Cable: Pfizer hired investigators to press Nigeria to drop suit

Researchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell parents their children were getting an experimental drug. Pfizer’s lead investigator later acknowledged that he  personally created and backdated a key ethics approval document.

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Vilniui – sifilio rykštė

Ligonis susitinka ir bendrauja tik su jį gydančiu gydytoju, kuris vienintelis žino apie jo ligą. Pacientui pageidaujant, visuomet išsaugomas anonimiškumas. Tačiau savo lytinius partnerius jis taip pat turi informuoti pats – tai paliekama jo sąžinei.

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Naujagimio netekusi šeima norėtų prisiteisti 10 mln. Lt

Kretingos apylinkės teisme – šalyje rekordinio dydžio ieškinys, kurį prašoma priteisti už medikų padarytą žalą.

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Slaugytojų vergovė išblizgintose ligoninėse

Tačiau kas iš tų švytinčių sienų, jei naktį skubiai operuoti atvežtai pacientei slaugytoja tiesiai į akis drebia, kodėl ši negalėjusi palaukti iki ryto? Arba jei Alzheimerio liga sergantis senukas, kad neišeitų į gatvę ir nepasiklystų, slaugos namų palatoje tiesiog užrakinamas?

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Kas stato barjerus tarp mediko ir sergančiojo?

Anot filosofo Krescencijaus Stoškaus, humanistinė medicina žino, koks svarbus mediko lūpose yra žodis, galintis ir prikelti, ir sužlugdyti, tačiau dabar šioje srityje toną duoda ciniškas pragmatizmas. Diagnozavimas artėja prie paprastų techninių sprendimų, kuriuos gali atlikti net kompiuteriai.

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Lietuvoje prekiaujama organais, mano kas trečias gyventojas

Trečdalis Spinter tyrimų apklausos dalyvių mano, kad Lietuvoje veikia juodoji organų prekybos rinka ir neoficialiai galima nusipirkti vieną ar kitą organą. 7 proc. respondentų nuomone, tai galima padaryti oficialiai  parodė Nacionalinio organų transplantacijos biuro užsakymu atlikta apklausa.

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Išvaryta gydytojo, mergina susmuko ant laiptų

Panevėžio Konsultacijų poliklinikos lankytojai tapo liudininkais, kaip mieste gali būti bendraujama su pacientais. Žmonės tvirtina buvę sukrėsti neįprastos situacijos: iš gydytojo kabineto išprašyta mergina vos išėjusi į lauką susmuko ant poliklinikos laiptų.

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Panevėžiui greitai prireiks naujų gydytojų armijos

Miesto gydymo įstaigos ilgai neranda pamainos kitur gyventi ir dirbti išvykstantiems arba į pensiją išeinantiems patyrusiems medikams.

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Per 18 metų Lietuvoje nuo AIDS mirė 41 žmogus

Nuo 1988-ųjų Lietuvoje AIDS nusinešė 41 žmonių gyvybes – 40 vyrų ir vienos moters. Kaip pranešė Lietuvos AIDS centras, pagal galimą užsikrėtimo būdą dauguma mirusiųjų (19) ŽIV buvo užsikrėtę per homoseksualius ar heteroseksualius (12) santykius, gyvenę Vilniaus, Klaipėdos ir Kauno apskrityse.

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Mirties nuosprendis poliklinikoms

Sveikatos apsaugos ministerija užsimojo per ateinančius dvejus metus į privačių paslaugų teikėjų rankas perduoti net 80 proc. pirminės sveikatos priežiūros paslaugų. Tokie planai gąsdina ir medikus, ir jų pacientus.

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Lietuvos sveikatos sistema – prasčiausia Europoje

Lietuvos sveikatos apsaugos sistema yra prasčiausia Europoje, konstatuojama Briuselyje pristatytame Europos Sveikatos paslaugų indekso tyrime. Lietuvos sveikatos paslaugų indeksas yra žemiausias iš 26 tyrime dalyvavusių šalių.

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Pasiturintiems ligoniams – išskirtinės sąlygos

Panevėžio ligoninės pacientai vis dažniau bendras ligonių palatas iškeičia į ištaigingas, viešbučio lygio vienutes. Jau aštuonerius metus ramybę ir patogumą ligoninėje siūlo keturiolika mokamų palatų.

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What It Takes to Become a Living Donor?

More than 3,000 people have signed up to be potential bone-marrow donors since word spread that 11-year-old Shannon Tavarez, one of the child stars of “The Lion King” on Broadway, needed a transplant to combat her acute myelogenous leukemia.

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Vatican official criticises Nobel Prize for IVF pioneer

A Vatican official has criticised the decision to award British IVF pioneer Professor Robert Edwards the Nobel Prize in Medicine, saying the choice was ‘very perplexing’.

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Caste still an important factor in IVF in India

Cutting-edge medical treatments clash with age-old caste divisions in India’s booming fertility industry, as parents seek donors from the same caste and religion.

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Wellesley professor unearths a horror: Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

Picking through musty files in a Pennsylvania archive, a Wellesley College professor made a heart-stopping discovery: US government scientists in the 1940s deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in experiments conducted without the subjects’ permission.

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Firms point to biometric future

Keys, cards, passports and PINs could soon be a thing of the past as biometric technology makes our bodies the only passwords we need.

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What if Bionics Were Better

“If one day a bionic hand outperformed a biological hand just on sheer practical performance — like dexterity, strength and speed — I’d probably consider replacing my biological hand,” said Kyle Peterson, a 21-year-old information science major at the University of North Florida in an e-mail.

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Debate rages over animal-human chimeras

Should medical researchers be allowed to create human-animal hybrids to investigate disease? No, says an ethics think tank that advises the Scottish Parliament. Yes, says Ian Wilmut of the University of Edinburgh, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep.

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Transhumanism: Yearning to transcend biology

With everything else that’s happening in the world today, debates about whether humanity should embrace as yet nonexistent technologies that could enhance our physical and intellectual abilities and someday make us “more than human” may seem frivolous.

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Is there a human right to be superhuman?

While America was rushing to see sharp metal blades jut from Wolverine?s fists during the opening of the third “X-Men” movie last weekend, an academic conference was being held at Stanford University to discuss what might happen if people with special powers really existed.

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The ideas interview: Nick Bostrom

John Sutherland meets a transhumanist who wrestles with the ethics of technologically enhanced human beings.

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The New Nano-Threat

First it was “gray goo,” the threat of self-replicating machines populating the planet. Now an environmental think tank is raising the specter of “green goo,” where biology is used to create new materials and new artificial life forms.

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Strange food for thought

The brain-gain revolution is already under way. But will these “neural enhancement” drugs turn us into Einsteins or Frankensteins?

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It’s life, but not as God planned it

Scientists are often accused of trying to play God. Cloning experts, genetic engineers and atomic physicists have all fiddled with aspects of the world that many believe should remain the preserve of some higher power.

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Mind-reading machine knows what you see

It is possible to read someone`s mind by remotely measuring their brain activity, researchers have shown. The technique can even extract information from subjects that they are not aware of themselves.

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Scientists control mood

Science is beginning to find ways to control happiness in the brain artificially.

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An Anti-Addiction Pill?

While many in the treatment field have long called addiction a “disease,” they’ve used the word in vague and metaphorical ways, meaning everything from a disease of the mind to a disease of the spirit. Many assumed that an addict suffers from a brain-chemistry problem, but scientists had not been able to peer into our heads to begin to prove it.

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Doctors fear gambling explosion

GPs tend not to refer people for treatment as there are perceived to be much more serious mental health and addiction problems.

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When the Personality Disorder Wears Camouflage

Which raises a question: How does someone with a personality disorder “a significant, disabling, and dangerous condition” manage the stress of combat? Wouldn’t a person with a serious mental problem drop out, or be identified and quickly discharged?

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Brain sensor allows mind-control

But Professor Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist from Duke University, was critical of the research. He said: “When you decide, like this company did, to go into clinical trials for an invasive technique the stakes are very high.”

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Science has designs on your brain

Should technology be used to stimulate and improve the brain – improving grades for instance?

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A Pill To Forget?

If there were something you could take after experiencing a painful or traumatic event that would permanently weaken your memory of what had just happened, would you take it? As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, it`s an idea that may not be so far off, and that has some critics alarmed, and some trauma victims filled with hope.

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Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t?

As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place.

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Scientists Tie Part of Brain to Urge to Smoke

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit, effectively erasing the most stubborn of addictions. The new finding, which is to appear in the journal Science on Friday, is likely to alter the course of addiction research, pointing researchers toward new ideas for treatment, experts say.

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Brain Injury Said to Affect Moral Choices

Damage to an area of the brain behind the forehead, inches behind the eyes, transforms the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations, scientists reported yesterday. In a new study, people with this rare injury expressed increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others` lives.

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ADHD drug earns subsidy despite suicidal side effects

A CONTROVERSIAL treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has been added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, despite potential to cause suicidal thoughts and stunt growth. The move comes after a Therapeutic Goods Administration assessment of Strattera last year, which identified suicidal thoughts, agitation, weight loss, chest pain and swollen testicles as potential side effects of the drug.

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Anorexics given new rights

Teenage anorexics will win greater rights to refuse treatment for their eating disorders under controversial new mental health laws to be debated by MPs this week. Parents have until now been able to override automatically a child’s wish not to be hospitalised for starving themselves, ensuring that they get treatment even if they do not want it.

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Drugs may boost your brain power

The government is assessing the impact of a new generation of drugs that are claimed to make people more intelligent. If, in the future, there are cognition tablets for exams and I wasn’t happy for my children to take them, would I be disadvantaging them against those children that actually take them?

