Doctors are not the only professionals excited about rapid advances in neuroscience. The military and the police are following advances closely, creating the possibility of ethical conflicts, according to a report released this week by the UK’s Royal Society.

Some of these are performance-enhancing applications – plugging brains into weapons systems to make soldiers more alert and perceptive; culling unsuitable prospects during recruitment; detecting targets; overcoming sleep deprivation and rehabilition.

Others are performance-degrading applications to harm opponents like chemical weapons, heat guns and brain scrambling. The Royal Society points out that “Neuroscientists have a responsibility to be aware from an early stage of their training that knowledge and technologies used for beneficial purposes can also be misused for harmful purposes.”

"As a scientist I dislike that someone might be hurt by my work. I want to reduce suffering, to make the world a better place, but there are people in the world with different intentions, and I don't know how to deal with that,” Vince Clark, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico told The Guardian. "If I stop my work, the people who might be helped won't be helped. Almost any technology has a defence application."

Check out the full report here. 

Single-embryo transfer should be the gold standard in IVF, argue many European fertility specialists. The risk of multiple pregnancies is too high, with dangers for the babies and for the mother. At the worst, the consequence is the scandal of an OctoMom – the California woman who gave birth to eight children in a single pregnancy.

But the outspoken Norbert Gleicher, Medical Director of the Center for Human Reproduction (CHR) in New York City, argues that this is daft. Doctors should heed market demand and respect customer choice.

European IVF pregnancy rates have levelled off, he says. The most recent European data show delivery rates of 26.6%. During the same time period, the US delivery rate was 40.7%. 

"A part of the reason is the recent propagation of single-embryo transfer (sET) in Europe," explains Dr. Gleicher. "In Europe, fertility experts and governments alike consider the reduced risk of multiple pregnancies through sET a good enough reason to offset lower pregnancy chances caused by sET. Thus, many European countries mandate sET despite irrefutable evidence that patients value nothing more than better chances of pregnancy in choosing their infertility treatments.

"This is a good example for the fundamental difference in the socio-medical philosophy between Europe and the US," points out Dr Gleicher: "Europe values what they perceive as the 'common good' over individual rights of patients. What they fail to recognize, however, are the unintended consequences affecting the patient-physician relationship and, most importantly, IVF outcomes."

"If there is a lesson to be learned here," says Dr Gleicher, "it is that IVF pregnancy rates in the US will continue to improve, as long as IVF research and clinical care remain largely unaffected by government interference, and primarily driven by success in the marketplace, as they have over the last few decades." ~ PRWEB, Feb 6

The world’s first euthanasia film festival is being held in Amsterdam, sponsored by the Dutch Right to Die lobby (NVVE). This week, from February 6 to 12 is a "Week of Euthanasia" in the Netherlands, a celebration of a decade of euthanasia and assisted suicide. They were legalised on April 1, 2002.  

More than 35 old and new films and documentaries, from all over the world, from Hollywood to Bollywood are to be screened. They include Million Dollar Baby, Mar Adentro, The Barabarian Invasions, Las Buenas Hierbas, Igby goes down, Whose Life is it Anyway? and The Suicide Tourist. There will be five world premieres, including one about the work of the NVVE called Compassion. (For a complete list, click here.) Oddly enough, the program does not include one of the first and most famous euthanasia films, the tear-jerker Ich Klage An – perhaps because it was made by Nazis during World War II to promote voluntary euthanasia as a cover-up for the involuntary sort. 

Just when you thought that surrogate motherhood could not get more bizarre and complicated, a news flash comes from Hyderabad, the centre of the Indian surrogacy industry. This story concerns J. Pearl Linda Van Buren Green, a 35-year-old New Yorker, and her son Emperor Kaioyus Van Buren Green, who are caught in a Bermuda Triangle of "red tapism" somewhere between the Big Apple, Jamaica and the Subcontinent. 

More than 18 months ago Ms Green flew to India with seven vials of frozen semen. Her husband, Eric Dalton Green, lives in Jamaica and could not come to India because he has a fear of flying. Ms Green visited clinics in Goa and Mumbai before hitting the jackpot in Hyderabad. There she found a clinic which provided donor eggs and a surrogate mother, both anonymous. Her son was born on December 7.

