Search
Malta: Changes to the Embryo Protection Act adopted by Parliament
Amendments to the Embryo Protection Act were adopted yesterday in Malta. Each change was fiercely debated, opinions being divided between LP MPs[1], mostly in favour, and NP MPs[2], all of whom were against. Ultimately, the decision was passed by 34 votes to 27. The...
Surrogacy: According to Catherine Dolto, it’s “full steam ahead to suffering and disease…”
"Organising the abandonment of a child for commercial reasons is a barbaric practice that is pushing humanity to the brink of oblivion". As far as Catherine Dolto, doctor and haptotherapist, is concerned, "the commercialisation of childbirth does not constitute...
Australia: Brisbane Supreme Court gives young woman right to use dead boyfriend’s sperm
In Australia, the Brisbane Supreme Court issued a decision on Wednesday granting one woman, Ayla Cresswell, the right to use her dead boyfriend’s sperm to have children. The young couple had been in a relationship for about three years. They were thinking about...
Surrogacy industry in India: donors are poor and have no other way to earn money
Most egg donors in India are poor and the money they earn from selling their eggs is much higher than any other option they have to make money. “Many women do this work because they have no other way to earn money”, Savitri coldly explains. She is responsible for...
Belgium: Many abortions do not meet legal conditions
As Belgium is considering fully legalising abortion, experts are being heard in parliament. Their input has raised questions: several of them are proud to perform illegal abortions, while others seem to know little about the conditions of legality. Belgian law...
English doctor euthanised patients for years with impunity
In Hampshire, Dr Jane Baron took “the liberty of ‘routinely’ prescribing opiates (diamorphine, the technical term for heroin) beyond reason to patients who did not need them”. She did so with the complicity of the hospital’s specialists, who did not intervene. Nurses...
Five arguments against euthanasia?
Doctors and bioethicists have published an analysis in the Journal of Palliative Care, outlining five main reasons for opposing euthanasia. Amongst them, Daniel Sulmasy[1], from Georgetown University, who served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of...
NIPT in Wales: “as though the government wanted to make part of the human race extinct”
Wales has become the first country in the UK to offer non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) on the NHS aimed at women at a higher risk of having a child with Down, Edwards or Patau’s syndrome. Although some women with Down syndrome children who were interviewed have no...
Hormonal contraception increases the risk of breast cancer in women over 40
Hormonal contraception, whether in the form of the pill or IUD, is not harmless for women aged 40 and over. Danish researchers followed up 1.8 million women aged 15 to 49 between 1995 and 2012. To avoid distorting the results of the study, the women selected had...
FDA remains cautious regarding CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell anaemia
The FDA[1] has not approved a clinical trial request for CTX001, an experimental drug that uses CRISPR technology. This drug is ex-vivo[2] gene therapy which would be used as first-line treatment in the management of sickle cell anaemia[3]. It is being developed...
Treatments using CRISPR-Cas9 could increase the risk of cancer
On Monday, researchers at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden warned against the risks of genome-editing technology currently being explored by scientists around the globe. It could inadvertently increase the risk of...
85% of Irish doctors believe that abortion cannot be considered “routine general practice”
Whether for or against abortion, 85% of Irish doctors believe that "medical abortion is not part of routine general practice". To trivialise abortion by likening it "to the treatment of asthma, heart disease or diabetes" would "be full of hypocrisy" and "tantamount to...