^{The three doctors on trial / Belga} 

The criminal trial of three Belgian doctors for assisting in an allegedly illegal euthanasia of a woman in 2010 is under way. It is the first time that doctors have been charged with an unlawful death since the legalisation of euthanasia in 2002. The accused have been named in the media: the doctor who administered the lethal injection, Joris van Hove; the general practitioner, Frank de Greef; and the psychiatrist, Godelieve Thienpont.

The parents and two sisters of Tine Nys have succeeded, after nine years of harassing the bureaucracy, in having charges laid.… MORE

It is inevitable that bioethics intersects with politics. This week US President Donald Trump was the main attraction at the 47th March for Life in Washington DC. This is an annual event commemorating Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which identified a right to abortion in the Constitution.

The President delivered an unabashed endorsement of the pro-life movement, although, as the media were quick to point out, he had once been firmly pro-choice. He framed his attack pro-life rhetoric in religious terms, no doubt to bolster his credentials with Evangelicals and Catholics.

Unborn children have never… MORE

^{Michelle Reaves and her family / GoFundMe} 

In a tragic reminder that surrogacy is not only morally fraught, but dangerous, a San Diego wife and mother of two has died giving birth to a baby for another couple.

Michelle Reaves was acting as a surrogate mother for the second time for the same family when she died on January 15. Apparently she was the victim of a rare complication, amniotic fluid embolism. The baby survived.

Michelle and her husband Chris already had two children. Although they had agreed that their family was big enough, Michelle wanted… MORE

The debate over abortion is not just about women’s reproductive rights. It is also about science. And none of these debates is more heated than foetal pain. Many contend that the upper time limit for abortion should be 20 weeks, as from then on, it can feel pain.

Mother Jones – not a scientific journal, mind you, but a benchmark for conventional thinking on the pro-choice side of the debate – says that this claim is “bunk”, or more politely, “scientifically dubious”. The Guttmacher Institute concurs. It says that the position of the American College of Obstetricians and… MORE

The Canadian province of Quebec will expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia to include people with severe and incurable mental illness, says Health Minister Danielle McCann. The guidelines will be drafted by the Quebec college of physicians.

Both the minister and the college believe that few people would be affected.

“We don’t expect many of these patients will qualify, because one of the other criteria that remains is to suffer from a disease that is not curable, which is not necessarily the case of all mental health situations,” said Dr. Yves Robert, the college’s secretary. “It will really be… MORE

^{Titania in love with Bottom, in A Midsummer Night's Dream / Edwin Landseer} 

The transhumanist impulse to supplement reasoning and will with technology is on display in a startling new book from two academics from Oxford University. In Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships, bioethicists Brian D. Earp and Julian Savulescu argue that biochemical interventions can strengthen relationships.

Their book builds a case for conducting research into "love drugs" and "anti-love drugs" and explores their ethical implications for individuals and society.

Scandalously, they contend, Western medicine tends to ignore the interpersonal effects of drug-based interventions.… MORE

^{The anatomical blueprint for a computer-designed organism and the living organism itself / Sam Kriegman, UVM}

A book is made of wood. But it is not a tree. The dead cells have been repurposed to serve another need.

Now a team of scientists has repurposed living cells—scraped from frog embryos—and assembled them into entirely new life-forms. These millimeter-wide "xenobots" can move toward a target, perhaps pick up a payload (like a medicine that needs to be carried to a specific place inside a patient)—and heal themselves after being cut.

"These are novel living machines," says Joshua Bongard, a… MORE

Scientists should be allowed to harvest sperm from dead donors, according to a new feature article published last week in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

The new essay – written by UK-based ethicists Dr Nathan Hodson (University of Leicester) and Dr Joshua Parker (Manchester's Wythenshawe Hospital) – defends an opt-in system of deceased sperm donation, whereby men would “[indicate] during life that they have a preference to donate sperm after death”. “Following death”, the authors stipulate, “sperm [would be] extracted, stored in fertility clinics and made available to those requiring donor sperm”.

Currently, doctors can collect sperm after death… MORE

^{Tine Nys (centre) with her two sisters} 

Next Tuesday commences an historic trial in Belgium – the first time that doctors have faced criminal charges over euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002. Three of them have been charged with illegal poisoning. If convicted, they face stiff prison sentences. The deceased was a 38-year-old woman, Tine Nys, who died in 2010.

Three doctors are in the dock: the doctor who administered the lethal injection, Nys’s former general practitioner and a psychiatrist. None of them has been identified publicly. Prosecutors allege that under the existing law Nys… MORE

A small hospice in British Columbia risks losing public funding over its continued opposition to Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), in a row that has attracted widespread media attention in Canada. 

MAiD has been legal in Canada since 2016, but the Irene Thomas Hospice in Delta, B.C., has refused to provide the service. Instead, patients seeking euthanasia have in the past been transferred to other hospices that will provide the procedure.

In November 2019, a newly elected board of the Delta Hospice Society reaffirmed the hospice’s policy on MAiD, stating that the philosophy… MORE