Ethics Headlines
#78

Volume 2, Number 24                                                 Friday, June 23, 2006


Ethics Headlines is an ethics-in-the-news clipping file published each Friday by Greg Feldmeth, a high school teacher at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. It contains news items from the media in the past week that deal with some area of ethical inquiry.

SUBSCRIBE. You can receive the file via email every Friday afternoon with links to the original articles. Just email your address here and put Ethics Headlines in the subject line. If you know of others who would be interested, please forward the page to them.

This week's headlines--select the headline to read the article
  • No sex please, robot, just clean the floor. The race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated. Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.
  • Parents can select healthy embryos. Couples who are at risk of having a child with a serious genetic disorder such as cystic fibrosis, may soon be able to select an embryo which is unaffected through in-vitro fertilization.
  • Ethical row erupts over designer babies breakthrough. New fears were raised last night that science is moving inexorably to a world of designer babies. UK experts revealed an improved method which could allow hundreds of couples to avoid the risk of having children with a killer disease. It will be quicker and more accurate than existing screening. More disturbingly, a London hospital applied to use IVF sex selection techniques to help couples with a family history of autism - by destroying all their male embryos.
  • Students make case for virginity.  According to Nichole Murray-Swank, an assistant professor at Loyola College in Maryland, general surveys as well as her own research indicate that 70 percent of 19-year-olds have had sexual intercourse. Just last month, a study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) even called into question an earlier statistical link between virginity pledges, first popularized by Christian groups, and a delay in teen sex.But for many, the case for virginity is far from closed.


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