Search
Pluripotent cells from adult stem cells
A revolutionary discovery A Japanese researcher team (Pr Shinya Yamanaka, University of Kyoto) and two American researcher teams (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Harvard Stem Cell Institute of Boston) succeeded in...
United States: The Supreme Court bans partial-birth abortion
On 18 April 2007, the United States Supreme Court upheld, by 5 votes to 4, the law banning partial-birth abortion throughout the United States (Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act), federal law adopted in October 2003 by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by...
Human-animal hybrid embryos in Great Britain soon?
In Great Britain, the government authorised on May 17 the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos for research. The law authorises a duration of life of 14 days for these embryos and prohibits their implantation in the uterus. In 2004, this country was the first in...
Europe regulates the therapies of the future: which ethics?
Innovative therapies On 25 April 2007, European MPs approved a regulation harmonising marketing authorisation (MA) procedures for innovative therapies: from now on, products resulting from gene and cell therapies as well as those resulting from tissue therapy...
Philippine, the force of a fragile life – Sophie Chevillard-Lutz (1)
Life as a challenge "The doctor who practices the ultrasonography, a woman, seems to be worried: - There is a problem. Immediately I understand and as instinctively that it is serious, and I heard: - Is she going to die? (Why did I speak first about death?) -...
Consciousness objection, tolerance and totalitarianism
Consciousness objection Consciousness objection consists in refusing to obey a civil law judged in consciousness as seriously unfair. If a general agreement existed for centuries on essential values which founded political authority and social balances, today...
End of life accompaniment: applying the law and not legalising euthanasia
The euthanasia lobby On last 15 March, after a highly publicized trial, the Court of Assizes of Dordogne condemned a doctor to one year suspended prison and discharged a nurse. Sued for euthanasia by injection of lethal substance to a terminally ill patient...
Euthanasia in Europe: alert on medical practices
A poll, made in 2002 in six European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Suede and Suisse) studied near-death medical practices1. Today, while death occurs most of the time in institution, after a long-term disease, what is the practice of health...
When eugenics sees women as a target – Danielle Moyse(1)
Extermination of a human group? Does exist, in the world, people, ethnic or human group scorned and denied to the point that we could broadcast about it a documentary announcing that hundred million of its members have been eliminated, without arousing...
Sexual confusion: gender problematic
Our societies are influenced by sexual confusion. The gender theory constitutes the ideological matrix from which come most of the questions on differences between sexes. During the Assembly of French bishops in Lourdes, in November 2006, the thought about the issue...
Publication of the decree authorising “designer babies” after PGD
The decree relative to the use of preimplantation diagnosis (PGD) to intend to give life to a “designer baby” was published on 23 December 2006. The Biomedicine Agency is in charge of supervising this practice, authorised since the bioethics law of august 2004, and...
Claeys’ report asks for legalisation of scientific cloning
Deputy Alain Claeys presented on 6 December 2006 the report from the parliamentary office for evaluation of scientific and technological options: “Researches on the functioning of living cells”. This report is an introduction to the public debate for the revision...