The Thin End

The Thin End has referred to the 'hidden' health cost of the COVID pandemic in previous articles.  Clearing the decks to prevent the National Health Service being overwhelmed meant that others had their diagnosis and treatment put on hold.  What the government should do now is to learn the lesson to build resilience into the system.  Else, we are saving the lives of those directly affected by a pandemic while allowing the health and lives of others to be lost.  This has been particularly evident in cancer services.  It is challenging to see the real ethics of that choice.  Sacrificing Peter to save Paul is not the best approach.   On the contrary, it had all the hallmarks of a panic response.  NHS England has now prioritised cancer services, but an analysis produced this month by The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says that the UK government must now use the opportunity of restarting cancer services in the NHS to "build back better." ...

The creation of genetically-modified babies is not only ethically justifiable but “highly desirable”, according to new academic research from a leading UK bioethicist. Dr Kevin Smith from Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, has published ethical analysis concluding that the risks of gene editing are now low enough to justify its use with human embryos, with a view to producing genetically-modified (GM) people. In the paper, published in medical ethics journal Bioethics , Dr Smith argues that an ethically sound attempt could be less than two years away, and predicts such research could kick-start a revolution in human genetic modification. It is difficult to see what the nature of this research would be.  The problem does not lie in the ethics of 'designer babies', but in the possible complications of such research.  This is the point I and my colleagues made in a paper we published a few years ago.  Genes are rarely specific for a given characteristic.  ...