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Brain scans predict MS, but should patients be told of risk?

If you had the nerve-degenerating disease multiple sclerosis, would you want to know, even if the symptoms weren’t going to appear for years? The research raises medical and ethical questions that genetic researchers and patients have bandied about for years: If someone’s at risk for a disease, should they be told?

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Let students take drugs to boost brainpower, says leading academic

Students should be allowed to take “smart drugs”, such as Ritalin, to help boost their academic performance, a leading academic has suggested. John Harris, professor of bioethics and director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, said the government and medical profession should “seriously consider” making cognition-enhancing drugs available to students without prescription, or allowing them to be prescribed for non-therapeutic purposes, such as studying.

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Millions for genetic technology

A major expansion of the use of genetic technology to tackle medical problems has been announced by Health Secretary John Reid.

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E-mail gaffe reveals HIV, AIDS names

WEST PALM BEACH – A highly confidential list of the names and addresses of 4,500 Palm Beach County residents with AIDS and 2,000 others who are HIV positive was e-mailed Thursday to more than 800 county health department employees.

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Operation 21st century

Will the much-vaunted 6.2 billion NHS e-revolution work? Sam Lister visits the first hospital phasing it in.

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GPs dissatisfied with IT system

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs committee, said there were concerns over patient confidentiality that needed to be addressed before the scheme was rolled out.

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Medicare data left on hotel computer

Social Security numbers and other personal information for nearly 17,000 Medicare beneficiaries could have been compromised when an insurance company employee called up the data on a hotel computer and then failed to delete the file.

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Government takes soft line on medical privacy

Of the 19,420 grievances lodged so far, the most common allegations have been that personal medical details were wrongly revealed, information was poorly protected, more details were disclosed than necessary, proper authorization was not obtained or patients were frustrated getting their own records.

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Consent not needed to test patients in emergency

In a public-health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to determine why they’re sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday.

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Doctors concerned over e-records

Doctors are raising a series of concerns about the confidentiality of the electronic care records system.

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Kansas AG Kline Says Request for Late-Term Abortion Records Motivated by Protecting Children; Opponent Says it Violated Medical Privacy

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline (R), who is running for re-election in November, on Friday said he not was trying to further a political agenda but to protect children when he sought access to the medical records of 90 women and girls who in 2003 underwent late-term abortions at two clinics, the Dodge City Daily Globe reports (Swanson, Dodge City Daily Globe, 8/30).

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Texas Medical Board Adopts Parental Consent Form

The Texas Medical Board last week adopted rules requiring physicians to gain written and notarized parental consent before performing an abortion on a minor.

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Analysis: The medical record paper chase

A bigger threat may be caused by the very companies who keep electronic health records, she said, because electronic health information can be compiled, bought and sold — sometimes without a patient’s consent.

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5 companies to launch electronic health files

Five major U.S. corporations have joined forces to create a “medical Internet” on which some 2.5 million people can compile their personal health records in one location, providing convenient access to everything from prescriptions and cholesterol readings to family medical histories.

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Ban on home HIV tests ‘outdated’

Banning home HIV testing kits is unwarranted and a breach of patient autonomy, a UK health expert argues.

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Warnings Over Privacy of U.S. Health Network

The Bush administration has no clear strategy to protect the privacy of patients as it promotes the use of electronic medical records throughout the nation`s health care system, federal investigators say in a new report. As a result, Mr. Akaka said, “more and more companies, health care providers and carriers are moving forward with health information technology without the necessary protections.”

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Parents are not my patients

There has been much debate over whether GPs should prescribe contraception to under-16s without telling their parents. Contraceptives, abortion and sexual transmitted infection advice and treatment can therefore be provided to young people under the age of 16, without parents knowing, so long as the young person fully understands the medical advice and its implications.

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Hospital lost patient data disks

A hospital has lost 100 computer disks containing personal information about patients. The disks, which were to be destroyed, are believed to have been disposed of “inadvertently” with other waste.

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Hey! Who Wants to Share Google Health Records?

Recognizing the sensitive nature of sharing health records, Google said it has built in several security measures to preserve privacy. Users choose who can view their histories, and the link to the patient’s profile will work only in connection with those people’s e-mail addresses–meaning the link won’t work if it is forwarded to a third party.

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What does the doctor talk to your teen about?

In fact, if your pediatrician doesn’t ask you to leave the room during teen visits, maybe he or she should. “The pediatrician should spend most of the office visit alone with the adolescent,” according to Dr. David Tayloe, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “It’s very important for teenagers to have confidential conversations with their pediatricians.”

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Kaiser fires staffers who snooped into Suleman`s files

Fifteen employees were fired and eight disciplined after testing revealed computer breaches at the Bellflower hospital, where Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets in January. The privacy violations occurred despite the hospital’s stepped-up efforts to shield Suleman’s records from employees who had no medical reason for accessing them, Anderson said. The hospital anticipated that Suleman’s giving birth to eight babies would create significant media interest and instituted refresher courses in patient privacy laws.

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Consider ethics, patient rights before treating your immediate family

But should physicians treat family members? Interestingly, the American Medical Association in its initial, 1847, “Code of Medical Ethics” addressed treatment of physicians’ families when it said of the physician, “the natural anxiety and solicitude which he experiences at the sickness of a wife, a child, or anyone who by the ties of consanguinity is rendered peculiarly dear to him, tend to obscure his judgment and produce timidity and irresolution in his practice.”

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Many medical malpractice cases groundless

About 40 percent of the medical malpractice cases filed in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis of the hotly debated issue that pits trial lawyers against doctors, with lawmakers in the middle.

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A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry

The patient, Keith, was a deeply religious young man, disabled by paranoia, who had secluded himself for weeks in one of the hospital’s isolation rooms. In daily therapy sessions he said little but was always civil, seemingly pleased to have company and grateful for a cigarette and a light.

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For a Medical Student, a Shocking Lesson in the Real World

I was about to appreciate the consequences of the work of doctors. A price was to be paid to become a real physician.

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Patient Power: Making Sure Your Doctor Really Hears You

It`s one thing to feel like a master of the universe when wearing a buttoned-down power suit. But how can you negotiate anything “How can you even contemplate “Getting to Yes,” as one motivational best seller puts it” when standing barefoot in a paper gown under the fluorescent lights at a hospital or a medical clinic?

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Medical Errors? Patients May Be the Last to Know

A survey of more than 2,600 surgeons and medical specialists reveals wide variations in doctors` willingness to disclose errors and in the ways they would present the details to patients.

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In Science-Based Medicine, Where Does Luck Fit In?

While everyone rightly praised the efforts of her surgeon and physical therapist, another factor in her recovery was ignored: luck. Why are doctors and patients so reluctant to discuss a phenomenon that permeates medicine every day?

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“Richer” patients – better treatment

If you want the best treatment from your GP, make sure you look a million dollars, UK researchers suggest.

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You`ve got mail?

Despite the growing use of computer technology in almost every other facet of their profession, American doctors are reluctant to use e-mail when interacting with their patients, a recently released study shows.

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Medics under report cases

Many doctors and nurses who see a child they suspect has been physically abused do not report it to the appropriate authorities, a survey has indicated.

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Rethink on disciplining doctors

Incompetent and underperforming doctors could face a new disciplinary system under proposals to be considered by the General Medical Council.

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The changing nature of medicine

Many practising doctors have never received any training in resolving ethical dilemmas.

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Where Does It Hurt?

Groopman powerfully conveys the complexity of the physician`s role, the anxiety and uncertainty that dog his every step, the difficulties that arise in understanding patients, eliciting their stories, making a diagnosis. One of the messages of “How Doctors Think” is that patients need to be active participants in their care; and without question the best physicians encourage, and even demand, the involvement of patients.

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Most Doctors See Religion as Beneficial, Study Says

Most physicians in the United States believe that religion and spirituality have a positive effect on patients` health, according to a survey published last week, and that God at least occasionally intervenes on their behalf. “The most telling part of this outcome,” said Dr. Farr A. Curlin, the lead author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, “is that it shows that what doctors bring to the data, whether religious or secular, seems to have as much to do with their interpretations of the data as the data itself.”

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In a Hospital Hierarchy, Speaking Up Is Hard to Do

Doctors in training sometimes confront situations in which they worry that their supervising physicians are making mistakes or bending the truth. Yet even though such acts can jeopardize patients, the inclination and ability of young doctors to speak up is hampered by the hierarchies in teaching hospitals.

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Should Patients Be Told of Better Care Elsewhere?

David I. Shalowitz, a bioethicist, said that expecting surgeons and hospitals to disclose information about other doctors and medical centers would create an untenable conflict of interest for them and should be avoided. The question of what the doctor’s obligation is remains unresolved.

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The New Kid on the Ward Round

The doctor wants to know who determines if the patient is ‘terminal’, and what he should say to the “hostile and angry” family. The ethicist tells him that deciding if a cancer is in its terminal phase is a clinical matter. As for the family, the ethicist offers to discuss the issue with them.

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Ethicists debate doctors who keep it personal

Yet some medical ethicists warn against practicing medicine too empathetically or becoming too involved in patients’ lives, saying it compromises treatment and the profession as a whole. Others argue personalized care will become extinct if physicians are not able to set aside the business of doctoring and resurrect the art of medicine.

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When getting cancer results over the phone is a good thing

I have learned since then that the best way to inform a patient of test results, especially results that indicate bad news, is a subject of debate among doctors. This is especially true outside the hospital setting. Many doctors have specific policies about never giving results over the phone; others are more flexible and approach each case individually.

