as "stem cells”. These cells reflect [...]
The European Human Brain Project: “We can gain fundamental insights into what it means to be human”
The Human Brain Project is born It has been ten years since the European Union launched an ambitious and highly funded project to understand the human brain in depth, and in particular to decipher how [...]
World Athletics prohibits trans women from competing in women’s competitions
World Athletics Federation banned trans women from competing in women's competitions on March 31, 2023, thus excluding transgender athletes who had passed male puberty before participating in women's competitions in the world rankings. Regarding DSD [...]
First woman in Spain gives birth after a uterus transplant
For the first time in Spain, a woman has given birth to a baby after undergoing a uterus transplant. Previously, in October 2020, Tamara Franco had undergone uterine surgery at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona [...]