In this issue of Monash Bioethics Review we present contributions on three current and emerging issues in the field, along with an extended analysis of a core concept in research ethics, and a review of a new book on the rapidly developing sub-field of global bioethics. Our first contribution examines whether the innovative CRISPR method of gene editing should be regarded as the revolutionary technology its advocates claim it to be, or as simply an extension of more familiar forms of gene editing. Mariscal and Petropanagos argue that CRISPR is best viewed as a technology which is indeed revolutionary in several important respects, and thus as likely to transform gene editing in ways analogous to the game-changing introduction by Ford of the Model T car from 1908 onwards.

The concept of beneficence is used as a fundamental principle in many national guidelines for research on humans, including Australia’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. In our second article, Pieper and Thomson explain and analyse the notion of beneficence in the context of various national research ethics guidelines, highlighting key features of this concept for researchers and research ethics committees. The practice of holding immigrants in detention centres while their applications are processed has attracted much controversy in Australia and elsewhere. A number of commentators have criticised such centres as unjust, and have argued that clinicians who provide health care in immigration detention centres are complicit in injustices that might be perpetrated at such centres. Essex evaluates these concerns by drawing on a recent analysis of the concept of complicity, and he suggests several ways in which clinicians working in immigration detention centres can minimise their complicity in wrongdoing in such contexts.

Also included in this issue of Monash Bioethics Review is a commentary by Soofi on a review essay published in a previous issue of this journal, about the unusual regulated market for kidneys in Iran. Soofi discusses recent moves in Iranian health care policy away from a market model for kidney procurement, and the implications of these moves for the ethics of kidney markets more generally. This commentary exemplifies well the benefits of keeping the conversations going. We would welcome further commentaries on articles and commentaries published in the journal.