Australia’s cosmetic surgery industry under attack in the media
The multi-billion dollar cosmetic surgery industry in Australia has come under attack from the media. A series of investigations by The Age, Four Corners and...
Is politics invading a leading science journal?
An editorial in Nature Human Behaviour has sparked a lively debate over woke science and free speech. Its headline, “Science must respect the dignity and...
Iranian doctors cooperating with judicial amputations
A special guillotine machine has allegedly been installed in a medical clinic in an Iranian prison to carry out amputations. The World Medical Association has...
What happened to the bones of Waterloo?
One of the most dehumanising practices of the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps was recycling the bodies of murdered victims. Often their bones...
The wisdom of Albert Tochilovsky, owner of Ukraine’s biggest surrogacy business
Since the Kyiv-based IVF clinic BioTexCom is the probably the largest surrogacy agency in the world, its owner’s thoughts about the future of assisted reproduction...
Indian doctors are removing the wombs of cane-cutters to increase productivity
This is a horror story from India about the intersection of poverty, sexism, exploitation, gender norms, and medical ethics. Investigative reporting in BehanBox, a feminist...
Israeli scientists create ‘synthetic’ mouse embryos
Israeli scientists have created the world’s first “synthetic embryos”. They used mouse stem cells to create embryos, nurtured them in an artificial “womb”, and grew...
World Medical Association protects conscientious objection by rejecting mandatory referral
Principled conscientious objection (CO) for health care workers is under threat from laws in several jurisdictions around the world. A number of prominent bioethicists have...
The lasting anguish of moral injury
On a Sunday evening in September 1994, David Peters drove to a church service in Beckley, West Virginia, as the sun set over the horizon....
Unauthorised pelvic exams continue in American hospitals
Unauthorised pelvic exams are still being carried out on women as part of medical education in the United States. In 2020 the New York Times...
Re-examining autonomy
The buzzword cutting through the noisy controversy over the US Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade is “reproductive autonomy”. This is raised on a...
Happy the elephant is not a ‘person’
Happy the elephant, a long-time resident of the Bronx Zoo, can remain there after the New York court of appeals ruled she is not legally...