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Pig brains restarted four hours after death: should brain death be redefined?
"The brain’s ability to revive its cells has been underestimated," said Nenad Sestan, a researcher at Yale University in the USA. He is one of the authors of a study resembling "a science fiction film," which was published on Wednesday in Nature. The researchers...
Risk of incest: Queensland, Australia: 48 children from the same sperm donor
Serial sperm donors pose a real “social risk” for the children they father. In Brisbane, Australia, a couple of women reignited the debate after accidentally discovering that the father of their children was also the father of 43 others in the region. The two women...
Euthanasia in Quebec: 10 times more deaths than expected, but not still enough for the government
In Quebec, five years after the adoption of the law introducing medically assisted suicide in 2014, the time has come for initial assessments: a Report on the situation of end-of-life care in Quebec was presented to the National Assembly last week. This report lists...
Giving birth to her grand-daughter: intra-family surrogacy “deprives the child of a clear genealogy”
The birth announcement of a surrogate baby girl, whose surrogate mother is her grandmother and her aunt the oocyte donor, has provoked many reactions. This birth was to satisfy the desire of two homosexuals, one of whom is the biological father. Apart from the...
California: Two-thirds of hospitals refuse to apply the law authorizing physician-assisted suicide
In California, physician-assisted suicide has been allowed for three years, but many hospitals and doctors refuse to offer it to their patients. "We had heard anecdotally and from reports that patients were having trouble getting these drugs," says Cindy Cain,...
Robotic uterine transplantation: birth in Sweden
The first baby born after a robotic uterine transplant was born in Sweden on Monday 8 April (see Robot-assisted uterine transplants: first pregnancy in Sweden). The baby boy was born at 36 weeks via a scheduled caesarean section; he measured 48 cm and weighed 2.9 kg....
Surrogacy: the ECHR does not advocate transcribing birth certificates
At the request of the French Court of Cassation, the ECHR issued an expected decision on the parentage of surrogate children on Wednesday: it states that recognition of this parentage is required in the "best interests of the child" but that this does not necessarily...
Abortion ban deemed “unconstitutional” in South Korea
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court of South Korea in Seoul ordered the abortion ban, which it deems unconstitutional, to be lifted and called for new legislation to be adopted "by the end of next year". The court has decided that the legislation banning abortion...
A “three-parent baby” born in Greece
Doctors in Athens and Barcelona announced last Tuesday the delivery of a "three-parent baby" as part of a research project on in vitro fertilization (IVF) with mitochondrial donation. The baby, weighing 2.9 kg, was born in Athens, to a 32-year-old Greek mother who had...
China: transgenic monkeys regardless of ethics?
Chinese researchers have announced the delivery of eleven transgenic monkeys, five of which survived. These monkeys have copies of a human gene that supposedly plays a role in the development of human intelligence. Bing Su, the geneticist who conducted the research,...
In the Philippines, two women hired to be surrogate mothers in China are arrested as they prepare to leave the country
The Bureau of Immigration has announced that two women hired to become surrogate mothers in China were arrested as they were about to leave the Philippines. In its statement, the Bureau of Immigration explained that these former oversees Filipino workers, Ria,...
Chile: psychological suffering will soon be grounds for requesting euthanasia
In Chile, the Chamber of Deputies’ healthcare committee has just adopted two important articles on the reasons authorizing euthanasia requests. These articles are central to a bill currently being debated on "dignified death" and palliative care. The two articles...