Two of America's leading medical organisations have banned members from participating in interrogations and torture in places like Guantanamo Bay. A new policy by American Psychiatric Association prohibits psychiatrists from direct participation in interrogations, including "asking or suggesting questions, or advising authorities on the use of specific techniques of interrogation with particular detainees."
The American Medical Association has adopted a slightly more flexible resolution which allows doctors to help develop interrogation strategies for "general training purposes", provided those strategies do not threaten or cause harm, are humane, and do not violate detainees' rights. "Physicians must not conduct, directly participate in, or monitor an interrogation with an intent to intervene, because this undermines the physician's role as healer," says AMA ethicist Dr Priscilla Ray.
The association representing American psychologists has so far refused to take so firm a stand. The director of ethics for the American Psychological Association, Stephen Behnke, says that the participation of psychologists can help…
click here to read whole article and make comments
And on the other side of the wire at Guantanamo Bay, a prominent Cuban doctor has written a scathing denunciation of her country's use of hospitals, doctors and medicine to earn foreign exchange. The report by Dr Hilda Molina, a former member of the Cuban National Assembly and a distinguished doctor, was smuggled out of Cuba and published on a Norwegian website. In it she claims that over the last 12 years or so the government has established a system of "medical apartheid" in which top quality care is denied to Cubans and provided to medical tourists.
It is impossible to verify any of the unscrupulous practices alleged by Dr Molina, and they will surprise many, as Cuba is reputed to have an excellent health care system. She writes: "Since February of 1994, the negative practices I outlined earlier have become standard in all Cuban hospitals that sell medical services to foreign patients. The main objective of many Cuban…
click here to read whole article and make comments
Ethicists at the world's leading association for reproductive technology have decided to extend a moratorium on reproductive cloning, but only for a single year. The executive committee of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology declared that in the light of mixed record of success with animal cloning, it would be "totally irresponsible, as well as unethical, to start human reproductive cloning". A five-year moratorium began in 1999 and was extended last year by one year.
click here to read whole article and make comments
Another new product unveiled at the ESHRE conference could allow women to freeze their eggs so that they can become pregnant at a time of their choosing. Dr Masashige Kuwayama, of the Kato Ladies Clinic in Tokyo, says that a technique first used for cattle and sheep might lead to a dramatic improvement in success rates for pregnancies from frozen eggs. Existing techniques result in a pregnancy with only 1 in 100 eggs. The Japanese method, which uses a kind of antifreeze to keep ice crystals from forming in the egg, will increase this rate to 10 in 100.
click here to read whole article and make comments
A British IVF clinic want to create autism-free babies for couples who fear that they might have an affected child. A team at University College London says that boys are four times more likely to have autism than girls, so embryos would be screened to eliminate the boys. A prospective couple would only be allowed to have the procedure if autism had inflicted severe suffering upon the family.
The proposal to the UK's fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, is a controversial one because autistic children can live long and healthy lives. A spokesman for the British Council of Disabled People said: "Screening out autism would breed a fear that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted. Screening for autism would create a society where only perfection is valued."
click here to read whole article and make comments
Overseas couples who want to choose the sex of a child are spending US$20,000 in American IVF clinics because the US is one of the few countries in the world where sex selection has not been banned. The leading practitioner is Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, of the . His websites proudly advertise that his services have been featured on CNN, Newsweek and 60 Minutes. He is obviously aiming at the Chinese market -- where sex selection is officially discouraged nowadays. A link to "sex selection" even features a Chinese flag. He says that this page generates 140,000 hits from China each month -- only from Canada is there more interest.
Even amongst IVF doctors, however, sex selection is controversial. Dr Yury Verlinsky, a Chicago specialist notorious for his radical experiments with human embryos, says "We don't do that. Sex is not a disease." However, Dr Steinberg calmly responds that people will become less alarmed as his specialty becomes more common. "It's…
click here to read whole article and make comments
A year ago, a Harvard study suggested that the medical dogma that women have a limited supply of eggs was wrong, exciting much comment in the media. Jonathan L. Tilly claimed that he could inject infertile mice with blood cells and that germ cells in the blood could become new eggs. This raised hopes that women might be able to overcome the age barrier for having children and that infertility due to chemotherapy could be overcome. Alas, a paper from another Harvard researcher disputes this in the journal Nature. In any case, many scientists had been sceptical of the revolutionary discovery. The review of Tilly's far-reaching claim found that his eggs could not develop into the mature eggs which are needed for a successful pregnancy.
click here to read whole article and make comments
European Parliament: The European Parliament has approved funding for embryonic stem cell research. Although the funds will only be available to the three EU members which permit research on embryos at the moment, critics fear that it will put pressure on other countries to update their legislation. The various bills authorising the funding passed by slender majorities in the 732-seat parliament and they still have to be approved by the European Council. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano complained that Strasbourg had endorsed a "tragically utilitarian" approach towards the creation and destruction of human embryos.
click here to read whole article and make comments
An ethical adviser to the British Medical Association has firmly backed non-voluntary euthanasia for patients who are too ill to ask for death. Professor Len Doyal, an emeritus professor of medical ethics and a member of the BMA's ethics committee, writes in the new Royal Society of Medicine journal Clinical Ethics that dignity in dying sometimes means that doctors should kill their patients.
Debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide has vexed the UK for months. Supporters normally deny that legalisation would shove the country down the slippery slope towards euthanasia of the non- voluntary kind. However, Professor Doyal not only backs non- voluntary euthanasia, but argues that it is "morally wrong" to be silent about it out of political expedience. There has been no disavowal or reaction from the BMA, which last year withdrew its long-standing opposition to legalisation in favour of neutrality.
The practice of selectively aborting girls is spreading from India and China to Canada as immigrant communities take root there. Normally the ratio of boy to girl births is 105 to 100. But according to an expos?n the magazine Western Standard, in several suburbs around Vancouver and Toronto, the ratio has risen to as high as 116 to 100 in recent years. "Since the communities... have seen hundreds of thousands of live births in the last decade, the number of missing daughters may be somewhere in the thousands," writes Andrea Mrozek.
Statisticians warn that the numbers are too limited to reach firm conclusions about the practice. Other factors may be contributing to the increasing skewed ratios. However, because abortion is such a politically sensitive issue, it is difficult to get access to the government statistics to establish exactly how widespread the practice is.
