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Year 10 Science: Genetic Testing: Bioethics

What are "ethics"?

Ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles.

 

How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet?

 

Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.

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Let's talk about Religion: Bioethics

Documentary presenting the views of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam towards a range of bioethical issues.

Insight: Genetic Testing

Would you want to know if you were carrying a gene that could kill you? Genetic testing may be able to give you the answer. But many Australians who potentially carry these genes choose not to be tested, because they cant bear to know what awaits them.

Where do we draw the line? Should we screen out all known genetic diseases or just those that dramatically affect lifespan and quality of life?

Jenny Brockie talks to genetic experts, ethicists and families whove had to face some difficult decisions about how they live their lives and whether they have kids.

Bioethics - Research Guide on ProQuest

Bioethics - research Guide on ProQuest

Bioethics is the branch of ethics, or moral decision-making, that deals with the problems of biology and medicine.

This Research Guide presents a range of ethical positions on a range of medical and scientific issues, including the perspectives of the Catholilc Church on the sanctity of human life.

Ethics of IVF

IVF involves the fertilisation of an egg outside the womb. 

Pre-implantation testing for genetic disorders can take place after fertilisation, and before the embryo is implanted in the womb.