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Conversation: Ruth Faden and Ali Berlow

August 12, 2019

Ali Berlow interviews our Ruth Faden about Food Ethics. What is a food ethicist? People who work on the ethics of food are studying the rights, duties, and harms associated with the ways in which we produce, process, and consume our food

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Remembering Daniel Callahan

July 19, 2019

Ruth Faden reflects on his extraordinary accomplishments and legacy

Protein of the Future

March 18, 2019

Get ready for a menu of lab-grown steaks, “bleeding” plant burgers, and cricket smoothies – w comments from our Ruth Faden and Jess Fanzo

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Protein of the Future

Monday, March 18th, 2019

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According to numbers compiled by the Alternative Protein Show, an annual event in San Francisco, there are around 100 companies battling to build better plant, seed, insect, and lab-grown meat alternatives. Dozens of incubator spaces and venture capital firms in places like Silicon Valley are helping to fund this research, which promises to change how we eat. When Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Atlantic, announced in 2017 that he was investing in the alt-protein company Memphis Meats, he did so, he said, because he believes that “in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, and also be much healthier for everyone.”

This alt-meat movement is being made possible, in part, by what’s been called the fourth industrial revolution by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. This revolution “is characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds,” according to the WEF, and it’s perhaps best summed up with the word du jour: disruption. As ride sharing upended the taxi industry, and online streaming put the screws to cable, companies like JUST hope to harness technology and computing to disrupt the feedlot-to-slaughterhouse pipeline and create foods that are more sustainable, healthy, and viable for a planet set to have 10 billion people to feed by the middle of this century.

“The alt-meat movement is the idea that we take the best of science, the best of engineering, and we can figure out alternatives to eating meat that will be healthy for us—or at least no worse—and that can be produced in sufficient quantities at a reasonable cost to be able to provide for the nutrition of today’s and tomorrow’s population,” says Ruth Faden, the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. But will we eat it? And what unintended consequences might lurk amid the disruption? …

…continue reading ‘Protein of the future – Get ready for a menu of lab-grown steaks, “bleeding” plant burgers, and cricket smoothies’

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Johns Hopkins Magazine

As the World Prepares to Fight Lassa Fever, The Interests of Pregnant Women Must Be Part of the Planning

January 15, 2019

Ruth Karron, Carleigh Krubiner, and Ruth Faden write, “As health officials work to contain the continuing outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lessons from that crisis can be applied to more equitably battle Lassa fever, another deadly infectious disease.”

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Experts Call for Inclusion of Pregnant Women in Vaccine Research

January 2, 2019

A new report, developed by the Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics and New Technologies (PREVENT) working group, identifies a cycle of exclusion that prevents pregnant women from accessing the benefits of vaccines. With comments from our Carleigh Krubiner

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Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.

December 18, 2018

“The decision to continue to withhold this vaccine from pregnant women is not justifiable,” says our Ruth Faden, “We must listen to the voices of pregnant women in the midst of an outbreak. If they’re saying, ‘Give me the choice, I want to decide,’ how can we not respond to that? How could you not give them that choice?”

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Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

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According to a new report by medical experts, the problem is global. New vaccines are rarely designed with the specific needs of pregnant women in mind, leaving many women vulnerable to diseases which, a few months earlier, they might have been able to receive protection from. “The decisionto continue to withhold this vaccine from pregnant women is notjustifiable,” says Ruth Faden, a professor of biomedical ethics at Johns Hopkins University and one of the lead authors of the report. “We must listen to the voices of pregnant women in the midst of an outbreak. If they’re saying, ‘Give me the choice, I want to decide,’ how can we not respond to that? How could you not give them that choice?”

The report, penned by the Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics, and New Technologies (PREVENT) Working Group, a team of experts specializing in disciplines including bioethics, maternal-fetal medicine, philosophy, and vaccine research, examines the urgent need to address the welfare of pregnant women in public health crises. It lays out 22 recommendations for policymakers in the United States and abroad, including directions to improve data collection so vaccines can be developed—and clinical trials conducted—with pregnant women in mind. In the event of an outbreak, the experts say, maternal and neonatal health experts should be closely consulted, and decisions should be informed by the perspective of affected women themselves—many pregnant women, Faden says, would likely opt into research to protect them and their babies, born or otherwise, from disease. And during an epidemic, the default should be to offer vaccines to pregnant women, not the reverse.

…continue reading ‘Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.’

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Mother Jones

Big Tongues and Extra Vertebrae

December 17, 2018

The unintended consequences of animal gene editing. Unintended effects have included enlarged rabbit tongues and extra pig vertebrae, as bioethicists warn of hubris

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Refusal To Give Pregnant Women Vaccines Branded Unacceptable

December 6, 2018

Failure to vaccinate pregnant women during deadly infectious disease outbreaks is putting them and their unborn children at risk, a new report has warned

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Conversation: Ruth Faden and Ali Berlow

Conversation: Ruth Faden and Ali Berlow

AB: What is a food ethicist?

AB: Do you have a priority list of urgencies?

Remembering Daniel Callahan

Protein of the Future

Protein of the Future

As the World Prepares to Fight Lassa Fever, The Interests of Pregnant Women Must Be Part of the Planning

As the World Prepares to Fight Lassa Fever, The Interests of Pregnant Women Must Be Part of the Planning

Experts Call for Inclusion of Pregnant Women in Vaccine Research

Experts Call for Inclusion of Pregnant Women in Vaccine Research

Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.

Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.

Big Tongues and Extra Vertebrae

Big Tongues and Extra Vertebrae

Refusal To Give Pregnant Women Vaccines Branded Unacceptable

Refusal To Give Pregnant Women Vaccines Branded Unacceptable

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