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Study: Hospice patients feel abandoned by doctors

Doctors spend years learning how to heal, but most are fairly ignorant about how to act toward patients when they run out of treatments, suggests a study today. Often, once doctors refer a patient to hospice care, they end all contact, leaving patients and their families feeling abandoned, says lead author Anthony Back, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington.

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A Miracle Denied

A teenager’s death after two sets of transplants raises questions of procedure and ethics.

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Families and organ shortage

The UK’s organ donation rate is one of the lowest in western Europe because grieving relatives are reluctant to allow such procedures, a study says.

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Beating heart transplant UK first

Doctors have carried out the UK’s first successful beating heart transplant.

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Organ retention compensation deal

Relatives of people whose organs were retained by Scottish hospitals without consent are to get 5,000 compensation.

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Face transplant deemed a success

The world’s first face transplant has been deemed a success by the surgeons who carried out the operation.

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Flesh Trade

How’s this for a repugnant situation? Take someone you love, perhaps your spouse or your sibling, and find a stranger who will accept a really big bet that your loved one will die prematurely, and if indeed that happens, you pocket a few million dollars.

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Radical changes for organ donors

Laws governing organ donation and tissue retention are to be radically changed, possibly allowing many more organ transplants.

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Stolen bones used in operation

A patient has been implanted with a body part which was allegedly stolen in the US, a hospital has confirmed.

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Organ sales

The sale of organs taken from executed prisoners appears to be thriving in China, an undercover investigation by the BBC has found.

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Pay organ donors, expert suggests

People should be paid for living organ donations, a US surgeon has said in an article in the British Medical Journal.

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My face transplant

In November last year Isabelle Dinoire became the first person in the world to receive a face transplant.

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Iran`s desperate kid

On streets and in town squares in Iran, young men and women can be seen holding signs offering their kidneys for sale.

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China admits shady transplants

After years of denial, China has acknowledged that many of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.

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Japan`s long wait for transplant

It is harder to get an organ transplant in Japan than almost anywhere else in the world. The problem is not a lack of funds or technology, but a lack of donors.

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Woman has double hand transplant

A Spaniard has become the first woman in the world to receive a double hand transplant.

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Experts warn against organ trade

A transplant surgeon has warned against selling body parts, after a report suggested organs are for sale online.

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Cosmetic surgery draw condemned

The offer of a cosmetic surgery procedure as a prize is an awful manifestation of the trivialisation of medical care in general, and aesthetic surgery in particular.

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Transplants come under scrutiny

Traditionally organ transplants have been carried out to save a person’s life, be it with a new heart, kidney, or set of lungs. People who are willing to undertake something like a face transplant are probably not of an open mind.

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Husband Wants Kidney Back

New York surgeon, Richard Batista, is asking his wife, Dawnell Batista, for the kidney he gave her in 2001 back, or if she can’t live without it (ha ha)–for $1.5 million in exchange for his regret over the gift. It occurs to me that husbands and wives who are divorcing often don’t get to ask for other large, costly, or otherwise meaningful or significant gifts that they give to their spouse while they are married back just because they aren’t in love or don’t wish to be married anymore. From engagement or wedding rings to Christmas presents, gifts stay with the recipient in most cases.

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Proposals to shorten transplant list make no gains

There are several proposals for increasing organ donations, none of which has made much progress in America so far. The three leading ones are:

• Making payments to donor families, which would cover some expenses for families willing to donate a relative’s organs.

• Enacting “presumed consent,” which would assume someone’s organs are available for transplant unless a family opted out of donation.

• Establishing “A” and “B” lists of potential recipients, which would give preference to people on the waiting list who had agreed to be organ donors themselves.

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Wales seeks organ opt-out powers

Wales could become the first part of the UK introduce an opt-out system of organ donation under plans by the assembly government. It would mean that Welsh residents would be presumed to be organ donors unless they have joined an opt out register or immediate relatives object.

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Iran at forefront of stem cell research

Though the world’s attention has focused on Iran’s advancing nuclear program, Iranian scientists have moved to the forefront in embryonic stem cell research, according to a recent joint study by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Controversial in the United States, embryonic stem cell research was embraced in 2002 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s conservative religious leader. President Obama has recently adopted a similar policy, reversing restrictions that George W. Bush’s administration imposed because of the implications for destroying potential human lives.

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Doctors make medical ethics plea

“Doctors can be involved with decisions concerning withdrawing and withholding treatment, approaching bereaved families about organ donation and assisted reproduction. “Indeed there has never been such an important role for medical ethics to help guide doctors in their everyday decisions.”

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Call for hospital ethics experts

I would also say that ethics committees have an advantage in that decisions are made by discussion, and I think that is best.

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Should sinners be made to pay?

Imagine the look on Gordon Brown’s face when he saw the results of Bupa’s poll this week suggesting that 34% of the British public think that those who smoke, drink or are obese should take the rap for their self-inflicted bad health by being charged for their medical treatment.

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NHS ‘failing’ disabled children

Barnardo’s and Whizz-Kidz say a chronic lack of funds and inconsistent provision across the country mean children’s needs are going unmet.

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Medical data errors

Patient care is being risked by hospital bosses sending medical notes abroad to be typed up, a union says.

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NHS “privatisation”

Fears have been fuelled the NHS is facing privatisation after firms have been asked to bid for the role of commissioning NHS care.

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Foreign nurses clampdown by NHS

Over 150,000 nurses are due to retire in the next five to 10 years and we will not replace them all with home grown nurses alone.

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Managers blamed for NHS deficits

Inadequate leadership and ineffective management are the causes of the worst deficits in the NHS, a watchdog says.

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Patients facing long test waits

It is the first time the so-called hidden waits have been published – to date hospital waits in England have measured diagnosis to treatment.

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Can doctors ever abandon their post?

Are healthcare workers ever justified in abandoning their patients during epidemics of severe disease?

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Making Health Care the Engine That Drives the Economy

By 2030, predicts Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, about 25 percent of the G.D.P. will be spent on health care, making it “the driving force in the economy,” just as railroads drove the economy at the start of the 20th century.

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Patients` appointments

Missed appointments are a waste of valuable resources.

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Study Finds Medical Spending Is Generally Worth the Cost

The researchers measured value by the cost of care that extends the average person`s life by one year. The $19,900 spent for each extra year of life, when averaged over 40 years, would be widely considered a reasonable value.

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Med schools warn doctors of drug sales pitches

Medical schools in several states are boosting programs that teach doctors and students to challenge the sales pitches of drug companies and avoid being dazzled by them.

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Psychologist Shortage Puts Mentally Ill Out on Street

Severely mentally ill people in Fairfax County whose families are trying to get them emergency help are being released without receiving treatment — or even a hearing — because there are not enough independent psychologists to examine them.

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A battle for children

Campaigners are warning thousands of disabled and terminally-ill children are waiting for vital equipment. They say NHS and government agencies are not supplying enough funding.

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No tabloid laws on mentalo care

Lib Dem peer Baroness Barker said the Bill would turn the clock back 70 years in mental health legislation and was “unfit for purpose”. A desire to change the law was largely driven by Michael Stone’s 1998 conviction for the murders of Lin and Megan Russell.

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Mental health peril

It is not a question just of resources or laws but, as has been highlighted, the failure to identify people at risk when all the red alerts were in hindsight flashing.

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Councils “face care problems”

Our priority has always been to support people to make sure they can live independently for longer, and with dignity. But this requires funding.

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Need a dentist? Come to Croatia

With many questioning the future of mass tourism on the Adriatic Sea, the EU candidate country of 4.5 million has started promoting itself as a dental treatment destination.

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What`s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses

The larger threat posed by American medicine is that more and more of us are being drawn into the system not because of an epidemic of disease, but because of an epidemic of diagnoses. But the real problem with the epidemic of diagnoses is that it leads to an epidemic of treatments.

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Disabled children “need” a voice

Disabled children who do not live at home should have the right to an advocate who can speak on their behalf, according to the Children’s Society.

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Mental health care “must improve”

“Sadly the government is happy with an administered chemical cosh of drugs for the alarming increases in the number of children suffering from mental illness. “Their draconian approach risks more sufferers not coming forward and risking their conditions deteriorating under the clinical radar.”

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UK to sign disability convention

The UK will be among the first 50 or so countries to sign a new United Nations convention giving greater rights and freedoms to disabled people. “The convention recognises that disability is caused by negative attitudes and barriers within society, not impairments, and that disabled people should have the same rights and freedoms as everyone else.”

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Drug-resistant TB strain raises ethical dilemma

Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others.

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Mental Health Bill “has balance”

The government’s Mental Health Bill strikes the “right balance” between patient safeguards and protecting the public, the health secretary has said. “The bill would enable a patient who is detained in hospital to be released under supervised community treatment, enabling some patients to be discharged into the community earlier than would otherwise have been the case.”

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Doctors’ report claims: ‘We no longer have free health care’

Increasing numbers of patients are paying for private “top-up” treatments alongside NHS care, meaning the health service is no longer free, a report by leading doctors warns today. The doctors have written to all three main political parties, and the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, outlining their concerns that the idea of a free health service is a “political mirage”.

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Why do we protect the moral convictions of only some health workers?

Two of the most pitched battles over reproductive rights in America right now turn on whether health workers can be forced to provide medical services or information to which they ethically or professionally object. But as we learn from these fights, our solicitude for the beliefs of medical workers is selective: Abortion opponents will soon enjoy broader legal protections than ever.

