Head of World Medical Association under fire

The Israeli president of the World Medical Association is under pressure to step down because he allegedly has turned a blind eye to the "institutionalised involvement of doctors" in torture in his country.

Yoram Blachar has been president of the Israeli Medical Association since 1995 and was elected president of the World Medical Association last year. His critics have gathered the signatures of 700 doctors from 43 countries. Their letter says his position "makes a mockery of… [+]

Many of the Britons who seek suicide in Switzerland with the help of the Dignitas organisation were not terminally ill and had ailments which were eminently treatable. This information surfaced in The Guardian this week and has horrified doctors.

Dignitas’s list of the medical conditions of the 115 people who killed themselves in Zurich shows that 36 had some form of cancer, 27 had motor neurone disease and 17 had multiple sclerosis. But a number of others… [+]

While British doctors may be aghast at the suicide tourism in Switzerland, an American bioethicist has just published a learned defence of the Swiss model of assisted suicide and praises it as superior to Oregon’s. Writing in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Dr Stephen J. Ziegler, of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, gives several reasons.

The Swiss model improves oversight: he is very impressed by the fact that the Swiss police are actively involved in… [+]

Now that the President’s Council for Bioethics has passed on to the bureaucrats’ burying ground, what will replace it?

The PCB had several predecessors. Beginning in 1974, these committees and commissions covered its turf: the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research; the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research; the Ethics Advisory Board; the Human Embryo Research Panel; the Biomedical Ethical… [+]

Bioethics goes to the movies again. This time, it’s in a new Canadian film, The Baby Formula, about two lesbians who create sperm from each other’s stem cells and use them to create babies with their own eggs. At the moment, this is impossible, but it seems to be at the top of the list for some stem cell scientists.

In 2006, Karim Nayernia, of Newcastle University, generated sperm from male embryonic stem cells which fertilized female mice and produced offspring.… [+]

Britain’s peak body for fertility doctors has described the rising ages of mothers in Britain and elsewhere, as an emerging public health issue". The Royal College of Obsterecians and Gynaecologists now says that research is needed into why women are having children later or not at all.

There are many reasons for women to postpone childbearing in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. They include easy-to-get contraception, education, career-building, a desire to have financial independence, and… [+]

A pioneer in the ethics of population control is having misgivings. Daniel Callahan, one of the founders of modern bioethics, writes in the latest Hastings Center Report that his earlier interest in the ethical dimension of bringing down birthrates seems to have missed something.

In a retrospective look at his work in the 1970s seeking to set down ethical guidelines for the work of population controllers, Callahan says that fear of excessive population has been followed by… [+]