Clinical psychedelic research in adolescents: a scoping review and overview of ethical considerations.

The potential use of psychedelic-assisted therapy for adolescents with mental illness has sparked both interest and concern. Modern psychedelic research has focused on adults, and adolescents younger than 18 years are typically excluded due to ethical and legal challenges. To explore whether adolescents have been included in 21st century psychedelic research, we conducted a scoping review of the medical literature from January, 2000, to April, 2025.

Digital Doppelgängers, Human Relationships, and Practical Identity.

In this paper, we examine the potential effects of relationships with Large Language Model (LLM)-based digital doppelgängers (DDs) on users' values, concerns, and interests, that is, on their practical identity. DDs are artificially intelligent conversational agents trained on individuals' data to replicate their speech patterns, mannerisms, and personality traits. We start by showing that practical identity is largely defined by the relationships we find ourselves in or cultivate.

AI-assisted consent in paediatric medicine: ethical implications of using large language models to support decision-making.

Obtaining informed consent in paediatrics is an essential yet ethically complex aspect of clinical practice. Children have varying levels of autonomy and understanding based on their age and developmental maturity, with parents traditionally playing a central role in decision-making. However, there is increasing recognition of children's evolving capacities and their right to be involved in care decisions, raising questions about facilitating meaningful consent, or at least assent, in complex medical situations.

Chat-IRB? How application-specific language models can enhance research ethics review.

Institutional review boards (IRBs) play a crucial role in ensuring the ethical conduct of human subjects research, but face challenges including inconsistency, delays, and inefficiencies. We propose the development and implementation of application-specific large language models (LLMs) to facilitate IRB review processes. These IRB-specific LLMs would be fine-tuned on IRB-specific literature and institutional datasets, and equipped with retrieval capabilities to access up-to-date, context-relevant information.

A qualitative study of true self judgments, epistemic access, and medical decision-making.

Background: Toomey (2024) found that US participants were more likely to follow a medical treatment preference-expressed after substantial cognitive decline-of a third person rather than their own future self. This correlated with a greater tendency to see the third person as still their true self. We hypothesised that the greater epistemic access one has to one's own true self as opposed to others might drive this difference.

When to create embryos or organoids for research.

The development of brain organoids and use of human embryonic neural structures for research each raise distinct ethical considerations that require careful analysis. We propose that rather than attempting to resolve longstanding debates about embryonic moral status, a more productive approach is to examine how different positions on this fundamental question lead to distinct conclusions about appropriate research strategies. For those who ground moral status in species membership or developmental potential, even early-stage embryo research may be ethically impermissible, suggesting focus on carefully bounded organoid development.

Malignancy Risk in Turner Syndrome+Y, Early Gonadectomy, and the Ethics of Parental Choices.

This case relates to an infant with Turner syndrome harboring the Y chromosome (TS+Y) and explores the boundaries of parental decision-making. Traditionally, gonads have been surgically removed in early childhood in this condition because of the risk of gonadoblastoma and potential malignant transformation. However, in the case discussed here, the infant's parents do not wish for surgery.

On Religious Influence in Bioethics: The Limits of Pluriversalism.

The World Congress of Bioethics held in Qatar in 2024 (WCB 2024) sparked controversy around the role of religion in bioethics, highlighting the need for critical discussions. During the congress, there was a strong push for incorporating religious values into bioethical discourse, raising questions about the validity and implications of such an approach. This paper examines the influence of religious thought on bioethical discussions, and the ongoing debate over the role of religious perspectives in this field.

Psychedelics as moral bioenhancers: Protocol for a scoping review of ethical arguments for and against.

Background: Moral bioenhancement typically refers to the deliberate use of drugs or biotechnologies, potentially alongside other practices, to attempt to improve oneself morally. In addition to general concerns regarding moral self-bioenhancement, the possibility of using psychedelic substances for such purposes raises distinct ethical questions. As a first step in analysing these questions, we intend to perform a scoping review of the existing arguments for and against the use of psychedelics as moral bioenhancers.

Psychedelic group-based integration: ethical assessment and initial recommendations.