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Information technology holds promise for advancing healthcare

It is known as “Health IT,” an idea that promises to use information technology to cut medical errors, avoid unnecessary tests and procedures and identify better treatments. The Obama administration is betting that $19 billion of the economic stimulus package will spread the concept from coast to coast. In Hawaii, Kaiser Permanente reported a 26% drop in patient visits after the hospital giant implemented an electronic record system that allows doctors and patients to communicate more easily by telephone or e-mail for routine contacts.

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Cloning ‘could beat gene disease’

A scientist involved in creating Dolly the cloned sheep has proposed using cloning and gene alteration to create babies free from hereditary diseases.

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S. Korea cloning expert on trial

The South Korean cloning scientist accused of faking his stem cell research has gone on trial in Seoul, charged with fraud and embezzlement.

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Clone ‘would feel individuality’

A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.

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Scientist reports on attempt to clone child

A Kentucky fertility specialist has published the world`s first scientific account of an attempt to create a cloned child, a scientific milestone that many researchers will likely condems.

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Biologists want to drop the word ‘cloning’

“Using the term ‘SCNT’ instead of ‘cloning’ dramatically raised approval ratings”.

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Korea to Join Stem Cell Race

South Korea has been reluctant to support local scientists for research into cloned human stem cells. However, with the new U.S. government deciding to lift the country’s restrictions on federal funding for new stem cell research, Korean regulators are feeling increasing pressure to do the same for researchers here. The National Bioethics Committee last month delayed its decision over whether to allow the Seoul-based Cha Medical Center to conduct research on embryonic stem cells created from cloned human embryos.

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Some Stem Cell Research Limits Lifted

Guidelines proposed by the National Institutes of Health to carry out an order made last month by President Obama would allow research with federal financing only on stem cells derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics. The money would still be prohibited for stem cell lines created solely for research purposes and for embryos created through a technique known as therapeutic cloning.

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Scientists plan interspecies cloning

Cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut and three teams of U.K. scientists have asked their government for permission to restart cloning research, which they argue will eliminate the need for women volunteers to take fertility drugs in order to donate their eggs to science. “It is treating a human being at his or her earliest stages as a mere tool,” said Georgetown University philosophy professor Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, a member of the President?s Council on Bioethics,

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Special Feature: Stem cell cloning needs you

Deriving a stem cell line from a cloned human embryo still represents one of the most formidable scientific barriers in biology. Challenged with deep ethical questions, misled by high-profile research fraud, and obfuscated in the eyes of the public, it’s fair to say that in the race to overcome this hurdle no one’s close to being at the starting blocks.

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A-conversation-with Woo-suk-hwang-and-shin-yong-moon-2-friends-242-eggs-and-a-breakthrough

For men who had just thrown a giant ethical bomb into the world of science, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon were dashing about Seattle last week in a remarkably relaxed mood.

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‘Make IVF genetic screen routine’

All IVF embryos should be checked for genetic abnormalities before the pregnancy is allowed to go ahead, say international genetic experts.

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“Designer baby” bid gets go-ahead

A couple from Leicester have been given permission by the fertility watchdog to have a “saviour sibling” in a bid to help their sick 20-month-old daughter.

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Embryo checks ‘should be widened’

Embryo testing should be extended to check for faulty genes not guaranteed to cause disease, a report by the UK fertility watchdog recommends.

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Science Anxiety

Many recent scientific advances in medicine and the life sciences involving genetic engineering leave many people concerned. Our new and increasing power to control heredity is based on a growing knowledge of our own genetic makeup as well as that of other living things.

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New row looms over embryo screening

Embryo screening should be extended to cover genes that may cause diseases but are not certain to do so, the regulatory body for fertility treatment has recommended.

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First baby in Britain designed cancer-free

A WOMAN is pregnant with Britain`s first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer, The Times can reveal.

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HFEA approves embryo tests for hereditary cancer

The UK’s fertility treatment regulator has given the go-ahead for couples to test embryos to avoid passing on hereditary cancer. At its open meeting held on 10 May in Belfast, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) accepted a recommendation from its ethics and law committee to allow licences to be granted for such procedures.

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Pregnancy test cuts risk to baby

I can foresee ethical problems if the test were to be made widely available – in some countries such as India and China there are significant imbalances in birth frequencies of boys and girls – probably due to selective termination of pregnancies with a female foetus.

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Hybrid embryo work ‘under threat’

UK scientists planning to mix human and animal cells in order to research cures for degenerative diseases fear their work will be halted.

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Public debate on hybrid embryos

The public will be asked whether scientists should be allowed to create hybrid human-animal embryos, regulators have announced.

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Genetic embryo screening: Questions grow along with number of procedures

In the United States — though not in Britain—families also can use genetic testing to ensure they have children of a particular sex. Still, doctors say, expanded embryo screening probably is not a slippery slope toward designer babies, not only because the process is costly and difficult but because the number of embryos is limited and finding one that includes a number of desired traits would be very difficult.

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Widow defends assisted suicide trip

The former docker was the first UK citizen to take advantage of the more relaxed Swiss laws. Swiss law does not state that assisted suicide is legal but the practice is widely considered as a “humane act”.

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Euthanasia debate sweeps world

The death of 22-year-old Vincent Humbert is just the latest in a series of high profile euthanasia cases that have changed the issue of assisted suicide from a dark secret, to an openly debated topic in many countries around the world.

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French Doctor Expected to Be Charged in Assisted Suicide Case

In a surprising twist to a euthanasia case that has captivated the nation, the head doctor of the intensive care ward where a French paraplegic, Vincent Humbert, died six weeks ago is expected to be charged with premeditated murder for injecting Mr. Humbert with poison.

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French row over rights for unborn

French feminists, doctors and the leftwing opposition reacted furiously after the conservative majority in parliament passed a bill making it a crime to cause a pregnant woman to miscarry against her will.

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Adviser sparks infanticide debate

A medical ethics adviser has provoked controversy by comparing the morality of abortion with that of infanticide. Professor John Harris said it was not “plausible to think there is any moral change that occurs during the journey down the birth canal”.

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Doctors broke law to help 3,000 die

Many countries simply make no laws against euthanasia. Swiss doctors are not persecuted if they can prove they acted unselfishly, meaning they must not do it for profit.

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Dutch Government Upset Italian Official Blasted It Over Baby Euthanasia

Holland was the first European nation to legalize euthanasia and in 2001 and observers believe thousands of cases occur every year. Some pro-life residents of the country where specialized bracelets telling doctors to provide them with lifesaving medical treatment if they are injured and unable to make their own medical decisions.

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Oregon-releases-assisted-suicide-report-pro-life-doctors-group-worried

The state of Oregon released its latest annual report on assisted suicides there and a pro-life doctors group is concerned that patients are not getting proper psychological treatment before doctors give them drugs to kill themselves.

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California Residents Support Assisted Suicide While Americans Split

A new poll shows a majority of California residents favor assisted suicide and backers of the grisly practice may use the poll to promote a measure in the California state legislature to make the state the second to legalize it. However, previous polls have not matched what Californians have done at the ballot box on the issue.

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Doctors in revolt over legalising euthanasia

DOCTORS issued a united plea against legalising „mercy killings“ for the first time yesterday, before a crucial parliamentary vote that would allow patients to choose when to die.

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I’d like to die with dignity. And I don’t want the medieval brigade interfering

FOUR YEARS AGO today, Diane Pretty died. Remember her? Or have you blotted out her fight to avoid the medieval death the law prescribed: to be slowly asphyxiated by the motor neuron disease paralysing her body until she was reduced to a shred, a shard of pain, an intelligent mind attached to a feeding tube?

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A matter of life and death: who gets to choose?

Sir, On Friday Lord Joffe?s Assisted Dying of the Terminally Ill Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords. The Bill will resolve many of the uncertainties that currently surround the issue.

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Ethical dilemma of the assisted dying Bill

From the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

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Doctor ‘offered illegal abortion’

A hospital doctor offered to carry out an illegal abortion on his married lover in his own flat, the General Medical Council (GMC) has been told.

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Home abortions ‘hit record high’

A record 10,000 women had an abortion at home last year, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has said.

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Neighbours of Swiss suicide clinic complain as corpses clog up the lift

The group Dignitas, which has attracted controversy since it began to offer assisted suicide eight years ago, uses a flat in a building on the outskirts of Zurich. More than 40 British patients have ended their lives in the flat, where a doctor administers a lethal injection after correct legal procedures have been followed.

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Family calls for suicide site ban

I’m not against people with terminal illnesses having help, but there should be a form of legislation brought in.”

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“Legalize euthanasia” says expert

A former professor of medical ethics has called for all forms of euthanasia to be legalised.

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Failed abortion “warranty breach”

A mother seeking damages from a health authority has claimed doctors breached a “warranty” by failing to abort one of her twins.

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Race attack victim wants to die

A man left paralysed after a racist attack in Germany says he is arranging for help to end his life.

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“Mercy death” woman faces charge

A woman who claimed she helped her terminally ill aunt die in a so-called “mercy killing” faces charges of wasting police time, it has emerged.

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“Living wills” fear for doctors

A law change allowing patients to make “living wills” could leave doctors open to accusations of euthanasia, two Belfast anaesthetists have said.

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The Curse of Having a Girl

India might be a country rushing headlong into 21st century but every year thousands of babies are aborted or killed at birth because they are girls.

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Kevorkian Says He Wouldn`t Choose Suicide

Jack Kevorkian, whose failing health may deny him a chance to be paroled, said he still believes in assisted suicide but would not choose it for himself.

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Cancer man dies after court win

A lung cancer patient who won a High Court battle to be given a drug to prolong his life has died just hours after receiving the news.

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Gory tale of Punjab`s lost girls

The government in India’s Punjab state is investigating the possible involvement of state officials in setting up illegal clinics and ultrasound centres accused of female foeticide.

