Biobanks collect and store large amounts of data that researchers use to conduct a wide range of studies. Making sure participants understand what they’re getting into can help build trust in science.
A scholar who has studied imprisonment explains why the promise of sentence reductions in return for organ donation raises ethical issues about whether inmates can ever consent freely.
With no clear biomedical basis for most early surgery on intersex children, interventions should be postponed until a child is competent to decide for themselves.
Aged-care residents will be among the first to receive the Pfizer vaccine when the rollout begins next week. For some, the process of consenting to the vaccine could raise ethical questions.
The tragedy at Whakaari/White Island highlights the need for consent forms to ensure tourists are fully informed when choosing to visit dangerous locations.
A project involving tens of millions of patient records poses ethical issues, even though patients could ultimately gain. Here’s why privacy concerns are a hurdle.
Deliberately infecting people with a disease-causing agent as part of carefully considered medical research can be ethically acceptable or even necessary.
Most tech companies make it difficult for users to say no to aggressive surveillance practices. But it is helpful to know about the default settings on your smartphone and how to change them.
Questions abound about whether the scientist who created the first gene edited human beings took shortcuts in the ethical oversight process. But pedantically focusing on protocol misses the point.
Conversations about reproduction should be a routine part of medical care for transgender people – but assumptions and non-inclusive language can act as barriers to informed consent.
Space terrorism and testing of space tourists are theoretical problems today. But let’s have conversations right now to make sure they don’t become real problems in the future.
Apps and wearable devices promise greater participation and empowerment in health care. But what are we risking when we take part in this new era of participatory health?
The outgoing president leaves behind some solid accomplishments in the world of science, tech and medicine. But the biggest departure from his predecessors might have been in his approach.
Next-generation genomic research depends on study participants sharing their biological materials with scientists. But concerns over how that information is protected may hold some people back.
Director of the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics and Adjunct Professor and Head of Department of Bioethics at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand