This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over-simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the 'handmaiden' role of simply providing the 'facts'). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being 'ethical issues.'

This article explores the experiences of lesbians who have become mothers using donated semen. During the 1980s lesbian access to clinic-based donor insemination was limited because it was seen to threaten both the traditional family and the medical definition of`infertility'. However, the spread of selfinsemination networks has enabled more lesbians to become mothers. This article analyses how lesbians negotiate and manage the role that donated semen, and donors, play in their, and their children's, lives. In the discussion, it is suggested that lesbian donor insemination has now gained some acceptance, but only within a medicalised framework. Self-insemination is still seen as a threat to medicine since it is a de-professionalised, de-medicalised practice that privileges the lay knowledge and concerns of the women themselves.

Physical characteristics based on ovarian response during a treatment cycle may positively influence a couple's decision to donate embryos. Further studies are needed to identify those couples who are likely to agree to research so that counselling for research can be directed efficiently.

BACKGROUNDThis article reports on an investigation of the views of IVF couples asked to donate fresh embryos for research and contributes to the debates on: the acceptability of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, the moral status of the human embryo and embryo donation for research.METHODSA hypothesis-generating design was followed. All IVF couples in one UK clinic who were asked to donate embryos in 1 year were contacted 6 weeks after their pregnancy result. Forty four in-depth interviews were conducted.RESULTSInterviewees were preoccupied with IVF treatment and the request to donate was a secondary consideration. They used a complex and dynamic system of embryo classification. Initially, all embryos were important but then their focus shifted to those that had most potential to produce a baby. At that point, ‘other’ embryos were less important though they later realise that they did not know what happened to them. Guessing that these embryos went to research, interviewees preferred not to contemplate what that might entail. The embryos that caused interviewees most concern were good quality embryos that might have produced a baby but went to research instead. ‘The’ embryo, the morally laden, but abstract, entity, did not play a central role in their decision-making.CONCLUSIONSThis study, despite missing those who refuse to donate embryos, suggests that debates on embryo donation for hESC research should include the views of embryo donors and should consider the social, as well as the moral, status of the human embryo.

This article explores the socio‐ethical concerns raised by the familial searching of forensic databases in criminal investigations, from the perspective of family and kinship studies. It discusses the broader implications of this expanded understanding for wider debates about identity, privacy and genetic databases.