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First legal abortion in Colombia

Colombia’s first legal abortion has taken place after the deeply-Catholic nation legalised the procedure in May.

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More Britons in assisted suicides

Eight hundred British people are registered with Dignitas, the Swiss clinic that helps the terminally ill end their lives – up 100 since January.

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Depressed “could get help to die”

Assisted suicide could be offered to Britons who are chronically depressed rather than terminally ill, says the head of a controversial Swiss group.

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Doctors grapple with abortion debate

Over the last few years abortion has been hitting the headlines with many arguing the upper limit should be reduced. But doctors who are at the front-line of the debate are struggling to come down on either side.

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Kissing Hospice Goodbye

“We need to ask our doctors — and our doctors need to answer — questions like, ‘What’s the shortest and longest time you think I have?’ ” she said. The other question patients might want to ask, she said, is, “How is it likely to happen?

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Call to cut abortion time limit

The latest time at which an abortion can be carried out should be cut from 24 weeks to 21 weeks, a Tory MP is due to argue in the Commons.

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Neonatal medicine – the moral maze

Heather weighed less than 1.5lbs when she was arrived early after just 23 weeks of pregnancy in 2002. Doctors gave her a one in 10 chance of surviving. But she was lucky – if she had been born 20 years ago she would have had no chance.

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Euthanasia woman withdraws case

A terminally-ill Bristol woman who had begun a legal fight to force doctors to let her die has withdrawn her case. She feels she has been forced to withdraw her case by the defendants and wishes to express how distressed she is by their actions.

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‘Do not revive’ earliest babies

Babies born at or before 22 weeks should not be resuscitated or given intensive care, a report says.

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How to treat premature infants

In 2004, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics convened a Working Party to discuss these issues. Although the members held a range of differing views on questions concerning the nature and sanctity of human life, they were unanimous on the conclusions and recommendations on these matters, which are summarized briefly below.

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One third of births

Emergency contraception is unlikely to make a substantial difference to pregnancy rates.

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Family right-to-die plea rejected

A woman in a vegetative state will be given a sleeping pill which may “wake her up” against her family’s wishes.

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Deadly toll of botched abortions

Unsafe abortions in the developing world kill 68,000 women a year, research suggests.

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Italy court snubs euthanasia plea

An Italian judge has rejected a request by a terminally ill man to have doctors switch off his life support machine.

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After Buddhist dies, legal battle continues

Last week, doctors declared Cheng, a grandfather of seven who suffered cardiac arrest the day after Thanksgiving, brain-dead and said it was time to remove him from the ventilators and intravenous medicines keeping his organs functioning. But the family refused to let doctors take Cheng off the life-support system because his heart was still beating.

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Doctor has admitted switching off the life support machine

A doctor has admitted switching off the life support machine of a terminally ill Italian man who had lost a legal battle for the right to die.

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Ghanaians risk death for abortion

Thousands of women in Ghana are seeking dangerous, illegal abortions every year with many ending in death or disability. The criminalisation of abortion along with traditional values, social perceptions and religious teachings have created a crisis in Ghana.

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Four out of five want to give doctors right to end life of terminally ill patients in pain

Four out of five people in Britain believe the law should allow a doctor to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is in pain if they wish to die. In a finding confirming that British public opinion is at odds with the law, today’s British Social Attitudes Survey reveals strong support for euthanasia, though only in carefully defined circumstances.

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Most support voluntary euthanasia

Eight out of ten of people support a law change to allow doctors to actively end the lives of terminally ill patients who want to die, a poll shows. The report states: “In certain respects the current law that prohibits assisted dying seems to be at odds with public opinion.

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Euthanasia doctor avoids prison

A French doctor has been given a one-year suspended jail term for poisoning a terminally ill woman. A French law adopted in 2005 allows families to request that life-support equipment for a terminally ill patient be switched off.

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Polish woman wins abortion case

The European Court of Human Rights has awarded a Polish woman 25,000 euros ($33,000) in damages after she was refused an abortion. The 35-year-old mother was refused an abortion despite warnings that having a baby could make her go blind.

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Nurses ‘could perform abortions’

The role of nursing is being extended and there is no reason why, with the correct training, nurses cannot carry out surgical abortions. “The pro-abortion lobby claim that so-called safe, legal abortion was necessary to safeguard women’s health yet, having achieved legal abortion, the pro-abortion lobby now wants to remove safeguards by getting nurses to do doctors’ dirty work for them.”

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Case Puts Texas Futile-Treatment Law Under a Microscope

Texas’s six-year-old “futile-care” law is one of two in the country that allow a hospital’s ethics committee to declare the care of a terminally ill patient to be of no benefit and to discontinue care within a certain time frame. The patient’s family or guardian must be informed in advance of the ethics committee meeting and must be allowed to participate. The family must also be given 10 days to find a medical facility willing to accept their terminal relative.

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In Mexico, Powerful Forces Drive a Furious Debate Over Abortion

The woman and tens of thousands like her who undergo illegal abortions in Mexico each year are at the nexus of a furious cultural debate gripping this nation, which allows abortion only in limited cases, including rape and when the mother’s life is in danger. Abortion opponents cite cases such as hers as evidence that abortion should be further curtailed; abortion rights advocates argue that the procedure should be decriminalized so that women have access to safe abortions.

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Doctors engaged in ‘slow euthanasia’

Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of “slow euthanasia”, research suggests. A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time. Guidelines for care at the end of life emphasise that doctors should always act in a patient’s best interests and act within the law, which prohibits euthanasia or actively helping someone to die.

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One in 30 aborted foetuses lives

One in 30 foetuses aborted for medical reasons is born alive, a 10-year study at 20 UK hospitals has found. Abortion is allowed in Britain up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Beyond this, a termination is only sanctioned if the baby has a severe disability or if the mother’s life is at risk.

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Woman goes to court in historic euthanasia case

A 30-year-old woman who is terminally ill has launched a campaign to overturn Britain’s euthanasia laws by compelling her doctors to increase her dose of morphine and let her die. She has been told she has a year to live but doctors have been unable to control her pain.

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TV Broadcast of an Assisted Suicide Intensifies a Contentious Debate in Britain

On Wednesday night, Britons could watch Mr. Ewert’s death on television, in a film showing how he traveled to a clinic in Zurich in 2006 and took a fatal dose of barbiturates. Broadcast on Sky Television, the film, “Right to Die?” is said to be the first broadcast on British television of the moment of death in a voluntary euthanasia case.

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Motivation key over assisted death prosecutions

New guidelines over whether people would face prosecution over assisting suicide place closer scrutiny on a suspect’s motivation. Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said whether a person acted “wholly compassionately” and not for financial reasons was important. But he made it clear the advice does not represent a change in the law and does not cover so-called mercy killing.

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Locked-in man seeks right to die

A man with “locked-in syndrome” has begun legal action, asking the director of public prosecutions to clarify the law on so-called mercy killing. Tony Nicklinson, 56, wants his wife to be allowed to help him die without the risk of being prosecuted for murder.

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Who decides when you die?

Conflicting wishes and demands regarding end of life care are a common – but not often discussed – problem, with no clear solution. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by three doctors from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital illustrates the emotional dilemma.

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Switzerland plans new controls on assisted suicide

Swiss assisted suicide organisation Dignitas is under growing pressure, as questions about its finances and urns of ashes found in Lake Zurich coincide with plans for a law that would make it harder for foreigners to end their life in Switzerland. The practice is permitted, the law states, as long as those involved in it are not selfishly motivated and do not make a profit out of it.

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German court legalises euthanasia with patient consent

A top German court has ruled that it is not a criminal offence to cut off the life support of a dying person if that person has given consent. The Federal Court of Justice acquitted a lawyer who had advised the daughter of a comatose woman to cut off her feeding tube. Earlier the patient had expressed her wish not to be kept alive artificially.

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Uterus transplantation: ethics and pragmatics

Swedish media reported  on plans of a group of researchers at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital and the University of Gothenburg, to conduct the world’s first ever transplantation of a human uterus.

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First trial of embryonic stem cells in humans

US doctors have begun the first official trial of using human embryonic stem cells in patients after getting the green light from regulators.

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Stem Cells Without Embryo Loss

A small biotech company says it has found a way to produce human embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo. That the prospect does not satisfy many religious conservatives who have opposed stem cell research demonstrates once again why the government should avoid making decisions on theological grounds.

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Many outraged as accused murderer gets liver transplant

Johnny Concepcion, a 42-year-old man accused of stabbing his wife to death, just received a liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Now many are wondering how an accused killer could jump to the top of a long list of those needing transplants.

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Terminally ill patients, caregivers feel lost connection with doctors

Once a patient becomes terminally ill, relationships between patients, their caregivers and their primary doctors can change. Now a study offers an unusual glimpse of what patients and their doctors are thinking as the end of life approaches — and it shows that patients sometimes feel abandoned.

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The Doctor’s Failure to Cut Costs

In an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Howard Brody, professor of family medicine and director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, writes that the medical profession, unlike other groups, has made little effort to curtail future medical costs. Physicians, Dr. Brody maintains, are not “innocent bystanders” to spiraling health care costs but have been complicit in their failure to take an active role in curtailing them.

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Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine

Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor. After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital.

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Cancer victims

The insurance industry unfairly penalises people with cancer, charity Cancerbackup has claimed.

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EU to let states rule on GM crops

EU officials plan to give the 27 member states the freedom to grow, restrict or ban genetically modified (GM) crops.

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Scientists develop GM ‘protato’ to feed India’s poorest children

The Indian government raised the global biotechnology stakes yesterday by saying it intended to feed “nutritionally enhanced” GM potatoes to poor children as early as next year.

