Church-affiliated institutions must cover free contraception for their employees, the Obama administration has announced. As a concession to outraged religious groups,

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.

“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 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”.

Is that rustling in the bushes a deer or my brother? What the hell. We’ll sort it out later… BANG! Most people would regard moral reasoning like this as at least superficial. Several paediatricians writing in the latest issue of Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine apparently 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.

It is difficult to imagine a case better scripted for a discussion of informed consent than Mary Moe’s Massachusetts abortion.

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.

Here is contrarian bioethics at its best. Pregnancy and childbirth are so painful, risky and socially restrictive for women that public funding should urgently be directed to the development of artificial wombs. This is the only way to achieve true equality between men and women for then neither women nor men would then be limited by having children and the burdens of reproducing the species would be shared equally.

More from the booming surrogate mother industry. A Philadelphia company is raising eyebrows by describing gestational surrogacy as a paying job. An email from Surrogate Services International says that "In this economy and particularly around the holiday season one would think a local business would not have any trouble filling job openings." It is offering "well paid, part-time positions" as egg donors and surrogate mothers.

A 3-year-old girl who was allegedly denied an opportunity for a kidney transplant because she was “mentally retarded” has sparked a debate in the US media. Amelia Rivera has a rare genetic disease known as Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome that can cause mental impairment, seizures and kidney failure. However, her parents were told by doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that there would be no transplant.

After a long legal and political debate leading up to a decision by its Supreme Court in 1988, Canada has ended up as one of the few nations in the world without an abortion law. About 100,000 abortion are performed each year. But now the Canadian Medical Association Journal is calling for strict limits on abortion – if the mother wants to abortion a child simply because it is a girl.

The UK should legalise assisted suicide, says a report by a private group headed by former lord chancellor Lord Falconer.