Then began her battle with Indian bureaucracy. Because she could not prove that her husband was the biological father, the government turned down her request for the baby's passport. in a huff, Ms Green stormed out of the passport office, leaving her bundle of joy on a bench. The police reviewed CCTV footage and after some inquiries, found Ms Green and returned the baby to her. They decided not to charge her with abandonment. Ms Green is still waiting for identity papers for the baby.

Fertility has become a significant industry in Hyderabad. The Calcutta Telegraph reports that “Many women from Andhra Pradesh’s drought-hit districts choose to become surrogate mothers to earn a few extra bucks for their impoverished families.” One clinic claimed that it has a list of “nearly 400 surrogate mothers” who can be contacted at short notice.

There are 50 or 100 surrogate births a month, although only a handful of these come from overseas. “Most of the clients are women from well-to-do Indian families who want to avoid childbirth so that their lifestyle, or body shape, is not affected,” said IVF specialist Srinivas Prasad. ~ Calcutta Telegraph, Jan 29

New figures show that 75 patients are dying in UK hospitals and care homes each day with conditions potentially caused by neglect. In 2010, over 27,000 people died with bedsores or infected wounds – an increase by more than 50% in a decade. Bedsores occur when patients are not turned regularly, or are left in poor hygiene. They may become infected if not spotted and tended to quickly. While in many cases the sores and infections were not the cause of death, experts said their presence demonstrated that thousands of patients were receiving poor treatment during the last days and weeks of their lives.

The Daily Mail reports that figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2010, 155 patients died in hospital from dehydration and a further 48 died from malnutrition. Another 812 died with dehydration and another 301 with malnutrition, although the conditions did not directly cause death.

While some attribute these deaths to poor care, officials who compiled the statistics noted that some illnesses such as Alzheimer’s or certain forms of cancer make it very difficult for patients to eat or drink. However, Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association said: “These figures are a terrible indictment of our precious National Health Service. They represent avoidable deaths. These people needed our care when they were at their most vulnerable.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “Many patients who suffer or die from malnutrition and dehydration are admitted to hospital with these conditions and have underlying health conditions like cancer that make them more susceptible to these problems. However, every NHS patient has the right to expect that they are looked after properly in hospital.”

A series of scandals over care of the elderly prompted the discovery, and led to an intervention from UK Prime Minister David Cameron this month ordering nurses to attend to patients more often. Last year, a report by the Health Service Ombudsman berated the National Health Service for treating the elderly inhumanely. ~ Daily Mail, Jan 22; Telegraph, Jan 29

Last year, Taiwanese health authorities moved to crack down on illegal abortions, warning that doctors found guilty of the practice could have their licenses revoked. They announced on Tuesday that tougher oversight on illegal gender-selective abortions prevented almost 1,000 terminations of female foetuses last year.

Chiu Shu-ti, director-general of the Bureau of Health Promotion, attributed the improvement to government measures aimed at curbing sex-selective abortions and public-private campaigns promoting gender equality awareness. “To improve the country’s imbalanced sex ratio, the DOH has been publishing birth statistics on a regular basis and monitoring hospitals with irregular numbers since May 2010,” Chiu said. “Thanks to these efforts, 993 baby girls were saved in 2011.”

“The strict measures have paid off,” said Lee Tsui-feng, an official at Bureau of the Health Promotion of Taiwan’s Department of Health. According to government figures, 108 male babies were born for every 100 female babies in 2011, down from 109 to 100 in 2010. The normal sex ratio at birth worldwide I 104-106 to every 100 females.

While sex-selective abortions have always been illegal in Taiwan, the practice is believed to have become widespread, due to a traditional preference for male offspring. Despite last year’s improvement, Lee said it might take another 4 or 5 years to root out illegal abortions entirely. ~ AFP, Feb 1; Taiwan Today, Jan 30

Jesus Navarro needs a new kidney.  He has a willing donor and private insurance -- but he has been denied the transplant because he is an illegal immigrant. Administrators at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center are refusing to transplant a kidney from Navarro’s wife, saying he may not receive sufficient follow-up care, due to his uncertain status.

