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Director's Welcome

In a post-pandemic world, some of the most fundamental questions of medical ethics have a new urgency. How much does the individual owe society? How do we manage unequal burdens and benefits? How do we act under uncertainty, and when can we mandate healthy choices?

But the pandemic is only one of the urgent challenges we face. Antimicrobial resistance has the potential to make once-beaten diseases deadly again. The maintenance of effective antibiotics requires international collective action. Does the patient’s best interest demand the best available care now, or the collective protection of antibiotic efficacy for the future? These are decisions we will need to make in the clinic, nationally, and internationally: antibiotics are a communal resource.

While we continue to fight our old enemies, medicine is opening new frontiers. Organoids, including brain organoids, can model diseases and help find and test new treatments for some of the most intractable diseases. Human monkey chimeras have been created and human organoids have been integrated into the brains of rats. But what is the moral status of a these new life forms? Preventing research from taking place isn’t necessarily the ethically safe option. While we delay, people are dying who could be saved.

How should these difficult decisions be made? How should we weigh public opinion, individual preferences, and the predicted best outcomes for society?

At the Centre for Biomedical Ethics we work on these questions and other topics in medical ethics. Our goal isn’t to tell you what to think, but to support effective, responsible, goal-oriented discussion to help us understand the costs and benefits of the decisions we make in healthcare as patients, caregivers, institutions, and policymakers.

Professor Julian Savulescu
Director 

About Us

The NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBmE) was established in September 2006 in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine through a generous gift by the Chen Su Lan Trust. We work to develop understanding, capacity for good judgement, and sound ethical practice in the context of healthcare provision, biomedical science and health-related policy development.

CBmE is a thriving centre for learning, teaching and research relating to ethical and legal aspects of healthcare and biomedical sciences. We study issues of broad international significance with a particular interest in learning for and from Singapore and Asia.

We have a diverse staff who bring a valuable range of disciplinary backgrounds and experiential perspectives to our various educational and research activities and collaborative initiatives. We work collaboratively with academic colleagues across and beyond NUS, and with key stakeholders in the healthcare sector and biomedical science and policy communities.

We are delighted that our Founding Director, Professor Alastair V. Campbell, was awarded the Public Service Medal as part of the 2018 National Day Awards. All of us at CBmE are committed to continue on the path of excellent service in bioethics.

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What's New

Clinical Ethics Bulletin February 2024 Issue 27
Research Ethics Bulletin February 2024 Issue 27
Clinical Ethics Beyond the Basics: Moral Distress (Part 1) by Associate Professor Michael Dunn
Clinical Ethics Beyond the Basics: Moral Distress (Part 2) by Associate Professor Michael Dunn
Clinical Ethics Beyond the Basics: Moral Distress (Part 3) by Associate Professor Michael Dunn

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