Alfie has a rare degenerative brain condition and has been at the centre of a life-support treatment battle. Parents lose legal battle over continuing life support for their 22-month-old son.
Eugenics is a science that seems to belong back in the darkest days of the 20th century. But today, ‘newgenics’ has people worried, as reproductive technologies make it increasingly possible to filter out certain genetic disorders. How does this affect the way we view disability and disease as a society? And how does it colour our notion of what constitutes a ‘desirable’ or ‘undesirable’ human subject?
Teenagers in Great Britain are being asked to take part in a study to learn if immunising them against meningitis B could protect them and other people.
The US House of Representatives passed a federal “right-to-try” bill. The bill, backed by President Donald Trump, would give terminally ill patients the right to seek drug treatments that remain in clinical trials and have passed phase one of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process, but they have not been fully approved by the FDA.
The euthanasia of mentally ill or cognitively impaired patients is inherently controversial. Given the risk of fatal error, how many botched cases would it take to discredit the practice completely? If you said “any number greater than zero,” you would be interested in the physician-assisted death of a 74-year-old woman with dementia in the Netherlands in 2016.
Fertility clinics in San Francisco and Cleveland fail on same day. The temperature of the liquid nitrogen keeping the contents at icy levels unexpectedly fluctuated, possibly damaging the frozen eggs and embryos inside. “It hit me like a ton of bricks,” Kate said after reading what she calls the hospital’s “sterile” letter.
Recent news from the Netherlands illustrates how its euthanasia regime is among the world’s most permissive. It shows no signs of slowing down. Aurelia Browers, a 29-year-old mentally ill woman, was granted her wish and euthanized, demonstrating the slippery slope confronting those countries in which euthanasia and assisted-suicide laws are becoming ever laxer.
Older people in Wales are being urged to think about donating their brains after they die to help scientists researching dementia.
When Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead by the hospital, her family disagreed. Her case challenges the very nature of existence.
