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An American Company promoting surrogacy wants to extend its influence in Europe
Last Tuesday, Extraordinary Conceptions, an American company based in southern California and specialising in promoting contacts with a view to surrogacy, announced its intention to set up a Spanish office in Barcelona. The reason behind this new centre is "to...
In the United States, Kentucky could become the only State without an abortion clinic
In southern USA, a 3-day trial is under way between the State of Kentucky and the EMW Women’s Surgical Center. The State called for the establishment to be closed due to non-compliance regarding safety issues. This clinic is not, in fact, connected to a hospital and...
Pre-mortem organ donor preparation must not obscure ethical questions regarding death with dignity
Up until a few years ago, end-of-life medical procedures were focused on the patient's best interests. Today, the increasing demand for transplant organs has warranted more donors. At the same time, for almost 10 years, non-beating-heart donors have increased the...
The story of Doctor Owen, who communicates with patients in a vegetative state
Doctor Adrian Owen, "a famous English neuroscientist", who carries out research at the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, has devised a method to allow patients in a vegetative state [1] to communicate by responding yes or no to questions. He recounts...
A new technique to sort human and animal embryos
Scientists at Adelaide University (Southern Australia) have published a study on a new pre-implantation screening technique in the Human Reproduction journal. This technique sorts embryos at an early stage, based on their cell metabolism, and is...
Parkinson’s disease and iPS cells: encouraging results in monkeys
A study published on Wednesday, in the Nature journal, by Japanese scientists, highlights "promising" research in the treatment of Parkinson's disease using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). These reprogrammed human adult cells have been differentiated...
MAP subject to epigenetics test
In the light of recent studies, Bioethics scientists at Montreal University voiced their concerns about "potential epigenetic risks associated with [1] medically assisted procreation" in a special edition of the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and...
Heading towards organ transplants from genetically modified pigs?
Scientists led by two Harvard University geneticists, George Church and Luhan Yang[1], have genetically modified porcine embryos in order to make their organs compatible for human transplantation in the future. Their study, published in the...
Chile decriminalises abortion in certain cases
On 21 August 2017, Chile's Constitutional Court validated the law decriminalising abortion in the case of rape, when the mother's life is in danger and in the event of a non-viable foetus. It rejected by six votes to four, the two appeals lodged by the opposition...
Three-parent IVF: John Zhang singled out by the FDA
On 4 August, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instructed "fertility doctor", John Zhang, to stop marketing three-parent IVF [1] [2]. He was involved in the birth of a Jordanian child through three-parent IVF last year (see three-parent...
A medicinal product discovered thanks to iPS cells
Scientists at Kyoto University should start the first clinical trial in the autumn, testing out a medicinal product identified using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) to treat a rare bone disorder. The team, led by Junya Toguchida, used iPS cells to model...
Genetically modified embryos: details of the American study are published
As announced at the end of July, the work of the American-Sino-Korean team were published in the Nature journal on 2 August (see United States: first genetically modified human embryos). Their work is "having a major media impact and raising a...