Bioethics

Enhancing human capabilities has been on the mind of people for ages, but superhumans came a long way from ancient training methods to exoskeletons.

Exploring the anatomy of a good digital health company: from communication to studies, these are the issues that count.

There are many threats if we let medical innovation run wild. We collected 10 hazards that technology brings about in the digital health age.

Facial recognition technology is upon us; phones and computers can now be unlocked with your specific facial structure using this gimmick, but it can also scarily be used to identify you from security cameras which are increasingly becoming omnipresent.

Multivitamins, drugs, gene therapies, human skin, heart, eyeballs, kidneys, entire dead bodies – everything comes with a price tag. Putting aside the moral questions of why and how come that the capitalist market priced even our body parts and health, we asked the question of how much is life worth: what is the maximum that you would/should pay for a life-saving drug? How high is too high a cost if a drug can save 200-300 babies a year from debilitating illness or death? And ultimately, does the pricing of new technologies, especially gene therapies, enable to fulfill their promise?

Every now and then we see something that freaks out even the seasoned team of The Medical Futurist. From robot nannies taking care of human babies grown in artificial wombs to waking up with an electric shock.

Medical A.I. will surely become competent enough to efficiently deal with a great number of health questions. But tricking patients into believing they interact with a human practitioner when they are not is an entirely different issue.

In early 2021, Spanish lawmakers legalised euthanasia and assisted death for patients suffering from unbearable and/or incurable conditions, making Spain the sixth country in the […]

The Hippocratic Oath is the most famous text in Western medicine. It constitutes the ethical basis of the medical profession. For centuries, it has provided […]

Data privacy scandals, help in rigging elections, spreading fake news: Facebook has some tough months behind it and users are not happy with the social media giant’s performance. However, Mark Zuckerberg’s company does not only have a political and social impact, but it’s also quite relevant in healthcare. We looked around what does Facebook in healthcare currently and evaluated whether those are viable ways to follow in the future.

Long-distance hugs; virtual reality porn stars; technosexuals living with automated dolls; you might have caught such news snippets online, but you’ll have to get used […]

How familiar are you with your digital health data footprint? Do you even know what kind of health data is generated about you and where it is stored? And what happens with this ever-growing pile of information after you die? Who owns this data and who can get access to it? Why could this even be interesting and for whom? We have dived into the mainly overlooked area of posthumous medical data and almost got lost. Here are our findings but just a heads up: it’s messy and complicated.

Let the trolley continue on its initial course and kill those 5 people on the way or pull the lever to save them at the expense of that other person’s life?

Not so long ago, worries about the digital divide represented the anxiety that the rich will have access to more information and more possibilities in every area of life compared to those who cannot afford connected digital devices. Currently, trends show that human connection might become a luxury good for the rich, while poor families might not be able to afford living screen-free in the future. We asked how would that translate into healthcare and what could we do to ensure the treasure of human contact to everyone in the coming decades.

What does being perfectly healthy mean? Not having any visible symptoms, hidden ones or successfully coping with any disease? Is it the opposite of being sick or more than that? How did the concept change throughout the centuries? Does it have a connection to technological change? How will we talk about the distinction between health and disease in the age of big data and artificial intelligence? Spoiler alert: philosophical contemplations ahead.

Who owns medical and genetic data? How to regulate gene editing? Where is the boundary of enhancing physical or cognitive human capabilities? What to do with biological differences widening the gap of the haves and have-nots? Could we define where is the boundary to augment life? Will we sue robots or algorithms for medical malpractice? With the constant advancement of technology, unprecedented moral, ethical and legal issues are surfacing. Channeling them into substantial debates will get us closer to their fair solution step by step. Here, we collected the 10 most pressing issues in bioethics.