Mortality rates for American kids are rising for the first time in 50 years
US President Joe Biden is so concerned about the future of American children that he inserted a mandate for affordable child care into a major...
Will Pope Francis be composted?
Will Pope Francis be composted instead of buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with his predecessors? It’s unlikely. But a former editor of the...
The virtues and the vices of the outrageous
A Norwegian bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, recently set out a case for “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – using the wombs of brain-dead women as surrogate mothers...
More than 200 people have been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies
Scientists believe that CRISPR gene editing technologies will transform medicine. But how many people have been treated so far? According to a report in MIT...
Asia-Pacific IVF market could reach US$46 billion by 2031
According to a market survey by Allied Market Research, IVF is booming in the Asia-Pacific region. The market size was about $9.3 billion in 2021...
The mouse with two dads, no mum
Using stem cell technology, scientists in Japan have succeeded in breeding mice with two fathers and no mother. Katsuhiko Hayashi, of the University of Osaka,...
Belgian euthanasia chief explains 10% rise
Why are more people resorting to euthanasia in Belgium? The number of cases of euthanasia in Belgium rose by 9.85% over the previous year in...
Romanian doctors harvested pacemakers from dead patients – and reused them
An occasional reminder that doctors are not exempt from participating in dark and dodgy get-rich-quick schemes might not go astray. The latest comes from Romania,...
Making Victorian euthanasia easier
The first legal euthanasia in the Australian state of Victoria took place on July 15, 2019. Almost four years later, supporters are calling for some...
Should bioethicists hold a conference in Qatar?
FIFA’s choice of Qatar for the 2022 World Cup sparked huge ethical controversies. What about its abominable record on migrant workers? What about its record...
Should slavery be invoked in debates about embryos?
A Virginia judge has referred to an 1849 statute about ownership of slaves in his deliberations about the fate of frozen embryos. Fairfax County Circuit...
A Swiss first: prisoner assisted suicide
In a first for Switzerland, an inmate of a prison has ended his life with the help of an assisted suicide organisation, Exit. The male...