Sunset for a stem cell star
Despite continuing huffing and puffing over the merits of human embryonic stem cells, the central issue seems to be shifting from the patients’ right to...
Are older mums selfish?
An Australian obstetrician was heaped with scorn and ridicule earlier this month when he declared that women who deferred having children until their mid-30s were...
Are we morally obliged to participate in research?
Bioethics debates are often robust, but it’s not every day that they make a reader sick. This was the reaction of Professor Bill Gleason, of...
European Court of Justice bans embryo patents
A landmark decision by the European Court of Justice this week marks a step forward in legal recognition of the dignity of the human embryo....
National self-sufficiency in organ donation is essential, say experts
Leading transplant surgeons have published an article in The Lancet calling upon governments to adopt a “new paradigm of self-sufficiency” so that patients stop seeking...
Killing the willing
On Thursday (Oct 20), 38-year-old Christopher Johnson was executed by lethal injection in an Alabama prison after only four years on death row. The average...
The bioethics Oscars
My apologies – some of the news is a bit dated, as BioEdge was on holiday last week. There’s one item in this week’s newsletter...
We are healers, not “providers”, US physicians protest
“Customer,” “consumer,” and “provider” are words that do not belong in teaching rounds and the clinic, two Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center physicians, Pamela Hartzband...
Trapiantiamo la felicità: we transplant happiness!
Illustrating the increasing commercialization of medicine, an indignant Italian surgeon sent BioEdge a link to a video made by a transplant unit in Cagliari,...
Will the stem cell wars erupt again?
Scientists at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory have scripted another perplexing episode in the on-going mystery of producing human embryonic stem cells. In...
Nominations for a bioethics hall of fame
As part of a promotional interview in The Atlantic, Dr Jonathan Moreno was asked to nominate organisations and individuals for a “bioethics hall of fame”....
What is the ideal number of parents? 2? 4? 5?
How many parents is too few, or too many, or just right? Dr Kamal Ahuja, a well-known IVF specialist at the London Women’s Clinic, once...