A number of organizations have developed or are developing psychedelic integration groups, held in person or online. In parallel, there have been calls to make enhanced integration available in the community after clinical trials. Here, we explore a potential reason why individuals may seek out these groups: namely, the feelings of disconnection and loneliness that may arise after the psychedelic experience (noting that there may be other reasons that individuals may seek out these groups).

The need for an empirical research program regarding human-AI relational norms.

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems begin to take on social roles traditionally filled by humans, it will be crucial to understand how this affects people's cooperative expectations. In the case of human-human dyads, different relationships are governed by different norms: For example, how two strangers-versus two friends or colleagues-should interact when faced with a similar coordination problem often differs. How will the rise of 'social' artificial intelligence (and ultimately, superintelligent AI) complicate people's expectations about the cooperative norms that should govern different types of relationships, whether human-human or human-AI? Do people expect AI to adhere to the same cooperative dynamics as humans when in a given social role? Conversely, will they begin to expect humans in certain types of relationships to act more like AI? Here, we consider how people's cooperative expectations may pull apart between human-human and human-AI relationships, detailing an empirical proposal for mapping these distinctions across relationship types.

Ethics of Procuring and Using Organs or Tissue from Infants and Newborns for Transplantation, Research, or Commercial Purposes: Protocol for a Bioethics Scoping Review.

Unlabelled: Since the inception of transplantation, it has been crucial to ensure that organ or tissue donations are made with valid informed consent to avoid concerns about coercion or exploitation. This issue is particularly challenging when it comes to infants and younger children, insofar as they are unable to provide consent. Despite their vulnerability, infants' organs and tissues are considered valuable for biomedical purposes due to their size and unique properties.

Distinctive But Not Exceptional: The Risks of Psychedelic Ethical Exceptionalism.

When used clinically, psychedelics may appear unusual or even unique when compared to more familiar or long-standing medical interventions, prompting some to suggest that the ethical issues raised may likewise be exceptional. If that is correct, then perhaps psychedelics should be treated differently from other medical substances: for example, by being subjected to different ethical or evidentiary standards. Alternatively, it may be that psychedelics have more in common with various existing medical interventions than first meets the eye.

Clinical, Ethical, and Legal Considerations Raised by Self-Reported Genital Mutilation Following Voluntary Cosmetic Labiaplasty.

An increasing number of women are undergoing female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS). Labiaplasty, the most commonly performed FGCS, consists of a surgical procedure to decrease the inner labia size so that no or less tissue protrudes beyond the outer labia. Anatomically, it is similar to female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) Type 2a.

Credit and blame for AI-generated content: Effects of personalization in four countries.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) raises ethical questions concerning moral and legal responsibility-specifically, the attributions of credit and blame for AI-generated content. For example, if a human invests minimal skill or effort to produce a beneficial output with an AI tool, can the human still take credit? How does the answer change if the AI has been personalized (i.e.

Moral enhancement and cheapened achievement: Psychedelics, virtual reality and AI.

A prominent critique of cognitive or athletic enhancement claims that certain performance-improving drugs or technologies may 'cheapen' resulting achievements. Considerably less attention has been paid to the impact of enhancement on the value of moral achievements. Would the use of moral enhancement (bio)technologies, rather than (solely) 'traditional' means of moral development like schooling and socialization, cheapen the 'achievement' of morally improving oneself? We argue that, to the extent that the 'cheapened achievement' objection succeeds in the domains of cognitive or athletic enhancement, it could plausibly also succeed in the domain of moral enhancement-but only regarding certain forms.

Digital Doppelgängers and Lifespan Extension: What Matters?

There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of research on lifespan extension: roughly, using medical technologies to extend biological human lives beyond the current "natural" limit of about 120 years. At the same time, there is an exploding interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create "digital twins" of persons, for example by fine-tuning large language models on data specific to particular individuals. In this paper, we consider whether digital twins (or digital doppelgängers, as we refer to them) could be a path toward a kind of life extension-or more precisely, a kind of extension-that does not rely on biological continuity.

Enabling Demonstrated Consent for Biobanking with Blockchain and Generative AI.

Participation in research is supposed to be voluntary and informed. Yet it is difficult to ensure people are adequately informed about the potential uses of their biological materials when they donate samples for future research. We propose a novel consent framework which we call "demonstrated consent" that leverages blockchain technology and generative AI to address this problem.