Australasian Science: Australia's authority on science since 1938
Quandary
Quandary column
The Facts About Surrogacy
By Michael Cook
The dismal death of Brooke Verity illustrates the need for longitudinal studies of the long-term outcomes of surrogacy.
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Turning Psychopaths into Nice Guys
By Michael Cook
If moral bioenhancement of psychopaths becomes obligatory, who will benchmark standards?
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Locked-in’s Challenge to Autonomy
By Michael Cook
Four patients with locked-in syndrome have communicated that they are happy as long as they receive adequate care at home.
The craze for Marvel superheroes encourages us to think that merely being human is too easy. We need to exceed our limitations by adding superpowers – breathing underwater, eternal youth, colossal strength, regeneration, flying, spinning spider webs and so on. Of course, that’s just comic book stuff, but the same dynamic is at work in the Olympic goal of going “faster, higher, stronger”.
Frozen Stiff
By Michael Cook
Cryonics is a growing industry even if its feasibility is questionable and its ethics murky.
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Patient Zero
By Michael Cook
An analysis of blood tests has revealed that HIV was widespread in the 1970s, and that the notion that Gaétan Dumas was the epicentre of the epidemic is flawed.
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Grim News for Immortals
By Michael Cook
A recent paper in Nature has cast a wet blanket over the dreams of immortality researchers.
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How IVF Is Changing Human History
By Michael Cook
Since IVF bypasses infertility it must also be having an effect on human evolution.
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Acting Absolutely Beastly
By Michael Cook
Charles Foster has tried to reconnect with the animal world by living as a badger, a fox, a swift, a deer and an otter.
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Masters or Slaves of AI?
By Michael Cook
If neural lacing enables our brains to be networked, we could easily be hacked or become the tools of Google or government.
In the 19th century and for a good part of the 20th century, many people feared that humanity was destined to become lapdogs of bloated industrialists. The world would be divided between the haves and the have-nots, the capitalists and the proletariat.
The fear persists, but nowadays capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg wear hoodies and tennis shoes like the rest of us. Apart from North Korea, there is universal agreement that “to get rich is glorious”.
Global Catastrophic Risk
By Michael Cook
A report calculates that we’re more likely to die in an extinction event than in a car crash.
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