A Google search for “London+riots+bioethics” yielded nothing of any value. But future discussions about how to respond to mass hooliganism may well require bioethicists. At least that is what a debate between two leading utilitarian bioethicists in the journal Bioethics suggests.

The topic is “enhancement”, the effort to extend artificially the capabilities of the human body and brain. Mild enhancement includes the consumption of alcohol and caffeine, but enthusiasts look forward to using neuroscience, biotechnology and nanotechnology to endow humans with “superhuman” powers. It is “one of the most significant areas of bioethical interest in the last twenty years”, according to John Harris, one of the disputants.

In view not only of the London riots, but of wars and genocides, which seem to be an ineradicable blight on human history, wouldn’t moral enhancement be a good idea? The notion is more radical than it seems. The traditional view of morality assumes… click here to read whole article and make comments

China’s Ministry of Health will crack down on illegal human organ harvesting and transplants, a statement on the ministry’s website said last week. Due to a serious shortage of donated organs for transplants, some mainland hospitals have turned to illegal organ trading. According to China Daily, Vice-Minister of Health Huang Jiefu says that this has seriously tarnished the image of the industry and undermined its development.

“The coming system held by the ministry would be open to qualified transplant centers nationwide and the general public to receive tip-offs on illegal practices, primarily the living organ trades,” said Xia Qiang, director of the liver surgery and transplant department of Renji Hospital in Shanghai, who was invited by the ministry to participate in a conference about the new plan on July 15. At the meeting, stakeholders discussed a registration system for organ transplant surgeons. ~ China Daily, Aug 4

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A new, highly accurate, blood test can determine a baby’s sex as early as 7 weeks into the pregnancy. Experts say that it could lead to more widespread use -- parents worried about gender-linked diseases, the curious and people contemplating selecting their children’s sex.

The test, which analyses fetal DNA found in the mother’s blood, is noninvasive, unlike amniocentesis and other procedures that carry risks of miscarriage. The news was published online this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Other tests have been available to consumers in pharmacies and online for a few years, but they saw limited use because their accuracy was unclear. European doctors now routinely use tests to help expectant parents whose offspring are at risk for rare gender-linked disorders. However, US doctors generally have not prescribed the tests because they are unregulated and medical labs are not yet federally certified to use them.

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Doctors at Zurich University Children’s Hospital have performed surgery on fetuses still inside their mothers’ wombs. The operations – the first of their kind outside the US – were conducted on unborn children with spina bifida. The condition can lead to paralysis of the lower limbs and sometimes to mental disability. Many times foetuses with the condition are aborted. The two successful prenatal surgeries were conducted late 2010 and halfway through this year, Martin Meuli, director of surgery said.

A hospital statement described the procedure as a major step for prenatal surgery in Europe. It is very challenging for the surgeons: two distinct patients, the mother and the fetus, have to be anaesthetised, monitored and operated on at the same time. ~ Swissinfo.ch, Jul 28

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One of the many ideological battlegrounds in bioethics is whether children are harmed if they are the offspring of sperm donors. A well-publicised report last year from the Institute for American Values found that “young adults conceived through sperm donation are hurting more, are more confused, and feel more isolated from their families. They fare worse than their peers raised by biological parents on important outcomes such as depression, delinquency, and substance abuse.” It claimed to be the “first-ever” report on the welfare of donor-conceived adults, but it was severely criticized by the infertility industry.  

A new report in the journal Human Reproduction gives a more positive spin to the experience of being donor conceived. It claims to be “the largest survey to date of donor-inseminated (DI) offspring”. Its message is that the children of lesbians and single mothers have few problems with being donor conceived because they were told about… click here to read whole article and make comments

Doctors and scientists who add their names to medical articles they have not written should be charged with professional misconduct and fraud, Canadian legal experts say. The proposals aim at stamping out the dubious business of “guest authorship”, where research papers composed by pharmaceutical companies or industry-sponsored medical writers are passed off as the work of influential academics.

In the worst cases, doctors receive payments or other incentives to endorse articles they have hardly read. The medical profession has long been concerned about guest authorship and ghostwriting, but problem has become more prominent in recent years as the extent to which drug companies use the tactic as a marketing ploy has become clear.

Articles written by industry with minimal input from guest authors have been published in leading journals on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Vioxx (an anti-inflammatory drug that was recalled amid safety fears), Neurontin (used in pain relief), antidepressants, and the… click here to read whole article and make comments

 

The American surrogacy industry has been battered by the news that a leading broker pleaded guilty to charges of baby selling. Theresa M. Erickson, Esq is a 43-year-old San Diego lawyer with a high profile in “non-traditional, third-party family building”.

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Apparently she had lodged fraudulent documents with the court and falsified information about the child’s parentage for the adopting couples.

She and two partners, women from Maryland and Las Vegas, would take surrogates to the Ukraine where they were impregnated with embryos from donor sperm and eggs. After the women reached the second trimester, she would offer the babies for adoption, with the excuse that the original parents had backed out of the surrogacy agreement. American couples would pay her between US$100,000 and $150,000. Surrogates were paid about $40,000. It appears that she earned only about $70,000 after selling a dozen babies.… click here to read whole article and make comments

China has vowed to strengthen measures to prevent sex-selective abortions and close a widening gender gap in a country that already has tens of millions more boys than girls. This has arisen in the form of a plan for childhood development through 2020, and does not give specifics. Non-medical use of ultrasound tests and abortion of fetuses based on gender will be banned. Because of the one-child policy and traditional preference for boys, sex-selective abortion has created a male-female ratio at birth in China of about 119 males to 100 females, with the gap as high as 130 males for every 100 females in some provinces. The natural ration is about 105 to 100. ~ China Daily, Aug 8 click here to read whole article and make comments

An Israeli court has allowed the parents of a dead 17-year-old woman to remove her eggs for future use. This is the first case of its kind in Israel, possibly the first in the world. Hen Aida Ayish, was critically injured in a car accident a fortnight ago. She was taken to Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava, and a week later doctors declared her brain-dead.

With the consent of Ayish’s family her other organs saved the lives of four patients. But the family’s second request was denied. Bizarrely, medical personnel said that the family wanted the eggs to be fertilised with the sperm of another dead body. This definitely would have been a world first: a baby whose father and mother both died before she was even conceived. The hospital declined.

Ayish’s family did not explain why they sought the egg extraction. The court has only allowed the extraction of the eggs, but… click here to read whole article and make comments

Bishops, editors and securities regulators may not be the only ones to lose jobs for failing to detect scoundrels in their ranks. Now a committee of the House of Commons in the UK has proposed that doctors be deregistered if they fail to report erring colleagues.

Senior doctors and clinical team leaders in hospitals would be most accountable, but there would be “questions asked of everybody,” said Stephen Dorrell MP, chair of the health committee.

“Every practising doctor and nurse knows that in addition to their obligation to care for their patients, they have an obligation as professionals to report to their professional body any concerns they have about the quality of care being delivered by their colleagues as a result of what they know or should have known,” said Mr Dorrell. “We look to the [General Medical Council] to ensure that failure to act is regarded as a serious… click here to read whole article and make comments