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Killer tomatoes attack human diseases

GENETICALLY modified tomatoes containing edible vaccine are to be used to challenge two of the world’s most lethal viruses.

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Biotech Rice Saga Yields Bushel of Questions for Feds

When the biotech company Bayer CropScience AG requested federal permission in August to market a variety of gene-altered rice, it assured itself a small, unwanted place in history: the first to seek approval for a genetically engineered food that was already — illegally — on the market.

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Genetic education: Reflections on Berkeley’s student gene-testing program

An ethical storm hit the University of California, Berkeley, earlier this year after it invited more than 5,000 incoming students to receive a personal genetic analysis of three genes associated with how they metabolize lactose, alcohol and folic acid.

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Who should decide when care is futile?

Ruben Betancourt died on May 29, 2009. Last week, a New Jersey appellate court declined to rule on the heated dispute that had broken out between his family and a North Jersey hospital over stopping his medical care prior to his death.

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Researchers and clinical trials

“The reporting of harm is as important as the reporting of efficacy in publications of clinical trials,” a group of French researchers wrote in a study being published in Tuesday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine. “However, harm is frequently insufficiently reported.” How insufficiently?

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Conflicts of interest bedevil psychiatric drug research

Does it matter if most of the experts who are creating definitions of mental disorders, and standards for the best way to treat them, receive money from pharmaceutical companies? Critics such as Cosgrove say there’s a damaging conflict of interest in the financial ties between drug companies and leaders who are revising the “bible” of psychiatric diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), as well as guidelines on the best treatments.

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After Falling for Fake Study, Review Board Steps Aside

IRBs must sign off on clinical trials before they can go ahead; a major charge they have is to look out for the well-being of trial subjects. Coast “approved our bogus research protocol for human subjects testing after only minor edits to our submission materials, even though we were a bogus company with falsified credentials and an unproven medical device.”

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Doctor Admits Pain Studies Were Frauds, Hospital Says

In what may be among the longest-running and widest-ranging cases of academic fraud, one of the most prolific researchers in anesthesiology has admitted that he fabricated much of the data underlying his research, said a spokeswoman for the hospital where he works. The researcher, Dr. Scott S. Reuben, an anesthesiologist in Springfield, Mass., who practiced at Baystate Medical Center, never conducted the clinical trials that he wrote about in 21 journal articles dating from at least 1996, said Jane Albert, a spokeswoman for Baystate Health.

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Outsourcing of Drug Trials Is Faulted

Now, an article about the globalization of clinical trials, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine raises questions about the ethics and the science of increasingly conducting studies outside the United States — when the studies are meant to gather evidence for new drugs to gain approval in this country. The article, by several Duke University researchers, suggests an ethical quagmire when drugs intended for wealthy nations are tested on people in developing countries.

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Drug company ‘hid’ suicide link

Secret e-mails reveal that the UK’s biggest drug company distorted trial results of an anti-depressant, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers. Panorama reveals that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials.

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Animal studies ‘of limited use’

The British Medical Journal research looked at studies in six areas and found animal studies agreed with human trials in just three. The high-profile London drug trial which left six men ill was carried out after animal studies showed the drug TGN1412 was effective.

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Industry ‘paid top cancer expert’

The scientist who first linked smoking to lung cancer was paid by a chemicals firm while investigating cancer risks in the industry, it has emerged.

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UK drug trial disaster: the official report

The final report into a catastrophic drug safety trial that left six men fighting for their lives in the UK in March 2006 has severely criticised Parexel, the firm that carried out the trial.

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Risky business: Human testing for a profit

Last week, six very healthy men suddenly wound up in a London hospital in critical condition. Earlier this month, 11 otherwise well people tested positive for tuberculosis, according to Montreal`s health department.

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Hwang Woo-Suk Fired From U. for Faked Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Seoul National University officially fired disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk on Monday from his position as a professor of veterinary medicine because of his role in faking embryonic stem cell research. The decision was a formality because Hwang resigned from in December after allegations of fraud began to surface.

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Blastomere Blasphemy: Advanced Cell Technology, the Media and the Lost Opportunity in Stem Cell Research

Millions of people who have already been born suffer from illnesses that can potentially be treated with stem or progenitor-cell based therapies. The true crime is the stifling of hES cell research.

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Stem cell treatment for ill girl

A five-year-old girl from Sussex has started receiving stem cell therapy in a remote hospital in China in an attempt to halt a degenerative disease.

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A written consent five centuries ago

The term informed consent does not have long historical roots. Until recent centuries, healthcare professionals were not held responsible for providing information to patients.

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Stem cell “breakthroug” more hype than hope

But does producing stem cells from blastomeres give us a chance to reach consensus on the ethics of embryonic stem cell research? Hardly.

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“Ethical” stem cells

Human embryonic stem cell lines have been generated without embryos being destroyed, according to researchers.

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Some Scientists See Shift in Stem Cell Hopes

In the five years since President Bush authorized and at the same time restricted research on human embryonic stem cells, a marked shift has taken place in some scientists` views of how the research is likely to benefit medicine. Many no longer see cell therapy as the first goal of the research, parting company with those whose near-term expectations for cell therapy remain high.

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Bush “out of touch”

Scientists have reacted with anger to US President George W Bush’s decision to veto a bill allowing federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research.

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Stem cell vote set to draw Bush veto

US President George W Bush is heading for a major clash with the Senate, and many in his own Republican party, over stem cell research.

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Stem cell research vote a great sham

Many scientists believe the Bush restrictions have severely limited the research on ES cells. That is why advocates for people with diseases and disabilities, including such luminaries as Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox and Nancy Reagan have argued forcefully to end the restrictions.

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“Lab made sperm” fertilization

Scientists have proved for the first time that sperm grown from embryonic stem cells can be used to produce offspring.

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Religious row over stem cell work

Scientists have condemned a leading Catholic cardinal’s calls for those who carry out embryonic stem cell research to be excommunicated.

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False Dilemma On Stem Cells

The issue of stem cell research — which is back before the Senate — is often described as a moral dilemma, but it simply is not. Or at least it is not the moral dilemma often used in media shorthand: the rights of the unborn vs. the needs of people suffering from diseases that embryonic stem cells might cure.

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“Virgin birth”

“VIRGIN-BIRTH” embryos have given rise to human embryonic stem cells capable of differentiating into neurons. The embryos were produced by parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction in which eggs can develop into embryos without being fertilised by sperm.

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A way around dilemmas of stem cells

Stem cell scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting today a gene discovery that suggests a way to take adult cells back to an embryonic state — a discovery that could help treat diseases without relying on controversial human embryonic stem cells or cloning.

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Warning over cord blood banking

Parents have been warned against the use of private companies to store blood from their babies’ umbilical cord.

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Family’s wish, doctors’ dilemma

Question of whether eggs should be harvested from woman on life support plunges specialists into tough terrain. The reason stunned the medical staff: The family wanted to explore whether eggs could be harvested from the woman and frozen so that she could become a mother posthumously.

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First open embryo donation program in Canada

Embryo donation is not adoption or surrogacy. The couple donating the embryo selects the recipient couple. The recipient female carries the embryo to term and becomes the delivered child’s birth mother.

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Czech regret over sterilisation

The practice officially ended with the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1990, but rights groups say the last recorded case was as recent as 2003. The Czech Republic does not keep statistics on the number of women sterilised, but in the eastern town of Ostrava alone, some 80 Roma women said they had been sterilised without their consent in the Czech health system.

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China debates sex change rules

China is set to formalise the rules covering sex change operations to ensure that all those who want surgery meet certain requirements. Those who apply for a sex change must be single, over 20 and have wanted the surgery for at least five years. Nearly 2,000 people are believed to have had a sex change in China, according to experts quoted by the state-run China Daily newspaper – and there could be up to 400,000 people considering having the surgery.

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Judge: OK to Collect Dead Son`s Sperm

After 21-year-old Nikolas Colton Evans was killed in apparent bar-related altercation in Texas, his mother said her son had always wanted children and asked to have his sperm preserved so that someone might bear said children. Docs said no. Judge said yes, adding: “There were other body [that is, body parts] harvesting that was going to take place, and I didn’t see why this additional body harvesting shouldn’t take place.”

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Custom-made babies delivered

A fertility clinic’s promise to deliver the ultimate in designer babies – letting parents choose eye, hair and even skin color – is sparking a worldwide uproar. Dr. Jeff Steinberg has already let thousands decide their kids’ gender. Now he says that within the next six months, the Manhattan and L.A. offices of his Fertility Institutes will let would-be moms and dads pick whether junior has blue or brown eyes or black or blond hair.

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Rule change allows overweight smokers IVF

Lifestyle factors will no longer be allowed to exclude couples from fertility treatment under revised gudelines. Lifestyle factors such as a person’s weight will no longer be a reason for health trusts to exclude them from IVF under guidance to be published this year.

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Lesbian couple win fertility bid

A lesbian couple have won the right to NHS treatment to help them have a baby after threatening to sue health chiefs. The NHS GGC spokesman added: “There is national guidance on eligibility for NHS-funded assisted conception, including age, body mass index and an inability to conceive after two years during which there has been sexual intercourse and no use of contraception.

