In the first published results from a clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), 2 legally blind patients with macular degeneration who had been given an injection in one eye have suffered no harmful side effects and appear to have slightly better vision. The trial was sponsored by a Massachusetts biotech, Advanced Cell Technology.
This is a rare piece of good news for the stagnating hESC field and ACT’s share price rose 23%. Two months ago another company, Geron, aborted the only other human trial with hESCs – a potential cure for spinal cord trauma – and announced that it was abandoning the field entirely. ACT is now the only company working with hESCs.
The controversial practice known as “three-parent IVF” has drawn one step closer in the UK with the government’s announcement of public consultation into its acceptability. The Wellcome Trust has also announced that it would allocate extra funds to expand research into the technique, which uses genetic material from 3 parents – 2 women and a man – to build a baby. The procedure, which currently banned, is a response to mitochondrial disease – defects in the small frameworks called mitochondria which surround the cell nucleus.
Mitochondrial diseases are inherited from the mother. They are rare – only about 100 affected children are born each year in the UK – but often very disabling. The proposed procedure involves extracting the nucleus from an affected woman’s egg, transferring it to the shell of an egg supplied by a donor with healthy mitochondria, then fertilising it with the sperm of the affected woman’s partner.
Leading plastic surgeons in the UK have responded to the current crisis in cosmetic surgery by calling for a ban on advertisements for all types of cosmetic surgery, including breast enlargements and tummy tucks. They say the industry is an under-regulated “wild west”.
The surgeons are members of the British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), who work on reconstruction in the National Health Service and regularly perform cosmetic surgery in private hospitals. The group, based at the Royal College of Surgeons, has been concerned in recent years about standards in private cosmetic chains, which advertise aggressively in tabloids and women’s magazines.
They have called for a ban as part of a six-point-plan with proposals for tighter regulation of the industry, including registration and audit of surgeons. “Over the last decade the BAAPS has worked tirelessly to educate the public on the many aggressive marketing gimmicks that not only trivialise surgery but endanger…
click here to read whole article and make comments
Former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and her husband have become parents through surrogacy. Once the editor of the now-defunct tabloid News of the World, the 43-year-old Ms Brooks was in the business of headlining celebrities’ private lives. Now her own 5-year battle with infertility is fodder for her colleagues, along with her arrest on charges of alleged phone hacking and corruption. The surrogate mother of Scarlett Anne Mary Brooks, whose name has not been released, was pregnant with twins, but one of them died early in the pregnancy. The story is likely to boost the profile of surrogacy in the UK. ~ BBC, Jan 26; BioEdge, Nov 19
“Dishonesty is common and institutionalized in medicine and medical research,” says a UK cardiologist, Peter Wilsmhurst, who has spent years trying to expose research misconduct and has reported more than 20 doctors to the General Medical Council.
Apparently the UK scientific establishment agrees with him. Earlier this month the British Medical Journal and the international Committee on Publication Ethics organised a meeting with representatives from universities, funding groups, journals and lobby groups to discuss the problem.
According to Nature News, Elizabeth Wager, of the international Committee on Publication Ethics, said that one American editor had told her that UK institutions were the worst to deal with if misconduct were suspected. “Our reputation in the world is not looking good.”
A number of factors are at work. The UK government, unlike the US, does not have an effective watchdog for research fraud. There can be conflicts of interest if a university detects fraud by one…
click here to read whole article and make comments
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has given a big boost to opponents of legalised euthanasia. This body, which (somewhat confusingly) is not part of the European Union, is an advisory body in Strasbourg with more than 300 delegates whose pronouncements on human rights are highly influential in the EU.
This week PACE passed a resolution on living wills (or advance directives) which states as a fundamental principal: “Euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited.”
Furthermore, an amendment was passed stating that “surrogate decisions that rely on general value judgements present in society should not be admissible and, in case of doubt, the decision must always be pro-life and the prolongation of life”.
Is it morally wrong to kill people? Not really, argue two eminent American bioethicists in an early online article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, of Duke University, and Franklin G. Miller, of the National Institutes of Health believe that “killing by itself is not morally wrong, although it is still morally wrong to cause total disability”.
Ultimately their aim is to justify organ donation after cardiac death (DCD). This is a state in which a patient is neurologically damaged and cannot function without a respirator. Within minutes of withdrawing this, the organs are removed. However, the authors state frankly that the patient is not dead at that point because it is possible that the patient’s heart could start beating again. (Other bioethicists disagree, vehemently.)