The decision highlights the tension between immigration policy and health care, and underlines the difficult role medical professionals play in attempts to save the lives of illegal immigrants. Mercury News reports there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that clinics often perform organ transplants on undocumented residents, even when the patients are young. In one case, UCLA Medical Center gave an illegal immigrant woman 3 liver transplants before she turned 21.

Health administrators also reject patients because of their immigration status, but that usually happens when patients lack insurance. “It puts the doctors in a very awkward and torn position,” said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan. “You come into this trying to do good and find yourself stuck in the middle of a fight about immigration.” ~ San Jose Mercury News, Jan 31

The North Carolina legislature has recommended that surviving victims of the State’s forced sterilization program be paid US$50,000 each. About 7,600 people were sterilized between 1929 and 1974 in North Carolina to prevent the feckless poor and the mentally handicapped from bearing children. About 2,000 are still alive. In the YouTube video above Elaine Riddick laments her experience. She was sterilized at 14 when she gave birth after being raped.

In a 1950 pamphlet, the Human Betterment League of North Carolina said that the program was necessary to protect "the children of future generations and the community at large.” "You wouldn't expect a moron to run a train or a feebleminded woman to teach school," it said. ~ Los Angeles Times, Jan 25

After losing a case for damages for the birth of their severely disabled son based on a “wrongful life” claim, a Sydney couple has returned to the courts with a “wrongful birth” claim for A$10 million.

Keeden Waller was born in August 2000 with a rare blood clotting condition. This caused a massive stroke soon after his birth which left him unable to walk, talk or use a toilet. His parents are suing the IVF specialist under whose care he was conceived. Lawrence Waller, the father, suffered from the same condition but somehow the doctor failed to link the parents up with a genetic counsellor.

''There was a duty of care on the part of Dr James to ensure that both he and the Wallers understood that this problem could be passed on and for there to be proper counselling and discussion about the other options they had, including the option of an anonymous sperm donor,'' the Wallers’ lawyer argues.

The doctor’s lawyer contends that he was not responsible for finding out whether a rare genetic condition could be inherited. ‘‘There is no question that Debbie and Lawrence Waller have experienced a tragic event and that the Keeden Waller situation is extremely sad,’’ said their lawyer. ‘‘But they are intelligent adults who were advised to speak to a genetic counsellor. They chose not to take up that advice.’’

The outcome of the case – which is far from certain – is sure to influence compensation to parents of other disabled children.

In 2006 the couple failed in the High Court of Australia when their lawyers argued that the birth was a “wrongful life”. At that time, the court ruled that the IVF specialist did not cause Keeden’s disabilities and that the couple could not claim that it would have been better if Keeden had never been born. ~ Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 1; skepticlawyer, Feb 1

Bioethics is playing a walk-on role in the drama of the Republican primaries. Newt Gingrich has expressed his opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research and has called for an investigation of practices in IVF clinics. He believes that human life begins at conception.

Gingrich’s stand on embryonic stem cell research has shifted over the years but he now says that he would ban all embryonic stem-cell research, including research done on surplus embryos created by IVF clinics. In his words, it amounts to “the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies.”

He also plans to form a commission to study the ethics of in vitro fertilization. “I believe life begins at conception, and the question I was raising was what happens to embryos in fertility clinics, and I would favor a commission to look seriously at the ethics of how we manage fertility clinics,” Gingrich said at a news conference at a Baptist church in Florida. “If you have in vitro fertilization, you are creating life; therefore, we should look seriously at what the rules should be for clinics that are doing that, because they are creating life.”

Predictably, the notion of questioning IVF was ridiculed. The liberal website ThinkProgress ran the news under the headline: “Gingrich Suggests It’s Immoral For Couples To Conceive Children Through In Vitro Fertilization”. But in Time magazine, columnist Bonnie Rochman thought it had some merit. What is going to be done with the hundred of thousands of embryos in frozen in the storage tanks of IVF clinics?

After his failure to overtake frontrunner Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s Florida primary, Gingrinch’s star seems to be fading. But his effort to back restrictions on tinkering with embryos could influence policy in a Romney Administration. ~ Washington Post, Jan 30