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I Think Glenn McGee Predicted This Would Happen…

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that a Los Angeles fertility clinic is offering parents the capacity to choose the traits of their child to allow them to make, um, “The Perfect Baby.” The WSJ article, titled “A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles — Hold the Colic”, describes precisely what McGee predicted in 1997, yes more than 10 years ago, parents would want to be able to do, what he calls the “under the hood”

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Birth of Octuplets Puts Focus on Fertility Clinics

Nearly a third of in vitro births involve twins or more. The government, along with professional associations, have been pushing fertility doctors to reduce that number, citing the disastrous health consequences that sometimes come with multiple births — infant mortality, low birth weights, long-term disabilities and thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances.

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Commentary: Are eight babies more than enough?

The birth of octuplets to a California woman last week raised a boatload of issues that can distract us from the central ethical question posed by the case: How do we take children’s well-being into account in reproductive medicine? The American Society for Reproductive Medicine acknowledged in a 2004 report that fertility programs may withhold services when they can provide “well-substantiated judgments” that the child will not receive adequate care.

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I enjoy being a surrogate mum

“They will ask for extra things such as a holiday for their family – I think it is totally unacceptable for surrogates to hold couples over a barrel.” Carole believes legally binding contracts acceptable to UK courts are needed to stop surrogates keeping the baby or claiming extra money.

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Surrogates: Redefining Motherhood

More Than Two Decades After Baby M, More Couples Are Using Surrogate Mothers To Carry Their Embryos. Surrogacy today is a far cry from the late ’80s, when Americans were gripped by the Baby M case.

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Uncertain future for hybrid research

It sparked impassioned debate, but less than a year after parliament refused to ban hybrid human animal embryos scientists say a lack of funding means their research has been put on ice. Condemned as “Frankenstein” science by at least one religious leader, and rejected by the majority of the Tory shadow cabinet, hybrids proved one of the most controversial aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

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Vatican Issues Instruction on Bioethics

The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican says these techniques violate the principles that every human life — even an embryo — is sacred, and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple.

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Call to raise sperm donor limit

The limit on the number of pregnancies that can be created from the sperm of a single donor should be raised, fertility experts suggest.  Under UK regulations, the maximum number of families that can use sperm from the same donor is 10.

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IVF clinics destroy 1m ‘waste’ embryos

MORE than 1m embryos created for fertility treatment in British clinics have been destroyed over the past 14 years, government figures have shown. The Department of Health data show that 2,137,924 embryos were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005, but about 1.2m were never used.

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My daddy`s name is Donor

Many children conceived by donor sperm have grown up angry and confused, and want a debate on their conception. Little is known about the effects on the children where parents tell them. Professor Blyth recently conducted a study involving 16 UK families who had disclosed: “The study showed that parents can tell their children and it doesn’t wreck the family,” says Professor Blyth.

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Not-so natural selection

But recent surveys show that in about two-thirds of the cases, PGD isn’t being used to detect genetic diseases. It’s done, instead, to inspect embryos created in the lab for abnormal chromosome counts in cases in which parents with fertility problems are already undergoing IVF.

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Deborah Spar on Paying for Eggs

Harvard`s Debora Spar has a commentary in a recent New England Journal of Medicine article that calls for an improved debate over egg donation and payment policies. Spar highlights a central inconsistency in American egg donation policy?we allow women to sell eggs for reproductive purposes, but not for research, even though the risks and benefits to donors are the same in both cases. Both donors undergo the same set of medical risks, and both receive roughly the same direct benefits?basically nothing.

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Twin IVF births ‘need to be cut’

The number of twins born from IVF needs to be cut because of risks to mothers and babies, a watchdog has said. Older women or those who have already been through several unsuccessful IVF cycles would be very unlikely to be restricted to one embryo transfer.

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The Problem, in A Fundamental Nutshell: ‘Is Your Baby Gay?’

And for expressing his approval of a hypothetical prenatal intervention to change a baby’s sexual orientation, he was verbally attacked by gay-rights advocates. Some of them likened him to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele for seeming to advocate the manipulation of nature to “basically wipe out gay people,” said Wayne R. Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, a group that fights efforts to convert gays to heterosexuality.

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NHS fertility care is ‘a lottery’

Guidelines say all eligible women aged 23-39 should get one free cycle of IVF. But some areas have introduced restrictions such as age limits, with some saying a woman over 35 is too old, with others saying that is too young.

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Psst! Ask for Donor 1913

IN the old days, nearly two decades ago, when Jeffrey Harrison was selling his sperm to California Cryobank, sperm banks did not tell clients much. The reason for offering clients previously unimaginable degrees of access to information is competition.

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Of Gay Sheep, Modern Science and Bad Publicity

If the mechanisms underlying sexual orientation can be discovered and manipulated,Dr. Wolpe continued, then the argument that sexual orientation is based inbiology and is immutable evaporates. “The prospect of parents” eventually being able tochoose not to have children who would become gay is a real concern for thefuture, Dr. Wolpe said.

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‘Embryo bank’: new hope or too far?

Yet a San Antonio woman’s idea to bring the two together “creating complete embryos ready to be implanted into the womb” has drawn a raft of criticism, with bioethicists debating whether this is the commodification of children or just another “perhaps more effective” way to help people become parents.

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Leading IVF doctor investigated

Britain’s most successful test-tube baby clinic has been secretly filmed offering unproven treatment to women, potentially risking their health.

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‘We went to Hollywood for IVF’

In the US they will implant five embryos, six in India. Back home I had one embryo the first time, two the second, and two the third; and it didn’t work.

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Donor crisis ‘fuels IVF tourism’

British couples desperate for a baby are travelling abroad for fertility treatment because of a shortage of egg donors in the UK.

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IVF father figure clause ‘to go’

The government is set to abolish the requirement for fertility clinics to consider the need for a father when deciding whether to offer treatment. It will mean clinics will no longer be able to deny treatment to lesbians and single mothers out of hand.

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Woman making final embryo appeal

A woman left infertile after cancer treatment is making a final appeal to a court for permission to use frozen embryos fertilised by a former partner.

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Gay Donor or Gay Dad?

R. made it very clear that he had no ambition to be a primary parent and that he was happy to renounce his parental rights. (The latter is crucial to many lesbian couples, allowing the nonbiological mother to adopt and protecting her bond with the child in the event of the death of, or separation from, the biological mother.)

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Embryo appeal case woman ‘scared’

A woman left infertile after cancer treatment says she is “really scared” at the prospect of losing her court case over her frozen embryos.

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First UK embryo test babies born

The first UK babies have been born after a pioneering embryo test.

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Contraception as an Option for the Man

Ben Kleinman plans to marry next year, and already he looks forward to starting a family. But he knows, too, that there will come a day when he and his wife do not want more children, and that she may grow weary of shouldering the burden for contraception.

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Eggs for sale: The booming business of sharing your fertility

It is illegal in this country. But that does not stop growing numbers of British women contacting websites to generate thousands of pounds with their ovaries.

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Britain’s sperm crisis: call up our boys

Couples are to be offered free fertility treatment in return for donating sperm to other women who are desperate for children. The offer, by the Care group of IVF clinics, comes as fertility experts warned that the shortage of sperm stocks in the UK was reaching crisis levels and had plummeted to a record low.

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‘Selling my eggs could clear my debts’

So why are so many women having to consider paying someone for their eggs? Egg donation used to be anonymous but, now the rules have been altered, fewer women are coming forward.

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One embryo call for routine IVF

Women undergoing routine IVF in the UK should only have one embryo implanted, fertility experts have recommended.

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‘Donor eggs for science’ debated

Hopefully they can take my eggs and find a cure.

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Head to head: The need for a father?

Earlier this week, UK ministers gave their clearest indication yet that IVF clinics will not be able to refuse to treat single women and lesbians. Here, two commentators present their views on what is important when deciding what is in the best interests of a child conceived through IVF.

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IVF ‘need for father’ rule may go

Ministers have given the clearest indication yet that fertility clinics will no longer be able to refuse treatment to single women and lesbians.

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Baby sex selection ‘to be banned’

Choosing the sex of babies for social reasons will be banned, Health Minister Caroline Flint has said.

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Fertility clinic ‘rip-off’ fears

Days after a woman of 62 gave birth, MPs insist cost and success rate of IVF for older women be made public.

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Official: dads not needed for IVF babies

Fertility clinics are to be told to provide IVF treatment to all women, even when they do not have a male partner, under radical reforms backed by MPs.

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More than 3m babies born from IVF

Fertility treatment has resulted in more than three million births worldwide since Louise Brown was born in the UK 28 years ago, experts report.

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Fertility clinics fear ID fraud

Fertility clinics fear they are at risk of identity fraud by patients, say UK researchers.

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Frozen eggs rival IVF success of fresh eggs

Women hoping to put their biological clocks on hold by freezing their eggs now stand almost as great a chance of getting pregnant as those using fresh eggs for in vitro fertilisation.

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IVF ‘good for British economy’

Funding infertility treatment is not just a benefit for the family, but also for society.

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Egg freezing boosts baby chances

A new egg-freezing technique could give women a better chance of having a baby when they are older, say scientists.

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The genius sperm bank

He was a millionaire who dreamed of saving humanity using the sperm of geniuses. But what became of Robert Klark Graham’s master plan?

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Wealthy Go to U.S. to Choose Baby’s Sex

The Chinese want boys, and the Canadians want girls. If they have enough money, they come to the United States to choose the sex of their babies.

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Ethical questions complicate the recruitment of egg donors

Recruiting women to donate eggs for stem cell research brings scientists into new ethical territory where the standards are still being worked out, ethicists say.

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As the Use of Donor Sperm Increases, Secrecy Can Be a Health Hazard

He was healthy, and he said his parents and grandparents were, too.But he passed a serious gene defect to five of those children, a blood disease that leaves them at risk for leukemia and in need of daily shots of an expensive drug to prevent infections.

