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Medically assisted dying in Canada: disturbing figures
On 6 October 2017, a "second interim report on medically assisted dying" was published by the Canadian Health Minister. Between June 2016, the date on which medically assisted dying was authorised, and 30 June 2017, "1,982 individuals have had access to this...
Australia: children authorised to write advance care directives
In Australia, the state of Victoria has authorised children "of any age" to write advance care directives. Until now, regardless of country, the law "gives the last word to parents" regarding medical decisions concerning their children. From March 2018,...
Ireland: heading towards reimbursement for MAP and post-mortem use of gametes and embryos?
The Irish Government has approved a bill presented by Health Minister, Simon Harris, focusing on "a full set of measures […] regarding medically assisted procreation". For the first time in Ireland, couples will be able to benefit from government funding...
Canada: Experts and ethicists want to lift the ban on three-parent IVF
In Canada, the creation of embryos from three DNAs (see One baby, 3 DNAs, 3 transgressions) is banned. Canada's law on assisted procreation states that no-one can consciously "modify the genome in a cell of a human being or embryo in vitro such that the alteration can...
In India, the Central Government rejects the start of a legal debate on “living wills”
On Tuesday, the Indian Central Government announced its opposition to the authorisation of "living wills". This announcement is part of a debate on active and passive euthanasia, which has been on-going since 2011. In 2011, the case of a nurse who had...
Council of Europe: Towards banning the use of genetic technologies in human embryos
Yesterday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a recommendation concerning “the recourse to new genetic technologies in human beings”. The parliamentary Assembly underlined the fact that “recent discoveries in terms of human...
In Chile, conscientious objection to abortion extends to institutions
Following the vote on the bill to decriminalise abortion in Chile at the end of August (see Chile decriminalises abortion in some cases), the Constitutional Court extended conscientious objection to institutions. This clause, which was originally applicable only to...
Human embryo stem cells: Asterias continues its trials
The Asterias company is carrying out a 1/2A clinical trial for patients presenting spinal cord injuries. This trial assess the safety and efficacy of AST-OPC1 therapy, which involves injecting these patients with neuronal precursors obtained from human embryo stem...
iPS cells, source of pneumocytes
A team of scientists at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Boston School of Medicine has succeeded in obtaining functional type II pneumocytes [1] from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). This work, which was published in the Cell Stem Cell journal, will...
Financing the preservation of gametes harvested from transgender adolescents: the NHS in the spotlight
NHS[1] clinics are allowing dozens of transgender adolescents to freeze their sperm or preserve their eggs to enable them to have a child following a sex change. Some boys, often as young as "twelve years of age", are freezing their sperm in order to have their...
United Kingdom has a plant to create “risk-free” genetically modified mosquitoes
In the United Kingdom, the biotechnology company, Oxitec, a subsidiary of British company, Intrexon, "is constructing a huge plant". The aim of this new facility costing €8.2 million, is to "produce a billion 'risk-free' mosquitoes every week to combat the Aedes...
United States: heading towards banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy?
The United States House of Representatives "passed a bill on Tuesday to punish doctors performing abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy". It carries a prison sentence of up to five years for these doctors; women who actually undergo the procedure would not be...