Euthanasia takes a backward step in Portugal and Colombia
The president of Portugal has refused to sign a bill legalising euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa criticised its wording as imprecise. This...
Hepatitis research: more dark corners in American medicine
When World War II began, the US military discovered that it had a huge health problem: hepatitis. Nothing much was known about the disease and...
Showjumper wins right to sue over ‘wrongful conception’
A 20-year-old woman in the UK who aspires to be a paralympian has won the right to sue for millions in damages because her mother’s...
US Supreme Court returns to abortion in a major case
This week the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the most controversial case of the year, the long-awaited challenge to Roe v. Wade and...
If you want assisted suicide in Germany, first you must get vaxxed
Promoters of "voluntary assisted dying" often seem to be lacking a gene for irony. Take the Australian activist, Dr Philip Nitschke, and his attempt to...
The CRISPR babies: the story unfolds
Remember the shocking announcement of the first births of genome modified twins (Lulu and Nana) globally? In an article in Nature Biotechnology, we learn a...
How long can you put off seeing the doctor because of lockdowns?
One in five people avoided healthcare during lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic, often for potentially urgent problems, according to a study PLOS Medicine. During the...
Belgian euthanasia doctors intimidated by lawyers
Euthanasia has become normalised in Belgium. Accounting to official figures, about 1 death in 50 is due to euthanasia – and a large proportion are...
Spanish couple awarded €38,000 after IVF clinic produced the wrong kind of child
A Spanish couple has won a lawsuit in a Belgian court because an IVF clinic produced twins with the wrong genetic make-up. The parents were...
Euthanasia updates: Bailiwick of Jersey and New South Wales
Lawmakers on the island of Jersey, the small UK dependency in the English Channel (population 110,000), have approved the principle of legalising assisted dying. A...
Agonising medical decisions made by French doctors in the Sahel
Doctors in developed countries deal with ethical issues all the time, but seldom are they dramatic or gut-wrenching. An article in BMC Medical Ethics describes...
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters will be protected as sentient beings in UK
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters will receive greater welfare protection in UK law following a report from the London School of Economics which suggests that there is strong...