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Single IVF embryo ‘just as good’

Selecting one quality embryo is as likely to result in a successful IVF pregnancy in older women as in their younger peers, research suggests.

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I’m the daddy

Ian Mucklejohn made history when he became the first single man in the UK to have his own children without a female partner. But he knew one day they would have to meet their mother.

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HFEA to consult on altruistic egg donation

At its open meeting held on 10 May in Belfast, the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announced that it will ‘prepare a proper consultation programme’ on oocyte (egg) donation so that it could assess the whole range of views and ethical issues that the process raises.

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Bid to save couple’s IVF embryos

A private IVF clinic is breaching its licence by storing a couple’s fertilised embryos past the time they should have been destroyed.

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Kenya hails first test tube girls

Doctors in Kenya are celebrating the birth of the country’s first test tube babies, two girls born in Nairobi. Dr Joshua Noreh, who oversaw the births, hailed them as a landmark for Kenya, 28 years after the first test tube baby was born in the UK.

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More babies born to women over 50

The number of women over 50 having babies is soaring figures show, days after it was announced a 63-year-old would become a mother.

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Doctor defends IVF for woman, 63

A controversial fertility doctor has defended his decision to give IVF to a 63-year-old woman who is set to become Britain’s oldest mother.

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Wanted: A Few Good Sperm

Yet this radical social change feels strangely inevitable; nearly a third of American households are headed by women alone, many of whom not only raise their children on their own but also support them. All that remains is conception, and it is small wonder that women have begun chipping away at needing a man for that ? especially after Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s controversial 2002 book, “Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children,” sounded alarms about declining fertility rates in women over 35.

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Korean doctors can remove life support

South Korean doctors will be allowed to remove life support from terminally ill patients after confirming their wish to die, under new medical guidelines on mercy killing. The guidelines were drawn up by a committee of 18 representatives from parliament, civic groups and the judicial, religious and medical communities, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

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Making the choice between life and death

The attending consultant, Professor David Menon, discovered that Richard was able to move his eyes in response to simple commands and questions. This meant that, in theory at least, Richard could make the decision to live or die himself.

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Switzerland plans new controls on assisted suicide

Swiss assisted suicide organisation Dignitas is under growing pressure, as questions about its finances and urns of ashes found in Lake Zurich coincide with plans for a law that would make it harder for foreigners to end their life in Switzerland. The practice is permitted, the law states, as long as those involved in it are not selfishly motivated and do not make a profit out of it.

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German court legalises euthanasia with patient consent

A top German court has ruled that it is not a criminal offence to cut off the life support of a dying person if that person has given consent. The Federal Court of Justice acquitted a lawyer who had advised the daughter of a comatose woman to cut off her feeding tube. Earlier the patient had expressed her wish not to be kept alive artificially.

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State’s assisted-suicide law faces major test Monday

Two Fairfield County doctors, Gary Blick and Ronald M. Levine, sued the state last year hoping to ensure that doctors who prescribe medication to enable a patient to end his own life won’t be charged with second-degree manslaughter under the law.
Oregon and Washington state have laws that permit doctors to provide “aid in dying” to terminally ill, mentally competent patients, and a court in Montana has recognized citizens’ rights to receive assistance from their doctor to end their own life.

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Motivation key over assisted death prosecutions

New guidelines over whether people would face prosecution over assisting suicide place closer scrutiny on a suspect’s motivation. Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said whether a person acted “wholly compassionately” and not for financial reasons was important. But he made it clear the advice does not represent a change in the law and does not cover so-called mercy killing.

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Mixed emotions over baby decision

A father who went to the High Court to try to stop a hospital turning off his seriously ill baby son’s life support machine has dropped his objections to the move. A host of paediatricians, nurses, and experts went into the witness box. Many of them urged a judge to decide that this profoundly disabled 13-month-old boy should be allowed to die. It was, they said, no longer in his best interests to keep him alive.

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Doctors engaged in ‘slow euthanasia’

Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of “slow euthanasia”, research suggests. A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time. Guidelines for care at the end of life emphasise that doctors should always act in a patient’s best interests and act within the law, which prohibits euthanasia or actively helping someone to die.

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Hospital ethics panels help families decide

They tackle questions of whether to begin or continue aggressive treatments or artificial life support, such as ventilators or feeding tubes. Only 25% of Americans have advance directives spelling out their values and choices for the day “when I’m not myself any more and never will be again,” Seery says.

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The alternative to euthanasia?

The recent ruling by the law lords in the case of Debbie Purdy has re-ignited the debate over assisted suicide. Polls suggest that while a majority of the public would support a change in the law to allow assisted dying, most doctors are against it. But there is evidence that some clinicians may already be using continuous deep sedation (CDS), as a form of “slow euthanasia”.

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Medics to get end of life advice

It has long been the case that patients have a legal right to refuse treatment. But in recent years there has been controversy about the right of patients to be tube fed or hydrated right up until the point of death.

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Pair die together at Swiss clinic

A British couple who were both suffering from terminal cancer have died at a voluntary euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. Peter and Penelope Duff, from Bath, ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich last Friday.

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Sixty Oregonians ended their lives under Death With Dignity Act in 2008

In all, 401 terminally ill Oregonians have died this way since 1997, when Oregon made it legal for a doctor to prescribe a lethal drug dose to a terminally ill patient who makes the request orally and in writing. Oregon is about to lose its exclusive status as the only state where such a prescription — known variously as doctor-assisted suicide or physician aid-in-dying — is legal. An almost identical law will take effect Thursday in Washington.

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Most country hospitals will bar assisted suicide

When Washington state’s Death with Dignity law is enacted this week, experts say people who think they may want to take advantage of it should decide now who their health care provider will be. “You need to find out now if your doctor shares your values, because when you are terminally ill, when you’re close to your death, that’s not the time to find out,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a Denver-based organization that advocates physician-assisted death.

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Woman loses assisted suicide case

A woman with multiple sclerosis has lost her Appeal Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK. She wanted clarification of where her husband, Omar Puente would stand legally if he helped her in any way.

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Who decides when you die?

Conflicting wishes and demands regarding end of life care are a common – but not often discussed – problem, with no clear solution. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by three doctors from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital illustrates the emotional dilemma.

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Shipman response “lacks progress”

Shipman went undetected as he killed more than 200 patients, certifying their deaths as natural causes. But speaking to BBC Radio 4, Dame Janet said “I really was shocked to find how totally our system of death certification is dependent upon the honesty and integrity of a single doctor.”

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Italy seeks clarity on euthanasia

Italy’s politicians have said they will create new right-to-die laws, as the country absorbs the death of a woman whose case became a cause celebre. Eluana Englaro, 38, died on Monday night, only a few days after doctors removed her feeding tubes. She had been in a coma since 1992.

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Italy Senate debates woman`s fate

Italy’s Senate is set to debate an emergency government decree to stop doctors withdrawing life support from a woman in a permanent vegetative state. In a last minute move on Friday, Prime Minister Berlusconi drew up an emergency decree with the support of the Vatican to prevent doctors withdrawing her feeding tubes.

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Philippines debates government promotion of contraception

A debate is stirring in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines: should the government provide contraceptives to the public? Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, except in cases to save a mother’s life. But the United Nations estimates that half a million illegal abortions are performed in the country every year.

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Doctor loses license in live birth abortion case

A doctor’s license was revoked Friday in the case of a teenager who planned to have an abortion but instead gave birth to a baby she says was killed when clinic staffers put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash. A fetus born alive cannot be put to death even if its mother intended to have an abortion, police said when the incident occurred in 2006.

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Obama Plan Aims to Appease Both Sides of Abortion Issue

President Obama is trying to blunt the edge of perhaps the sharpest, most divisive wedge issue in the country: abortion. In a series of moves, he is attempting to nudge the debate away from the morality and legality of abortion and toward a goal he hopes both sides can endorse: decreasing the number of women who terminate their pregnancies by addressing the reasons they might choose the procedure.

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Woman in assisted suicide appeal

A woman with multiple sclerosis who lost her High Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide is set to appeal against the decision. Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK.

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“Dear Noel, is life really not worth living?”

Paralysed after being attacked by neo-Nazis, Noel Martin is planning a trip to Switzerland to commit suicide. Here, disabled broadcaster Liz Carr, who met Noel for a BBC Radio 5 Live report, writes an open letter urging him to think again.

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Why children have a say over care

She may only be 13, but terminally-ill Hannah Jones still has the right to have a say over her treatment. The Herefordshire teenager turned down a potentially life-saving heart transplant after deciding she had had enough of medical help after spending the previous eight years in-and-out of hospital battling leukaemia and heart problems.

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Assisted suicide fight ruling due

A woman with multiple sclerosis will hear later whether her High Court challenge to clarify the law on assisted suicide has succeeded. Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK.

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Luxembourg parliament adopts euthanasia law

Luxembourg parliament adopted a law late on Tuesday to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, adding the Grand Duchy to a small group of countries that allow the terminally ill to end their lives. Euthanasia would be allowed for the terminally ill and those with incurable diseases or conditions, only when they asked to die repeatedly and with the consent of two doctors and a panel of experts.

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Students could face dope tests

Students could one day face dope tests to prove they have not boosted their academic performance with so called “smart drugs”, a psychologist suggests. Any attempt to prohibit the use of [smart drugs] will probably be difficult or inordinately expensive to police effectively.

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Electronic “Sex Chips”

Scientists in the UK are working on methods to stimulate the brain, specifically in the orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that feels pleasure from eating and sex. Using this chip technology, deep brain stimulation may be used to revive or enhance areas of the brain that are lacking. These are tough neuroethics questions for which we need answers soon.

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