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Blood may be thicker than water but what dollar value would you place on parents having children with their own genes? Singapore’s highest court had to rule on exactly that question recently in a case involving a mix-up at an IVF clinic that led to a child related biologically only to her mother.
Its ruling – that ‘genetic affinity’ has a sound basis in the way we value family – is not only significant in itself, says Owen Schaefer, it might also provide the right lens through which to consider ethical questions that will undoubtedly arise in the genomic era.
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www.GlynLowe.com/Flickr
G. Owen Schaefer, National University of Singapore
The court found that parents have a strong interest in a "genetic affinity" with their children, one that can merit compensation if subverted.
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Politics + Society
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Verónica Giménez Béliveau, University of Buenos Aires
The Pope hasn't actually opened the door for married priests. But in rethinking celibacy, he has shown his mastery of the art of containing people without actually making big changes to the Church.
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Health + Medicine
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Peter Meylakhs, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg; Yadviga Sinyavskaya, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg; Yuri Rykov, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg
In Russia, social networks have given a new life to the conspiracy theory that HIV-AIDS is a global hoax.
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Science + Technology
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Lindsay Wu, UNSW
The true promise of ageing research is that rather than tackling individual diseases one at a time, a single drug to treat ageing would treat all of the diseases that arise in old age, at once.
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Barbara Cavalazzi, University of Bologna
A study is being done in Ethiopia's Danakil Depression - a natural environment like no other on earth - to understand how microbes thrive in extreme environments such as those found on Mars.
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