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Chile: Lawmakers advance bill permitting euthanasia for 14-year-olds
The Committee on Public Health in the lower chamber of Chile’s congress approved a bill that would allow 14-year-olds to obtain the means for medically-assisted suicide. This move, approved in extremis by a vote of 7 to 6, had been debated for several weeks by the...
U.S.: frozen embryos are not people? A attorney submits an appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court
An Ohio appeals court upheld on Thursday a previous ruling that frozen embryos are not people. This decision was based on an Ohio law that states that an embryo is considered a person only if it can survive outside the womb. The decision was taken following...
Only 20% of American women know their cycle
A new survey by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York revealed a “basic gap in fertility knowledge for many US women”. The study, which was conducted with 1,000 American women ages 20 to 45, found that only 20% of women know that they are only fertile...
U.S.: Georgia to become the fourth state to adopt the “Heartbeat bill”
A new American state has adopted the Heartbeat bill, a law that prohibits abortion once a foetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. The law will come into effect January 2020 (see Abortion: the "heartbeat bill" passed in Georgia). ...
The Vincent Lambert case: the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities calls for euthanasia decision to be suspended
On 4 May 2019, the UN International Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – to which the matter was referred by Vincent Lambert's parents – asked France to suspend, "as a precautionary measure," the decision to stop Vincent Lambert’s hydration...
Abortion in Ireland: 6,000 requests for information since January 2019
Since abortion was decriminalized in Ireland on 2 January 2019, the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) My Options helpline has received 6,000 calls. Of the 317 Irish general practitioners willing to perform abortions, 169 agreed to have their contact details shared on...
The United Kingdom: 20,500 test-tube babies born in 2017
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has released its latest data on medically assisted reproduction in the United Kingdom. More than 54,000 patients underwent 75,000 fertility treatments in 2017, with the number of IVF cycles increasing by...
The law in the Netherlands authorizes stillborn and aborted children to be registered
Following a petition signed by 82,000 Dutch people, a law now allows parents who so wish to do so to apply for their stillborn child to be registered as a legal person in the government's official databases. A woman asked for Yara, the child she had carried for...
A new method to generate iPS cells more efficiently
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) are one "of the most important tools in modern biomedical research". To obtain them, an adult cell, for example a skin cell, has to be transformed into an undifferentiated cell. But current methods are long and ineffective. A study...
Regenerating lungs too damaged to be transplanted?
According to Matthew Bacchetta's team at Columbia University, a new technique can apparently regenerate lungs considered too damaged to be transplanted, which represent 80% of the lungs removed from donors. Their study published in Nature Communications shows that a...
Taking stock one year after the first face transplant in Canada
One year after his operation, Maurice Desjardins, the first Canadian to receive a face transplant, has recounted his experience. His entire face – nose, jaw, teeth, facial muscles and skin – was transplanted under the supervision of plastic surgeon Dr Daniel Borsuk at...
Optic Technology, an NGO for the ethical development of technology
The Dominican priest Eric Salobir has founded an NGO called Optic Technology. This is "a platform for interdisciplinary reflection and dialogue on the challenges of technology," which seeks to "anticipate" the impact of technology on society. Not by lobbying but by...