A year ago, a Harvard study suggested that the medical dogma that women have a limited supply of eggs was wrong, exciting much comment in the media. Jonathan L. Tilly claimed that he could inject infertile mice with blood cells and that germ cells in the blood could become new eggs. This raised hopes that women might be able to overcome the age barrier for having children and that infertility due to chemotherapy could be overcome. Alas, a paper from another Harvard researcher disputes this in the journal Nature. In any case, many scientists had been sceptical of the revolutionary discovery. The review of Tilly's far-reaching claim found that his eggs could not develop into the mature eggs which are needed for a successful pregnancy. click here to read whole article and make comments

European Parliament: The European Parliament has approved funding for embryonic stem cell research. Although the funds will only be available to the three EU members which permit research on embryos at the moment, critics fear that it will put pressure on other countries to update their legislation. The various bills authorising the funding passed by slender majorities in the 732-seat parliament and they still have to be approved by the European Council. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano complained that Strasbourg had endorsed a "tragically utilitarian" approach towards the creation and destruction of human embryos. click here to read whole article and make comments

 An ethical adviser to the British Medical Association has firmly backed non-voluntary euthanasia for patients who are too ill to ask for death. Professor Len Doyal, an emeritus professor of medical ethics and a member of the BMA's ethics committee, writes in the new Royal Society of Medicine journal Clinical Ethics that dignity in dying sometimes means that doctors should kill their patients.

Debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide has vexed the UK for months. Supporters normally deny that legalisation would shove the country down the slippery slope towards euthanasia of the non- voluntary kind. However, Professor Doyal not only backs non- voluntary euthanasia, but argues that it is "morally wrong" to be silent about it out of political expedience. There has been no disavowal or reaction from the BMA, which last year withdrew its long-standing opposition to legalisation in favour of neutrality.

The crux of Professor Doyal's argument is that withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment like food… click here to read whole article and make comments

 The practice of selectively aborting girls is spreading from India and China to Canada as immigrant communities take root there. Normally the ratio of boy to girl births is 105 to 100. But according to an expos?n the magazine Western Standard, in several suburbs around Vancouver and Toronto, the ratio has risen to as high as 116 to 100 in recent years. "Since the communities... have seen hundreds of thousands of live births in the last decade, the number of missing daughters may be somewhere in the thousands," writes Andrea Mrozek.

Statisticians warn that the numbers are too limited to reach firm conclusions about the practice. Other factors may be contributing to the increasing skewed ratios. However, because abortion is such a politically sensitive issue, it is difficult to get access to the government statistics to establish exactly how widespread the practice is.

The magazine also claims that some hospitals do sex selective abortions. A leaked internal… click here to read whole article and make comments

 Harvard University has decided to become the first non-commercial institution in the US to attempt human embryo cloning. Researchers will focus on diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and blood disorders. All funding will come from private donations because of restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research imposed by US President George W. Bush.

Although the decision was made after two years of discussion amongst eight institutional review boards at five institutions, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers anticipated criticism of Harvard's ethics. "While we understand and respect the sincerely held beliefs of those who oppose this research, we are equally sincere in our belief that the life-and-death medical needs of countless suffering children and adults justifies moving forward," he said. The New York Times praised the decision as "bold moves made after intense soul- searching".

Not everyone was so congratulatory. A stem cell biologist delivered a broadside in the Boston Globe. Associate Professor James L. Sherley, of the Massachusetts Institute… click here to read whole article and make comments

American institutional review boards are drowning in paperwork and the resulting frustration could "alienate some researchers enough to turn them into scofflaws", says an editorial in Science. IRBs were established after the 1979 Belmont report to protect human subjects in potentially risky research. But after a quarter of a century, IRBs are being "overwhelmed by a focus on procedures and documentation at the expense of thoughtful consideration of the difficult ethical questions surrounding the welfare of human subjects," writes a team from the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign.

This "obsession" with paperwork could undermine the protection of human subjects, comment the authors of the editorial, if IRBs get a reputation as "ethics police". "It will be a sad day if scholars come to see human protection in research as the source of frustrating delays and expensive paperwork." click here to read whole article and make comments

The British doctor who sparked an international health scare by claiming the standard measles, mumps, rubella vaccine was linked to autism may be charged with serious professional misconduct. Dr Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist at Royal Free Hospital in London, published this sensational claim in 1998 in The Lancet with 12 other doctors. His conclusions were based on a study of only 12 children. Against fierce opposition from the medical establishment, he promoted his theory and became a media favourite.

The result was a bitter controversy, a split with his colleagues, and a steep drop in UK vaccinations. In some parts of London it fell to 61%. Perhaps as a consequence, a 13-year-old unvaccinated boy died near Manchester of measles -- the first in 14 years in the UK. A minor epidemic of mumps in the US is being blamed on a Briton who visited the state of Iowa.

In 2004 Dr Wakefield's case was further clouded when it emerged that… click here to read whole article and make comments

Some American patients get priority on organ donor lists by signing up on several lists, creating a system in which the wealthy have a better chance of getting a transplant. Critics complain that the practice, known as "multiple listing", is unfair to the poor, and expensive for Medicare, which normally pays most of the costs. People donate organs with the idea that everyone will have a fair shot at getting them," says bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "I think it diminishes people's willingness, especially the poor, to become donors."

For the purpose of organ transplants, the United States is divided into 11 regions. Organs normally stay within a region and go to patients depending on how sick they are and how long they have been waiting. But patients can better their luck by signing up on two or more lists. The poor can hardly afford this, as it involves extra air fares. Duplicating expensive blood tests and medical checkups also costs the… click here to read whole article and make comments

A family dispute over the fate of a brain-damaged Adelaide man echoes the bitter controversy over Terri Schiavo. Mark Leigep, 31, a single father, was badly injured in a car smash on March 26 and is now in a so-called persistent vegetative state. His mother asked for his feeding tube to be removed, but he survived for three days before senior staff reversed the order. It turns out, however, that his mother, Joanne Dunn, had abandoned Mark and his brother Brian at an early age to their paternal grandparents and since then has had little to do with him. Brian, on the other hand, hopes that his brother will recover and says that she has no right to turn off his life support. He plans to apply to become his brother's legal guardian. click here to read whole article and make comments

The parents of a mentally ill Czech woman are suing a hospital after she died in a controversial caged bed. An estimated 700 patients are being kept in caged beds in the Czech Republic and about 100 in neighbouring Slovakia. Until January the parents of Vera Musilova had cared for their daughter at home. When her condition deteriorated, they admitted her to the Bohnice psychiatric hospital in Prague. They were shocked to find her in a caged bed, naked, dirty, dehydrated, and with her head shaved.

The director of Bohnice, Mr Ivan David, defended the caged bed policy, arguing that they were needed to pacify extremely aggressive patients when medication did not work. However, Jan Fiala, of a Hungary-based disability rights group which is preparing a lawsuit against the hospital, says that several patients have died in the beds and other have been injured. He says that the practice is grotesque, degrading and torturous" and will only make their condition… click here to read whole article and make comments