The bioethics of extraterrestrial contact
Bioethics is a broad church, but a NASA-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University recently made it even broader by extending it to extraterrestrial intelligence...
A race against time for Down syndrome research
Is it possible to cure Down syndrome? Alberto Costa, a 48-year-old physician and neuroscientist at University of Colorado-Denver School of Medicine, thinks so. He has...
French doctor allegedly killed four elderly patients
In a case which has gripped France, a doctor has been released on bail after being charged with the euthanasia deaths of four elderly people....
Sydney sperm donor removed from birth certificate
A Sydney sperm donor has been erased from his 10-year-old daughter’s birth certificate and replaced with the lesbian partner of the biological mother.A Sydney sperm...
Chinese abortion story: urban myth or gruesome scandal?
China’s Health Ministry is taking the gruesome story of aborted babies ground into powder and used as aphrodisiacs seriously enough to launch an official investigation....
Australian minister’s IVF child provokes IVF debate
IVF is in the headlines in Australia again after Federal Finance Minister Penny Wong announced last week that she and her lesbian partner Sophie Allouache...
Flawed papers based on unethical UK research remain unretracted
Research papers based on body parts taken from hundreds of dead children without their parents’ consent were “fundamentally flawed,” according to a January 2001 report....
Hollywood’s surrogacy boom
There is a baby boom in Hollywood and celebrity surrogacy is “front and centre”, according to the Toronto Sun. Among the celebrities using surrogate mothers...
Antibody cocktail may lead to safer stem cell therapy
A Stanford University research team may have found a solution to the biggest challenge of using embryonic stem cells – that they can cause tumours....
The gut-wrenching dilemmas of “foetal reduction”
Foetal reduction is the dark side of the moon of fertility treatment. All too often women who become pregnant have twins or triplets. Since this...
NY Times columnist attacks “liberal bioethics”
Progressive bioethics came under attack this week in the New York Times. Columnist Ross Douthat complained that the growing acceptance of “foetal reduction”, or the...
US assisted suicide group opens campaign for voluntary starvation
Campaigners for voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide seem to be trying to make them more acceptable by blurring the moral boundaries. In the Netherland, terminal...