Gene of the week: internet addiction
Everybody is talking about internet addiction – many people spend hours online and immediately start feeling bad if they are unable to do so. Medically,...
Revolutionary! Life-transforming! Paradigm-shifting! Not!
This will surprise no one, but we all need reminders. Newspaper coverage of biomedical research leans heavily toward reports of initial findings, which are frequently...
Thalidomide apology derided as too little, too late
Fifty years after the calamitous release of the sedative Thalidomide by the German company Gruenenthal, the company has finally issued an apology. Fifty years after...
New first for Belgium: prisoner euthanasia
For the first time, a Belgian prisoner has been euthanased. A man identified as Frank V.D.B, who had spent 20 years in prison for two...
Gallows humour
Hi there, There is a dimension of bioethics that I have completely overlooked, I’m sorry to report. It’s medical humour. One of the articles below...
Is regret enough reason not to have an abortion?
As if the existence of post-abortion trauma exists weren’t controversial enough, an Oxford academic argues in the Journal of Medical Ethics that it makes no...
Human exceptionalism is for the birds
Here’s something we missed about the uniqueness of human beings. In July the Francis Crick Memorial Conference, at Cambridge University, decided that we aren’t as...
State to pay for Massachusetts murderer’s sex change
A Massachusetts man with gender identity disorder murdered his wife in 1990 when she discovered him wearing her clothes. He was sentenced to life in...
Mind that gallows humour!
Commonly used palliative care practices are often misconstrued as euthanasia or murder, even though the treating physician may have no intention of killing a patient....
“Don’t let them put you under!”
Coma is a recent four-hour TV mini-series based on the 1978 Michael Crichton thriller about a young medical student who discovers that something sinister is...
Is it better to be minimally conscious than vegetative?
The interesting question posed by two Oxford utilitarians, Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu in the Journal of Medical Ethics recently is this: “Is it better...
Sperm precursor cells created in lab
The moment when scientists will be able to create artificial sperm from a skin cell is drawing closer. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have...