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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
