http://www.bioedge.org/ {site_description} mcook31@gmail.com(Michael Cook) michael@bioedge.org(Michael Cook) http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10536 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10536#When:14:26:09Z Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 14:26:09 GMT Newsletter http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10532 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10532#When:13:13:46Z Vermont has become the fourth US state to legalize euthanasia. Its legislature voted in favor of the controversial law last week. The new legislation allows anyone over the age of 18 with an “incurable and irreversible disease” and a maximum of six months to live to obtain a prescription for lethal drugs. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 13:13:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10529 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10529#When:11:31:46Z The Australian winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine is leveraging her discovery to market a test which will help people know their true health status and biological age. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 11:31:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10531 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10531#When:11:27:46Z Negative attitudes towards Alzheimer’s disease are undue influence on the euthanasia debate, claims an Australian bioethicist. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 11:27:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10530 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10530#When:11:00:46Z A Montana man brain cancer diagnosis shows how difficult it is to determine whether or not a person has a “terminal illness”. Mark Templin was awarded US$59,000 for expenses and emotional stress after his doctor wrongly told him in 2009 that he had only six months to live. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 11:00:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10533 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10533#When:10:30:46Z A fierce campaign is being carried out in Australia to strip Chinese doctor Huang Jiefu of his honorary professorship at Sydney University. Dr. Jiefu, who was Vice-minister for Health in China for 12 years, authorized the forced removal of organs from thousands of executed Chinese prisoners. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 10:30:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10528 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10528#When:10:29:46Z Following the highly publicised pre-emptive double mastectomy of Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie, it has emerged that a 53-year-old British man has become the first in the world to have a pre-emptive removal of his prostate. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 10:29:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10527 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10527#When:09:02:46Z Last week we reported that researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University had finally cloned human embryos and successfully extracted embryonic stem cells.This was a feat which scientists agreed was possible but was proving unexpectedly difficult. The last time the claim was made, by South Korean Hwang Woo-suk in 2005, it turned out to be a colossal fraud which embarrassed leading journals and dampened enthusiasm for “therapeutic cloning”. Unfortunately, the most recent paper has also been criticised for image duplication, evoking the nightmarish Hwang scandal Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 09:02:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10526 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10526#When:08:18:46Z Inferno: Robert Langdon is back with a globe-trotting thriller in which the symbologist has to decode clues left in a map of Dante’s masterpiece by a recently-deceased evil genius before one-third of the world perishes. Oops, we are about to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that the master of transmuting highbrow trivia, European travel guides and clunky prose into dollars has framed transhumanism as the most dangerous threat to the future of mankind. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 08:18:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10535 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10535#When:06:33:46Z A European Court has told Switzerland to make its euthanasia laws more specific, after an 82-year-old woman seeking the procedure on the grounds of old age was denied it. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 06:33:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10534 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10534#When:06:30:46Z The cliché “bundles of joy” has two meanings in the assisted reproduction industry: babies and cash. Keen businessmen are scrambling to take advantage of this burgeoning area of the health sector. Read more...]]> Sat, 25 May 2013 06:30:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10525 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10525#When:06:29:46Z This 25-minute documentary by Al-Jazeera presents a balanced view of the campaign for euthanasia in Australia. No presentation will satisfy everyone, but this one, "Licence to Kill", presents articulate folk on both sides of the question. Definitely worthwhile. Read more...]]> Thu, 23 May 2013 06:29:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10524 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10524#When:15:00:38Z Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:38 GMT Newsletter http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10523 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10523#When:13:53:58Z Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie was hailed this week for her bravery in revealing that she has had a preventative double mastectomy. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:53:58 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10522 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10522#When:13:48:35Z The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) goes on sale on May 22 after more than a decade of revision by 1,500 experts. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:48:35 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10521 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10521#When:13:45:16Z Cloning humans might be one step closer, with scientists in the US managing to use adult skin cells to produce an embryo clone. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:45:16 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10520 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10520#When:13:40:35Z Is bioethics compatible with democracy? This is not a question that surfaces very often in policy debates featuring prestigious bioethicists. However, in a provocative column in The Guardian, Nathan Emmerich, a young bioethicist, asks whether bioethicists are turning into a priestly caste: Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:40:35 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10519 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10519#When:13:36:35Z The German and Czech governments allow sex offenders to be surgically castrated – provided that they give informed consent to the procedure. This has put them at loggerheads with the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). It has denounced the practice as degrading treatment which should be ended immediately. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:36:35 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10518 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10518#When:13:34:47Z A new bill is before the South Australian parliament that would make IVF available to lesbian couples and fertile single mothers Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:34:47 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10517 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10517#When:13:30:46Z A Californian women has been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment after she misappropriated US$2.5 million from a surrogacy company. Tonya Ann Collins, 37, set up the company Surrogenesis in 2005, along with the escrow company Michael Charles Independent Financial Holding Group. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:30:46 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10516 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10516#When:13:23:24Z A complex custody dispute has come before an Israeli court, raising questions about the limits of legal parenthood as well as the rights of parents with disabilities. A disabled woman is taking state social services to court after being denied custody of a child she had conceived by surrogacy. Read more...]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 13:23:24 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10515 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10515#When:14:22:47Z Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 14:22:47 GMT Newsletter http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10509 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10509#When:12:32:37Z Of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, about 100 are on a hunger strike. About 20 are being force-fed, according to the New York Times. About 40 medical staff have arrived to ensure that the detainees are fed. Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 12:32:37 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10508 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10508#When:02:51:53Z India and China are not the only countries with lop-sided sex ratios due to sex-selective abortions. Georgia, a former member of the USSR in the Caucasus with a population of about 4.5 million, has a distorted sex ratio at birth of 114 boys to 100 girls Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 02:51:53 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10507 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10507#When:02:08:33Z Euthanasia claimed its most famous victim last Saturday. At the age of 95, Belgian Nobel laureate Christian de Duve was killed with a lethal injection. He died in his home, surrounded by his four children. Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 02:08:33 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10506 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10506#When:01:24:59Z Two German economists have published in Science the results of an economic experiment which supports a pessimistic view of organ markets. Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 01:24:59 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10505 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10505#When:00:29:42Z Journalist Miriam Zoll has just released a personal account of her involuntary involvement with the reproductive technology industry, Cracked Open. Read more...]]> Sat, 11 May 2013 00:29:42 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10512 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10512#When:13:18:16Z The concept of 'wrongful birth' has suffered another defeat, this time in Australia. Read more...]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 13:18:16 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10511 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10511#When:13:18:16Z Poland's Justice Minster was sacked this week after accusing German scientists of importing Polish embryos for experiments. Read more...]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 13:18:16 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10514 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10514#When:13:13:40Z A media firestorm broke out last week after Harvard’s celebrity economic historian Niall Ferguson said that Keynes's views were affected by his homosexuality. Read more...]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 13:13:40 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10513 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10513#When:13:09:40Z An Australian health tourism company is offering a new package for couples seeking a sex-selective IVF. Read more...]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 13:09:40 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10510 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10510#When:12:52:58Z What do people mean when they make living wills? Read more...]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 12:52:58 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10504 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10504#When:13:06:17Z Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 13:06:17 GMT Newsletter http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10503 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10503#When:12:23:58Z In late February last year, two Italian academics working at Monash University in Australia flicked a match into a highly combustible pile of old abortion debates, caricatures of pointy-headed academics, news-hungry journalists and recycled protest posters about Peter Singer. Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 12:23:58 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10502 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10502#When:12:16:09Z Some bioethicists who feel at home in the utilitarian common room of the Journal of Medical Ethics described the imbroglio as an attack on academic freedom. Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 12:16:09 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10501 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10501#When:12:08:15Z Not everyone in the “pro-life” camp is singing from the same song sheet in the controversy over infanticide. In this month's Journal of Medical Ethics two leading foes of abortion debate the reasonableness of arguments for infanticide. Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 12:08:15 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10500 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10500#When:12:06:31Z The infanticide debate in the Journal of Medical Ethics has garnered comments from the grand old men of infanticide, the Australian Peter Singer and the American Michael Tooley. Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 12:06:31 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10499 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10499#When:12:02:32Z Dr Eduard Verhagen, a paediatrician at University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands, says that, in his experience, infanticide is sometimes preferable to second-trimestre abortion. Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 12:02:32 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10498 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10498#When:11:58:01Z Peter Singer supports free speech for foes of abortion Read more...]]> Sat, 04 May 2013 11:58:01 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10497 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10497#When:06:57:01Z Five people have been convicted of organ trafficking in Kosovo by the European Union court which runs the legal system in the quasi-independent territory. Read more...]]> Thu, 02 May 2013 06:57:01 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10496 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10496#When:05:35:43Z An unnamed woman in the UK has been jailed for five years after artificially inseminating her 14-year-old adopted daughter in order to get another child. Read more...]]> Thu, 02 May 2013 05:35:43 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10495 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/pointedremarks/view/10495#When:15:04:06Z Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:04:06 GMT Newsletter http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10494 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10494#When:13:17:51Z Here’s the bioethical angle on the Boston Marathon bombing Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:17:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10493 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10493#When:13:10:51Z Are we exploiting animals by relying on them for solace? Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:10:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10492 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10492#When:13:03:00Z Two IVF stories from opposite ends of the globe are a sobering reminder that “foetal reduction” remains a failsafe position in clinical practice. Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:03:00 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10490 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10490#When:12:59:51Z Prominent British writer and producer Samantha Brick has spoken of her devastating experience with IVF in a recent column in the Daily Mail. Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:59:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10489 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10489#When:09:58:51Z A feature story in the new online magazine Matter gives an exclusive account of how an American man found a surgeon in Asia who was willing to amputate his healthy leg. Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:58:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10488 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10488#When:09:52:51Z Utah has become the first state to allow prisoners, even prisoners on death row, to donate organs. Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:52:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10487 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10487#When:09:49:51Z Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have created bioengineered rat kidneys which successfully filter blood and produce urine. If the technique works with humans, it could do away with the need for donor kidneys. Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:49:51 GMT BioEdge http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10486 http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10486#When:09:45:51Z Fancy having your prescription data sold to pharmaceutical corporations? Read more...]]> Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:45:51 GMT BioEdge