On-line games featuring virtual worlds could become a venue for medical and sociological experiments which bypass regulations on human research subjects. Recently, education researchers at...

Modern doctors should focus less on curing the sick and more on expanding human potential for longer lifespans, says an Oxford University bioethicist. Professor Julian...

Like Gulliver, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, has been pinned down by countless pygmies equipped with lawsuits. The lengthy delay in launching its ambitious...

The Chinese government has banned TV shows about cosmetic surgery and sex changes, called them "explicit" and "cheap in tone". It has also shut down...

Responding to its increasingly skewed sex ratio, the Chinese government is drafting laws to punish parents and doctors involved in aborting females. Recently releases figures...

In an effort to make donation of IVF embryos more like adoption, the Australian state of Victoria is thinking of allowing donor couples to choose...

Scandalous and shameful: that's how care for British elderly in hospital and nursing homes has been described by its critics. A British parliamentary committee on...

The BMJ's new series of head-to-head debates has proved highly newsworthy. In the latest, two Australian psychiatrists clash over whether depression is over-diagnosed. , of...

Doctors in the US are taking another look at medically-managed childbirth, as the number of births scheduled for convenience rises. Fewer than 10% of women...

An infamous American case of doctors experimenting on orphans without their consent is close to settlement. The state of Iowa has agreed to pay US$925,000...

American cosmetic surgeons are turning their field of medicine into a big-ticket consumer item by helping patients finance their operations with easy credit. According to...

State governments and private donors will probably remain the biggest supporters of human embryonic stem cell research, even if President Bush's successor reverses his restrictions...