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Michael Cook
Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. He also writes a bioethics column for Australasian Science. |
Jolie’s Choice
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie was hailed this week for her bravery in revealing that she has had a preventative double mastectomy.
DSM-5 to be launched next week
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
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.
Are bioethicists a “priestly caste”?
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
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:
Is surgical castration is an ethical option for sex offenders?
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
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.
Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers are being force-fed
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
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.
Georgia searches for solutions to gendercide
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
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
Belgian Nobel laureate dies through euthanasia
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
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.
Bad news for fans of organ markets
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Two German economists have published in Science the results of an economic experiment which supports a pessimistic view of organ markets.
Cracked Open, a journalist's memoir of IVF
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Journalist Miriam Zoll has just released a personal account of her involuntary involvement with the reproductive technology industry, Cracked Open.
A blaze of controversy revisited
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
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.
An attack on academic freedom?
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
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.
“After-birth abortion” already exists in the Netherlands
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
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.
Five convictions for Kosovo organ trafficking
Michael Cook | 2 May 2013 |
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.
14-year-old girl forced to become pregnant with donor sperm
Michael Cook | 2 May 2013 |
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.
Did Tamerlan Tsarnaev turn to terror because he was punch drunk?
Michael Cook | 27 Apr 2013 |
Here’s the bioethical angle on the Boston Marathon bombing
Foetal reduction still needed in IVF
Michael Cook | 27 Apr 2013 |
Two IVF stories from opposite ends of the globe are a sobering reminder that “foetal reduction” remains a failsafe position in clinical practice.
Wannabee amputees going to Asia for secret surgery
Michael Cook | 27 Apr 2013 |
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.
Should prisoners donate organs?
Michael Cook | 27 Apr 2013 |
Utah has become the first state to allow prisoners, even prisoners on death row, to donate organs.
Australian think tank backs euthanasia
MIchael Cook | 27 Apr 2013 |
A new Australian think tank has issued a call for the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
First pregnancy from womb transplant announced
Michael Cook | 20 Apr 2013 |
Turkish doctors have announced that the first woman ever to receive a uterus from a deceased donor is two weeks pregnant with an IVF baby.
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| michael@bioedge.org