Are drug addicts responsible or helpless victims of an illness?
The Massachusetts Supreme Court could decideWho is responsible for drug addiction: your brain or you? This momentous question will be decided in the Massachusetts Supreme...
Medical staff punished after privacy breach in Pennsylvania hospital
Staff were sharing photos on their smartphones Respect for patients’ privacy is a work in progress, to judge from an incident in UPMC Bedford Memorial...
US Congress ponders assisted suicide
Opponents are trying to drum up support for a resolutionA resolution condemning assisted suicide has been introduced into the US House of Representatives. Both sides...
40 years after, Scottish mother still mourns the son a hospital stole from her
Body used for tissue samples or organsForty years later, a Scottish mother is still mourning her son who died at 7 days. The death of...
Costa Rica becoming hub for global organ trafficking
Four doctors on trial A doctor being arrested in 2013 / The Costa Rica Star A trial of four doctors and their accomplices in Costa...
When a ‘good death’ was often painful
Until the 19th century, pain was accepted as a normal part of dyingEdvard Munch, The Dead Mother and Child, 1897-9 Today, a primary goal of both...
Major US doctors group opposes physician-assisted suicide
The American College of Physicians, the second-largest physician group in the US, sends a resounding No.The American College of Physicians, the second-largest physician group in...
Bioethicists: get rich quick!
Apply for the Dan David prizeBioethics is a career in which financial rewards do not figure prominently. However, if you have made significant contributions to...
British childbirth doctors back decriminalised abortion
Now three major medical lobby groups support itThe professional body representing British obstetricians and gynaecologists has chosen to support the decriminalisation of abortion. The ruling...
Is a defence of female genital cutting possible?
Absolutist notions of human rights must be tempered by respect for cultural traditions, says German ethicistFemale genital mutilation (or circumcision, or cutting) is reviled as...
Spanish researcher snagged in stem cell research fraud
Five papers have been retracted; one is in doubtThe biggest-ever fraud in Spanish science is coming to light – and like other recent frauds, it...
5% of Japanese babies from IVF
With the birth rate so low, the government is grasping at strawsThe latest figures show that 1 in 20 Japanese babies born in 2015 began...