“[T]he criterion of irreversibility has not been satisfied; hence, these patients are not known to be dead at the time of organ procurement.”
Is that rustling in the bushes a deer or is it my brother? What the hell. We’ll sort it out later… BANG! Most people would regard moral reasoning like this as potentially indicative of a deficit of ethical reflectiveness. Several paediatricians writing in the latest issue of Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicineapparently agree. They have called for a moratorium on donating organs after cardiac death (DCD) until a number of troubling issues have been resolved. The pre-press, peer-reviewed article offers a good summary of the ethical issues.
“We have argued that DCD donors are not dead, and therefore that organ donation during DCD violates the dead donor rule. Our concerns with DCD include the following: irreversibility of absent circulation has not occurred and the many attempts to claim it has all fail; conflicts of interest at all steps in the DCD process are simply unavoidable; premortem interventions to preserve…
click here to read whole article and make comments
It is difficult to imagine a case better scripted for a discussion of informed consent than Mary Moe’s Massachusetts abortion.
When Mary Moe, a pseudonym for a 32-year-old woman with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, visited a hospital emergency room in October, it was discovered that she was pregnant. This meant that she could not take her psychiatric medication as it would harm the foetus. So the state Department of Mental Health applied to have the woman’s parents named as guardians so they could give consent for an abortion.
However, Mary did not want to have an abortion. Although she was not completely coherent, she insisted that she was “very Catholic” and would never do such a thing. She knew what abortions were, as her first pregnancy had been aborted. (She subsequently gave birth to a son, whom her parents are caring for.)
The UK’s cosmetic surgery industry is under fire in the wake of the liquidation of a French company which made faulty breast implants. For a number of years Poly Implant Prothese had been manufacturing breast implants with industrial grade silicon instead of medical grade. Now the implants are rupturing at a higher than normal rate and a woman has died in France of a rare cancer which appears to be related to the leakage.
Earlier in the month, a few dozen women with PIP implants marched in London's medical specialist district to protest against clinics which are refusing to remove and replace the devices. Danni Starr, 33, an accounts clerk, told the Guardian: “We feel totally fobbed off. I feel so angry that these companies can make all this money from doing this surgery, and then when there is a problem, they can’t afford to help us.”
In the first published results from a clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), 2 legally blind patients with macular degeneration who had been given an injection in one eye have suffered no harmful side effects and appear to have slightly better vision. The trial was sponsored by a Massachusetts biotech, Advanced Cell Technology.
The controversial practice known as “three-parent IVF” has drawn one step closer in the UK with the government’s announcement of public consultation into its acceptability. The Wellcome Trust has also announced that it would allocate extra funds to expand research into the technique, which uses genetic material from 3 parents – 2 women and a man – to build a baby. The procedure, which currently banned, is a response to mitochondrial disease – defects in the small frameworks called mitochondria which surround the cell nucleus.
Leading plastic surgeons in the UK have responded to the current crisis in cosmetic surgery by calling for a ban on advertisements for all types of cosmetic surgery, including breast enlargements and tummy tucks. They say the industry is an under-regulated “wild west”.
Former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and her husband have become parents through surrogacy. Once the editor of the now-defunct tabloid News of the World, the 43-year-old Ms Brooks was in the business of headlining celebrities’ private lives. Now her own 5-year battle with infertility is fodder for her colleagues, along with her arrest on charges of alleged phone hacking and corruption. The surrogate mother of Scarlett Anne Mary Brooks, whose name has not been released, was pregnant with twins, but one of them died early in the pregnancy. The story is likely to boost the profile of surrogacy in the UK. ~ 
“Dishonesty is common and institutionalized in medicine and medical research,” says a UK cardiologist, Peter Wilsmhurst, who has spent years trying to expose research misconduct and has reported more than 20 doctors to the General Medical Council.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has given a big boost to opponents of legalised euthanasia. This body, which (somewhat confusingly) is not part of the European Union, is an advisory body in Strasbourg with more than 300 delegates whose pronouncements on human rights are highly influential in the EU.
Is that rustling in the bushes a deer or is it my brother? What the hell. We’ll sort it out later… BANG! Most people would regard moral reasoning like this as potentially indicative of a deficit of ethical reflectiveness. Several paediatricians writing in the latest issue of 
