Informed consent process often mired in paperwork
Despite elaborate protocols to ensure that patients have given informed consent to surgery, too often it is just a formality, writes Judy Foreman in the...
Clarification about artificial wombs
BioEdge 175 reported that Israeli ethicist Frida Simonstein, of Ben Gurion University, had "proposed the creation of artificial wombs to solve social and medical reproductive...
IN BRIEF: medical students; Chernobyl
American medical students are being courted by drug companies with gifts and free seminars. According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical...
Embryonic stem cells may develop cancerous mutations
After lengthy periods of cultivation, embryonic stem cells accumulate genetic changes which can provoke human cancers, according to an article in the latest issue of...
Uproar over another delay of Plan B
A high-ranking Food and Drug Administration official has resigned and abortion-rights groups are outraged after the FDA again deferred approval of Barr Laboratories' morning-after pill,...
Stem cells “over-hyped”, says leading IVF scientist
Professor Robert Winston, pioneer of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, TV celebrity, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, doyen of British science, and peer of...
First salvos fired in Australian stem cell battle
Public hearings have begun in the lead-up to a decision by the Australian parliament on whether to allow therapeutic cloning. A committee headed by Justice...
Ethicist calls for artificial wombs
An Israeli ethicist has proposed the creation of artificial wombs to solve social and medical reproductive problems. The possibility of real "test-tube babies", or "ectogenesis"...
Funding dilemmas in Missouri
The US state of Missouri has withdrawn Medicaid funding for equipment such as hospital beds, wheelchair batteries, feeding tubes and walkers unless patients are pregnant,...
Euthanasia in the courts
The Dutch Medical Association has begun talks with public prosecutors over the issues underlying the collapse of a murder case against an anaesthetist who gave...
Abortion research sparks debate about scientific objectivity
A study in a prestigious medical journal which claims that anti-abortion legislation is unnecessary has sparked a bitter debate over advocacy science. Last week the...
Right-to-life appeals fail in Britain
Two families have failed in legal battles to have British doctors keep their loved ones alive at all costs in public hospitals. In the first,...