Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41649109›Full record

ArticleBioethics2026

What Is Space Bioethics?

Maurizio Balistreri

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Bioethics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Maurizio BalistreriUniversity of Tuscia, DISTU, Viterbo, Italy.ORCID 0000-0001-5704-7377

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Classical bioethics examines moral issues in terrestrial medicine and the life sciences. According to Konrad Szocik, space bioethics merely relocates those questions to harsher environments. We argue that this view is incomplete: space bioethics is a genuinely original domain. Unprecedented conditions-chronic radiation exposure, partial gravity, closed ecologies, long communication delays, and severe resource constraints-reconfigure risk and responsibility. Survival-oriented interventions-human bio-enhancement, human-machine integration, germline editing for adaptation and off-world reproduction (potentially via ectogenesis)-pose dilemmas with no close terrestrial analogue. Moreover, some technologies may be developed and adopted in space before diffusion to Earth, generating ethical challenges in advance. These scenarios strain the portability of standard moral norms and cannot be addressed by simply importing frameworks from military or extreme-environment medicine.

Indexed as

Bioethical IssuesBioethicsExtraterrestrial EnvironmentSpace FlightBiomedical EnhancementEthical DilemmasHumansMoralsbioethicsenhancementhumanityreproductionspace

Identifiers

PMID41649109
PMCPMC13293273

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.