Indian Medical Association backs pre-natal sex tests
If banning them won't work, perhaps making them compulsory will India’s gender imbalance is possibly the worst in the world because doctors routinely abort unborn...
Zika: still wrapped in mystery
Some reports suggest that the situation is far more complex than reports in the media suggest. This was a week of confusing information about the...
Is US medicine becoming an assembly line?
Boston physicians complain in NEJM that patients are being treated like cars. Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), one of the first management consultants, helped to make American...
When Ebola breaks out again, whose fault will it be?
There has been a moral failure to confront serious epidemics The West African ebola outbreak has been largely contained. Now the world can sit back,...
Is the antibiotic apocalypse nigh?
Experts warn that it is creeping closer. In practice contemporary bioethics assumes a constantly increasing standard of medicine. The challenge is to ensure that healthcare...
What are the bioethics of Mars exploration?
Ridley Scott's latest film raises some interesting questions. Ridley Scott’s latest film, The Martian, opens this month. Matt Damon plays an astronaut who is left...
Does it matter if experiments cannot be replicated?
Isn't that the way science works? Many issues in bioethics are influenced by “data” supplied by psychology: how IVF children socialise; whether patients who request...
Nearly 2/3 of psychology papers cannot be trusted
Out of 100 papers, only 31 could be replicated. Nearly two-thirds of all psychology research should be distrusted because it cannot be replicated, according to...
FDA approves “pink Viagra” for women
But is “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” a real condition, or marketing hype? Nearly 20 years after approving Viagra, the US Food and Drug Administration has...
Psychologists shaken by report on torture program
The leadership of the American Psychological Association implicated. The use of torture to extract information from terrorist detainees under the Bush Administration continues to reverberate....
Rohingyas battle population control
Myanmar finds a way to deal with its Muslim minority. Somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are drifting in the Andaman Sea...
Feverish vaccine debate spreads to Australia
"No jab, no welfare", says government. Last Sunday the Australian government announced a controversial new immunisation policy that makes welfare support for families conditional on...