I’m shocked, and saddened. I expected more from Montana.
Michael Cook, BioEdge.com
The state of Montana has become the third US jurisdiction to allow doctors to participate in assisted suicide. In a 4-3 decision, its Supreme Court held that state law protects doctors from prosecution for helping terminally ill patients die. Read more…
From this article we learn that there are even more problems with invitro fertilization and surrogacy than are common knowledge. Problems arise when playing God? Shocker!
Jared Yee, BioEdge.org
Different regulatory approaches to surrogacy in the US can result in legal tangles, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. The “lax atmosphere” of surrogacy regulation “means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions.”
The Times gives three disturbing examples.
Continue reading: http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8791/
Way to go, Dr. Sang-duk Shim and the doctors who have joined you to fight abortion in Korea. Way to be courageous despite opposition on many fronts.
From Mercatornet.com
A Korean gynaecologist explains why he abandoned a lucrative procedure and is campaigning to reduce abortions.
South Korea has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world, even though abortion is technically illegal there except in a few rare circumstances. According to official government figures, there are 340,000 abortions each year, although one parliamentarian has estimated that there may be as many as 1.5 million. At the same time, Korea’s birth rate is the second-lowest in the world – 1.19 births per woman — and some Koreans fear that their very survival as a nation is in doubt.
That is the background for a courageous decision by a 50-year-old Seoul obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Sang-duk Shim, to stop doing abortions and to lobby the government for a dramatic reduction. He has even received death threats for his stand. MercatorNet conducted this email interview with him: Read more…
Jared Yee, BioEdge.org
The successful fertilisation of an egg using biological material from two women may have moved the world closer to three-parent babies. Researchers at St Mother Hospital in Kitakyushu, Japan, have experimented with repairing the damaged eggs of older women by using eggs from younger donors. The usefulness of this process is disputed. Some doctors say it could improve chances of fertilisation and prevent genetic defects; others worry that the DNA of three people might lead to genetic problems. Read more…
Manuel and Sophia Corpas, Mercatornet.com
Ever-more sophisticated technology allows us to detect ever more genetic anomalies. What will we do with this knowledge?
One of our biggest worries in the field of genome medicine is the use of prenatal genetics tests to justify the abortion of human embryos. Current technologies allow enhanced detection of genetic abnormalities that a few years ago would have been unthinkable. Read more…
Michael Cook, BioEdge.org
Studies have shown that 92% of Down Syndrome babies are aborted in the UK each year, much the same as in the US and Australia. However government statistics show that the number of babies aborted because of Down syndrome was only 436 in 2008 and 2,168 between 2004 and 2008. There seems to be a mismatch. Read more…
Margaret Somerville, Mercatornet.com
Legalising euthanasia will have incalculable consequences for healthcare professionals.
Last week, the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons tentatively approved euthanasia. That means it’s essential that we look, specifically, at the impact that euthanasia would have on physicians and the profession of medicine, in order to understand why this approval is a very bad idea. Read more…
Barbara Kay, National Post
They don’t call it the scary-sounding “Hemlock Society” any more. The new name is “Compassion and Choices.” Under this cuddly rubric, bespoke death is now endorsed by respected society matrons and politicians as euthanasia’s version of Planned Parenthood. The once-reviled euthanasia obsessional — and criminal — Dr. Kevorkian, is raking in $50,000 a pop on the lecture circuit. The cultural wind is in euthanasia’s sails and the most unlikely people are heeding its siren call. Read more…
Michael Cook, BioEdge
Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk has escaped jail after being convicted of violating bioethics laws to obtain human eggs and of embezzling US$700,000 in government grants. Hwang became a national hero after he published articles in the journal Science in 2004 claiming that he had successfully cloned human embryos and developed stem cell lines. He was named “Supreme Scientist”; his feat was commemorated on a postage stamp; and the government even considered nominating him for a Nobel prize. However, in 2005 most of his work in human embryonic stem cells was exposed as a fraud. Further investigation showed that he had misused funds and pressured a female researcher into donating eggs for his experiments. Read more…
Michael Cook, BioEdge
A study in the BMJ has confirmed that more effective prenatal screening has contained the growth in the number of Down syndrome children in Britain. Even though the number of births in 1989/90 was roughly the same as 2007/08, antenatal and postnatal diagnoses of Down’s syndrome increased by 71% to 1,843. The number of live births with Down syndrome, however, actually fell by 1% because more women had antenatal screening and subsequently terminated the child. Read more…
Michael Cook, BioEdge
The Israeli Knesset has once again declined to ban human reproductive cloning. Instead it has extended a moratorium on it for another seven years. Scientists had apparently persuaded them that a permanent ban would make some researchers would abandon their cloning research. They seem to have won the day, as the government had only proposed a five-year moratorium. Read more…
Remarks to Phoenix Catholic Physicians’ Guild by Archbishop Chaput of Denver
I want to talk tonight about the kind of people we’re becoming, and what we can do about it. Especially what you can do about it. But it’s always good to start with a few facts before offering an opinion. So that’s what I’ll do.
A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner’s syndrome to Trisomy 18, which is extremely serious. But I want to focus on one fairly common genetic disability to make my point. I’m referring to Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. Read more…
Michael Cook
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) will be collaborating with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on stem cell research. CIRM already has agreements with six other countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, the state of Victoria in Australia, Spain and Japan. Read more…
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