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IVF with 3 biological parents: is it France’s turn after the United Kingdom?
Doctor Laurent Janny, a specialist in reproduction biology and Head of Department at Clermont-Ferrand CHU (University Hospital Centre), refers to the “feat” announced in the United Kingdom and broadcast by the BBC. It is the story of a little girl, Alana Saarinen,...
Missing women and the fiancée trade in India
Journalist and film-maker, Carl Gierstorfer, has worked on the subject of violence against Indian women through a documentary broadcast by the following TV channels - ZDF (Germany), Discovery Channel (United States) and the BBC (United Kingdom). He explained the...
Surrogacy: new scandal between Thailand and Australia
Last August, the whole world learned that an Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother, abandoned the Down syndrome baby, Gammy, taking only his "healthy" twin sister. (Gènéthqiue press review on August 4th, 2014). On this occasion, an Australian...
Foetal growth: cosmetics and hygiene products in the limelight
A study published this month in the Epidemiology journal shows that, during pregnancy, exposure "to certain phenols, especially parabens and triclosan, could disrupt the growth of baby boys [girls were not included in the study] in the womb and during the first few...
Switzerland: Reduction in the number of IVF procedures
According to the Federal Statistics Office, the number of couples accessing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment in Switzerland is decreasing but more and more women are travelling abroad "to countries that are more liberal than Switzerland". The data...
Switzerland: first organ donor card on Smartphone
Swisstransplant, the Swiss national foundation for organ donation and transplantation in conjunction with Dr. Jocelyn Corniche – anaesthetist at CHUV (Vaudois University Hospital Centre in Switzerland) and REGA (Swiss Air Rescue Service) – have just launched the...
Abortion on the Internet for €90
After the “abortion boats”, Rebecca Gomperts from the Netherlands is offering an unusual on-line service - she is making drug-induced abortions available to women living in countries where abortion is illegal or restricted. So, for the sum of €90, Women on Web...
Medicine in the “big data” era
American geneticist, Craig Venter will be embarking on his project entitled, “Discovering the secret of a long life” in January 2015. He revealed his ambition in an interview with Le Monde. His company, Human Longevity, Inc., is currently recruiting...
The Netherlands : a clinic fails to comply with official directives governing euthanasia
In the Netherlands where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, one clinic, Levenseindekliniek, - the end-of-life clinic – is about to be investigated for the second time in four months. In the most recent case, the clinic helped an elderly woman to die because...
Genetic diseases: Prader-Willi syndrome modelled using IPS cells
Each cell exists in duplicate in a human being: one transmitted by the father and the other by the mother. The parental imprint is a "mechanism via which some genetic sequences remain silent, i.e. are not expressed, depending on whether they come from the mother or...
Belgium: the number of cases of euthanasia has risen substantially since 2011
In Belgium, based on a Parliamentary report issued by the commission fédérale de contrôle et d’évaluation de l’euthanasie (Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia), the number of reported cases of euthanasia “has tended to rise substantially...
China: a 3D printed vertebra implanted for the first time
" It’s a world first". In Beijing, a young boy with bone cancer was not given a titanium prosthesis but a vertebra produced with the 3D printing technique and subsequently implanted in his body. It’s the first time that a 3D printed vertebra has been used as...