Assisted suicide in Oregon creeps ahead
Forty-two people died in Oregon through doctor-assisted suicide in 2003, the highest number since it was legalised in 1997, according to figures released this month....
NZ nurse on trial for euthanasia
A New Zealand nurse has gone on trial in Auckland for the attempted murder of her terminally ill mother in 1999. Police initially dropped their...
Canada passes stem cell bill
The Canadian Parliament has passed a bill which will allow research on spare IVF embryos, but not therapeutic cloning. The bill also bans reproductive cloning,...
What ordinary Germans feel about stem cells
A report to the German parliament by a "citizens' conference" opposes research on embryos and all forms of cloning. The conference was meant to gauge...
Utah woman who refused Caesarean charged with murder
A Salt Lake City woman who refused to have a Caesarean section to save the life of her unborn twins has been charged with first-...
Sacked biologist fires another volley
Cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn has fired another broadside at President George W. Bush after being dismissed from his Council on Bioethics. In an article in...
Vatican calls for more fertility research
The scale of destruction of embryos in IVF amounts to a "massacre of the innocents", says the Pontifical Academy for Life. In a Vatican communique...
IN BRIEF: adult stem cells; von Hagens cleared
US scientists have announced two advances in adult stem cell research. A team at Duke University, in North Carolina, has found that most adult fat...
ODD SPOT: Pentagon funds embryo research
With a war in Iraq, an occupation in Haiti and a man hunt in Afghanistan, you might think that the Pentagon has enough enemies and...