A bioethicist at Weill Cornell Medical College has fired another salvo in the battle of human dignity – or to be more precise, of whether the notion of “human dignity” makes any sense or not.

Writing in the May issue of the journal Bioethics, Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, responds to an earlier contribution from Alistair Cochrane (see BioEdge). He had argued that “human dignity is flawed, fuzzy and unhelpful. However, de Melo-Martin dissects his arguments and finds them wanting. While human dignity might not be useful, the case remains unproven.

“Perhaps the problem is not so much with dignity being useless, but with the fact that people want it to do things for which it might not be particularly well suited. But that is a far cry from showing that the concept is simply useless in bioethics. Or it might be that what one wishes is to have precise answers… click here to read whole article and make comments

America’s most fecund surrogate mother has just retired, after bearing 11 children for other people and 4 for herself and her husband. Meredith Olafson, 47, a nurse in Fargo, North Dakota, says "I am stopping because of my age and six C-sections. It's kind of a lot, and it's time to say we're done."

This is becoming a familiar story. ABC News reports that more and more military wives are turning to surrogacy to supplement their husbands’ meagre wages. Figures are obviously sketchy, but ABC estimates that there are about 150 military surrogate mothers every year (see video).

With these developments, perhaps it… click here to read whole article and make comments

As the gap between love and sex grows wider and wider, peculiar new professions crop up. Der Spiegel recently featured a 42-year-old Dutch man who drifted into a career as a personal sperm donation for women who want to be single mothers or who are in lesbian relationships. Ed Houben found that anonymous sperm donation for clinics was emotionally unsatisfying, so he now advertises his services as a stud on websites. At last count, he had 82 children in countries ranging from Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. The oldest is 9 years old and the youngest  2 months. According to Der Spiegel, another 10 women are currently pregnant.

German sperm banks charge between €3,000 and €4,000 (about $4,000-5,300) for their services. Mr Houben’s are free, except for expenses, and they are implemented in the traditional way, which women find more reliable or more satisfying. He does not mind… click here to read whole article and make comments

People are increasingly sensitive to the medical, social and psychological problems of donor-conceived children. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, in the UK, is conducting an inquiry into how much information people need to know about their genetic origins. Its call for evidence ends on May 15. Check the website for details.

Mickey Rooney, the Hollywood icon who testified before the US Congress about his experience with elder abuse, stars in an 82-minute documentary, “Last Will and Embezzlement”. It has a certain relevance to bioethics: the growing incidence of elder abuse has been flagged as an important reason why it would be dangerous to legalise euthanasia. 

Is it good to have children? Most people would think so, but there is a range of views amongst utilitarian bioethicists. Rebecca Bennett, from the University of Manchester, believes that having children is just another irrational experience like taking recreational drugs or dancing. “In most cases we choose to bring to birth children on the basis of unquantifiable and unpredictable ideas of what they will bring to our lives,” she says.

Matti Häyry, a well-known Finnish bioethicist working in the UK, believes that it is both irrational and immoral because the child might encounter suffering in the course of its life, and “it is morally wrong to cause avoidable suffering to other people”.

The latest contribution to this debate comes from a Canadian feminist philosopher, Christine Overall. She published a book in February which is currently making a splash in bioethics circles, “Why Have Children?” Dr Overall is delighted to have two children… click here to read whole article and make comments

American couples who have pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) done on their embryos are almost never informed of the potential risks of the procedure, a Wellesley College biologist claims in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Without this vital information, says Michelle LaBonte, parents are not capable of giving informed consent.

PGD, or embryo screening, has become a standard service in IVF clinics. A technician removes a cell from an 8-cell embryo and tests it for defects. If it passes, it is implanted in the womb.   

In a potentially explosive article, Dr LaBonte asserts that “In efforts to eliminate risk through the use of PGD, we may in fact be creating a new set of risks perhaps even more concerning than those we are trying to avoid.” She bases her claims on a survey of the websites of the 262 US clinics offering PGD. She found that “86.6% of PGD-performing centres state that PGD… click here to read whole article and make comments

The Italian government is investigating an IVF clinic in Rome after 94 embryos, 130 eggs and 5 sperm samples were destroyed when its refrigeration system failed. About 40 couples were affected.

The French company which supplied the liquid nitrogen, Air Liquide, said that it had followed strict procedures but it apologised for the incident at San Filippo Neri Hospital in Rome.

A briefing by the Health Department soon afterwards alleged that there were serious shortcomings in the hospital’s procedures. "Organisation at the centre is far from ideal and the organisation structure is unclear,” it reported. “There are no quality assurance systems in place, structures and routine checks on structures are inadequate and monitoring operations reveal serious shortcomings".

In interview with La Stampa the hospital director admitted that an alarm went off when the temperature rose but "no-one heard it" because it was in a basement while the lab was on the second… click here to read whole article and make comments

When two Italian-Australian utilitarian bioethicists declared in the Journal of Medical Ethics that infanticide (or after-birth abortion) was morally permissible, they lit the fuse on a world-wide storm of condemnation. But a proposal which may be even more controversial has popped up in the April issue of the American Journal of Bioethics. Two bioethicists contend that some parents are morally obligated to use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to create a healthy baby.

Janet Malek, of East Carolina University, and Judith F. Daar, of Whittier Law School, in California, argue that eventually the law should and will impose “a duty on IVF-reproducing parents to maximize the well-being of their future offspring by all reasonable means.” Why? The authors cite three reasons: increasing the child’s well-being, expanding his or her self-determination, and reducing inequalities. 

If this reasoning evokes the notorious “after-birth abortion” article, this may be because the authors rely upon ground broken by Julian Savulescu, Guy Kahane… click here to read whole article and make comments

A British doctor may have fathered more than 600 children by using his own sperm in his London fertility clinic. Toronto film-maker Barry Stevens has researched records of women treated by Dr Bertold Wiesner, and found that two-thirds of offspring conceived through the clinic were his children. Estimates of how many children he fathered range from 200 to 1,000.

Dr Wiesner and his wife Mary Barton ran their clinic from the early 1940s until the mid-1960s, offering sperm from intelligent stock to the spouses of infertile middle and upper-class men. Their work was notorious at the time – so much so that it was once denounced in the House of Lords as “the work of Beelzebub”.

Dr Barton told a 1959 government forum on artificial insemination: “I matched race, colouring and stature and all donors were drawn from intelligent stock. I wouldn’t take a donor unless he was, if anything, a little above… click here to read whole article and make comments