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Vatican: a new charter for health care workers reaffirms the sanctity of life
On 6 February, the dicastery for integral human development announced an "update to the health professionals' charter". This document, which was printed for the first time in 1994, "summarises the teaching of the Church regarding biomedical issues". It "not only...
CRISPR-CAS9, fears of a terrorist spin-off
Ever since its discovery in 2012, the CRISPR-Cas 9 system "derived from a mechanism to protect bacteria against viruses, has invaded virtually all biomedicine laboratories where it is used to deactivate and modify genes freely, rapidly and at lower cost". The...
Criminal obstruction to abortion: The National Assembly censures freedom of expression
Conventional speech this morning at the national Assembly, each member perfectly playing his/her role. The outcome of the vote was clear all along. After the last intervention concerning this law, Catherne Coutelle, rapporteur of the social affairs Commission and...
Gene therapy: mice cured of deafness
A team of scientists at Harvard University, led by Doctor Jeffrey Holt, has succeeded in restoring hearing to mice suffering from Usher's syndrome, thanks to gene therapy. Their study, which was published in the Nature Biotechnology journal, is deemed to be a "major...
“She decides”: a conference to launch a European pro-abortion fund
Luxembourg, Finland, Canada and Cape Verde have joined in the initiative led by Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark - countries wishing "to off-set the ban on allocating Federal funding to foreign NGOs supporting abortion, announced by American...
An implant to restore sight in blind individuals tested in monkeys
Although the potential to use the computer/brain interface is enormous, experiments involving the implantation of electrodes in these tests have proved fruitless since the healing of the tissues causes a deterioration in electrical connections in the brain. To...
The European Parliament rejects draft report on surrogacy
Although the Committee on Legal Affairs called for a draft report on surrogacy, its proposal has been rejected by the European Parliament. This kind of draft report "would have legitimised" surrogacy even though this practice is illegal in most Member States....
Criminal obstruction to abortion: the French Senate refreshes the text without taking out its freedom-destroying dimension
In less than two hours, the French Senate went over, for the second time, the writing of the new criminal offence concerning abortion proposed by the National Assembly. 171 voices against 147 allowed the left-wing senators and a couple of centrists to restore the...
Criminal obstruction to abortion at the National Assembly: a hasty examination in Commission
To vote the draft law extending criminal obstruction to abortion; thus is the objective of a government which has engaged in a marathon to achieve its objective. This morning, in just a few minutes, the Social Affairs Commission of the French National Assembly sent...
“Repair the heart” – a trial using patients’ stem cells
Cellprothera, start-up,"a pioneer in the regeneration of cardiac cells", held a press conference on Friday to reveal the progress made in its clinical trial (see Des essais pour réparer le cœur avec les cellules souches des patients - trials to repair the heart using...
Born at 23 weeks, these miracle babies survive
In Scotland, twin girls born after 23 weeks and 4 days, weighing 450 g, have survived. Although the babies were developing normally, the mother's waters broke after 22.5 weeks. The doctors induced labour because of septicaemia. The chances of survival for these...
A brain-computer interface to diagnose levels of consciousness
European scientists have investigated whether patients who have lost all powers of communication are still fully conscious and still want to live[1]. They found the answer by using a brain-computer interface to communicate with 4 patients who were "locked in"...