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Neonatal palliative care: meeting your dying child
The multidisciplinary prenatal diagnosis centre in Rennes carried out an experiment from 2006 to 2012 alongside parents who had chosen to take the pregnancy to its term after having being informed that a lethal malformation had been diagnosed. It analysed the relation...
Quebec: requests for euthanasia exceed estimates
In Quebec, the publication of data brought into the public domain by integrated health centres and university medical centres on medically assisted dying is under debate. This information shows that, between December 2015 and June 2016, 253 patients from Quebec...
In Vietnam, a man adopts more than a hundred “unwanted” children
In Vietnam, Tong Phuc, a single mason has become a real hero, saving the lives of tens of babies. It all started in 2001. When his wife was in labour in hospital, Tong Phuc noticed that lots of women came into the delivery suite but left without their babies....
CRISPR-Cas9 v. GMO: time for debate?
CRISPR Cas9 genome editing technique “can reproduce natural protective mutations in cultivated plants”. Consequently, a team of Israeli scientists has made a species of cucumber resistant to harvest pest viruses by mutating a single gene with CRISPR. A...
Apple encourages organ donation with the launch of its new iOS 10
On Tuesday, Apple announced its intention to facilitate organ donation process for American iPhone users via the Health app. This new function should be introduced before the launch of the new iOS 10, scheduled for this autumn. It will also be possible to...
In Poland, the draft abortion law arrives in Parliament
In Poland, the draft abortion law presented in March (see Poland: a draft bill to restrict abortion) was presented to Parliament on Tuesday following the collection of 450,000 signatures in support of the bill (100,000 signatures are required to present a bill to...
The Lithuanian President opposes her veto on the “excessively strict” law surrounding MAP
Last week, Lithuania adopted a law on MAP (Medically Assisted Procreation) (see. Lithuania adopts MAP framework). On Monday, President Dalia Grybauskaite, opposed her veto on this law which she deems to be too strict. She stated that “this law ignores modern medical...
British scientists want to test the “stress response” of embryos conceived by IVF
To increase in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) success rates and even “exceed that observed during natural fertilisation”, British scientists have put pressure on the HFEA[1] to authorise a test “to evaluate the ‘energy quality’ of embryos conceived by IVF”[2], which...
United Kingdom: A judge grants legal guardianship to a surrogate mother
In England, a young woman agreed to carry the child of a homosexual couple she met on a surrogacy Facebook page. During the one and only brief meeting in a fast-food restaurant, the three people concerned completed a document downloaded from the same site, which...
Cloning: major debates for minor outcomes
According to experts, ever since the cloning of the ewe, Dolly, the question surrounding human cloning has become “complicated, risky and ethically questionable to the extent that other methods have taken precedence”. Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned....
NIPS: The American Supreme Court confirms the removal of the patent filed by Sequenom
The American Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal case versus Sequenom and Ariosa, two companies marketing the non-invasive screening test for Down Syndrome (see United States: Sequenom asks Supreme Court to rule on the patentability of NIPS). ...
Abortion: the American Family Planning Association takes on a new process in Florida
In Florida, several measures aimed at significantly reducing the public funding of abortion clinics and especially Family Planning Clinics, came into effect on 1 July 2016. The law regulating these measures was approved by the Governor in March (see Florida cuts...