Many of the most heated policy debates in bioethics hinge on the accuracy of the research -- in biology, medicine and social science. Will embryonic stem cells really cure patients? Do IVF children really thrive? Do some women really experience post-abortion trauma? So anything which affects the reliability of scientific knowledge also has a bearing on bioethics.

That’s what makes recent articles in the New York Times and in Nature so intriguing. They both assert that there is a crisis brewing over the reliability of science – not among “fundamentalists” and science sceptics, but among scientists themselves.

The New York Times highlights the belief of the editor of the journal Infection and Immunity, Ferric C. Fang, that a ten-fold increase in the number of retractions over the past ten years is a symptom of “a dysfunctional scientific climate”. And in an opinion piece in Nature, the co-director of the Consortium for Science,… click here to read whole article and make comments

A controversy has erupted in Massachusetts over the use of skin shock therapy for troubled teenagers. The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in the suburb of Canton is a facility for people with severe emotional, behavioural and psychiatric problems, including autism. It is the only institution in the US which uses shock therapy – a 2-second application to the skin which feels like a pinch, or, its critics say, a bee sting. About half of its 250 students are treated this way.

This week, a graphic video from 2002 showing a restrained teenager screaming in pain while staff administered 31 shocks galvanised opponents into obtaining more than 200,000 signatures on a on-line petition to state legislators – although it included only 9,000 Massachusetts residents.

The JRC founder, Matthew L. Israel, a behavioural psychologist who trained with Harvard’s B.F. Skinner, was forced to step down last year over an incident in which staff gave… click here to read whole article and make comments

The German government is drafting legislation to ban cosmetic surgery for teenagers except for medical reasons. At the moment, there is no minimum age. As a result, patients under 20 account for about 10% of all cosmetic procedures, according to the Association of German Plastic Surgeons.  These include operations like breast enlargements, nose jobs and abdominal liposuction.

"For good reasons, the state protects young people from themselves as far as alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking go, and we think it's high time it did the same with regard to unnecessary and often risky cosmetic operations," a health adviser to the Christian Democratic Union, Jens Spahn, told Die Welt.

However, the bill is being opposed by a junior party in the governing coalition, the Free Democratic Party. “We have yet to be presented with specific reasons or reliable facts with regard to this," says Heinz Lanfermann. In his opinion, the boundaries between medical necessity… click here to read whole article and make comments

Gadfly: a person who annoys or criticizes others in order to provoke them into action (Oxford English Dictionary). There is no better word to describe Carl Elliott, a University of Minnesota bioethicist who is probably the profession’s most savage critic. In his column in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week, he returned to a favourite theme: the dangers of cosying up to the pharmaceutical industry. He complains that too many bioethicists are being funded by Big Pharma, which Dr Elliott tends to describe as a Mafia network.

The target of his wrath is the 2012 Pfizer Fellowship in Bioethics, which was awarded to Lynn Schuchter of the University of Pennsylvania. The US$100,000-over-two-years fellowships are for investigation of ethical issues -- including conflicts of interest. Dr Elliott helpfully points out that her project is sponsored by Ezekiel Emanuel, the new head of medical ethics at UPenn and a former adviser on health policy… click here to read whole article and make comments

“Hey, I got a really good deal on embryos on Craigslist the other day.” Hopefully this story from Iowa is not a harbinger of things to come. Two couples, in Chicago and Florida, found their embryos through a Craigslist discussion group from an Des Moines couple who had 18 spare embryos. Deb and Kevin McCrea gave 9 to each couple for free, saving them thousands of dollars in IVF treatment.

The McCreas still want to keep in touch with their biological children and have asked the couples to agree to yearly reports and occasional visits – a novel kind of open adoption.

Mrs McCrea told the local TV station that she had considered giving the embryos to the IVF clinic, but she had some misgivings. “We went into give life and just because the doctor chose the two that we got doesn’t mean the other 18 shouldn’t have a chance at life also,” she reflected.

“One day… click here to read whole article and make comments

Thousands of drug capsules made from powdered baby flesh in China have been confiscated by South Korea customs agents. They were manufactured in northern China and smuggled in as stamina boosters. There were 35 attempts since last August, involving 17,450 capsules. Customs officials said that no one had been arrested, because the material, which contained bacteria and other harmful substances, was only intended for personal use.  

BioEdge reported this story last year after a South Korean TV station investigated rumours that baby flesh was being used as an aphrodisiac. It sounded quite implausible and Chinese authorities dismissed the allegations. But it seems to have been true.

The gruesome news coincided with the publication of two academic books about similar practices in early modern Europe. Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, by an Australian, Louise Noble, of the University of New England, and another by Richard Sugg of England’s University of… click here to read whole article and make comments

The contentious issue of birth defects in babies conceived with IVF is on the boil again after a major study was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers at the University of Adelaide, in Australia, confirmed earlier surveys that found an elevated risk of defect among IVF babies. The odds for any birth defect in pregnancies involving assisted conception are 8.3%,  compared to 5.8% for unassisted pregnancies.

However, they said that the risk seems due to “patient factors” like obesity or smoking, not to the procedure itself. “In vitro fertilization off the hook for causing birth defects” was the headline in Nature’s news blog.

However, this was only half the story. Some fertility treatments appear to be riskier.

ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection), a technique which involves injecting a sperm into the egg, is one of these. The increased risk of birth defects is 57% over normal IVF, although the absolute size of the risk… click here to read whole article and make comments

Entering national politics is a bit like strip mining the family farm. As soon as you’ve sold your soul, the earthmovers get to work excavating your family’s life story. This week, for instance, two of Barack Obama’s old flames popped up in a tell-all biography to be released next month. And yesterday it emerged that Mitt Romney’s new twin grandchildren were born with the help of a surrogate mother.

His oldest son Tagg now has six children, three of whom have the same surrogate mother. Tagg and his wife Jen are the biological parents. He posted the news on Facebook:

“A special thanks to our gestational surrogate who made this possible for us. Life truly is a miracle, and we feel so blessed to be able to celebrate the arrival of these precious boys into our family. For those keeping score at home, these are grandchildren numbers 17 and 18… click here to read whole article and make comments

(This article has been substantially revised.) Abortion is often described as a necessary component of women’s health. Abortion rights groups contend that unless it is legal and freely available, backyard abortionists will fill the gap in demand and maternal mortality rates will rise. Remarkably, though, for such a contentious issue, there is little data to back up this claim. 

Now a ground-breaking study of maternal mortality in Chile published this week in the leading journal PLoS One suggests that “the legal status of abortion does not appear to be related to overall rates of maternal mortality”.

Chile is an important “natural experiment” for abortion policy. In 1989 abortion was made illegal with one of the more restrictive abortions laws in the world. Good statistics from the past 50 years make it possible to compare MMRs before the ban and after.

According to Elard Koch, of the University of Chile, and colleagues,  the study “provides counterintuitive… click here to read whole article and make comments

Should termination of Down syndrome foetuses be regarded as a fundamental human right? This is an issue which the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is currently pondering. In the case of Krūzmane vs. Latvia, the mother of a girl with Down syndrome alleges that she was denied a screening test for the condition when she was pregnant in 2001. She claims that this test is a necessary element of  “prenatal care” and that access is guaranteed by the fundamental right to respect for private and family life.

As often happens, the facts of the case are not completely straightforward. Ms Krūzmane, who was 40 at the time, consulted a doctor during her pregnancy. The doctor told her to consult a specialist for a test but failed to follow up on this advice. For this negligence the doctor was fined. However, a subsequent police investigation found that Ms Krūzmane had failed to keep her appointment… click here to read whole article and make comments