EUTHANASIA: Women most often victims American research indicates that two-thirds of people killed in "mercy killings" are women. Associate Prof Silvia Sara Canetto, of Colorado State University, says that "many women do not have the resources, the sense of entitlement or the power and freedom to make the choice they desire, especially when they are sick and disabled." Most mercy killings involved a woman and a man and in 70% of the cases, it was the man who did the killing. In 85% of the cases surveyed, no one knew whether the victim asked to be killed.
A nurse involved in end-of-life issues, Nancy Valko, supported Canetto's claim that women are at risk in euthanasia. "When a man was dying, it was not unusual to see the wife and even ex-wives -- as well as other family at the bedside. In contrast, it was just about as common to see a dying woman who was divorced and alone." -- HealthScout News, Oct 17
A jury in Fremantle WA took only 10 minutes to acquit a doctor and the brother and sister of one of his patients of a charge of euthanasia. A 48-year-old woman, Freeda Patricia Hayes, died on February 4 last year in their presence just hours after she begged another doctor to end her suffering. All three accused had pleaded not guilty. -- Canberra Times, Oct 24
A British court has ruled that the husband of a terminally-ill woman cannot be allowed to kill her without facing criminal penalties. Diane Pretty contends that denying her the opportunity to commit suicide is a breach of her human rights. However, three High Court judges ruled that the right to human dignity was not the right to die with dignity, but the right to enjoy as dignified a life as possible. An agreement not to prosecute her husband would be a "licence to commit crime", they said. -- BBC News, Oct 18
Euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke is campaigning against Victorian MP Kevin Andrews in the Federal seat of Menzies using funds donated by his supporters across the country. -- press release from the "Put Andrews Last" campaign. top
ADULT STEM CELLS: Striking advances In many ways adult stem cell research is more advanced clinically and commercially than embryonic stem cell research, says the magazine Technology Review, published by MIT. "Recent animal studies emerging from academic labs have underscored the major take- home lesson about adult stem cells in the past year or so: these cells are much more biologically versatile and capable of adopting many more cellular fates, than anyone previously thought."
Experiments suggest that the development of adult stem cells is determined to an enormous degree by the local environment. Adult stem cells are as flexible as embryonic stem cells, says Neil Theise, of New York University. "They seem to be part of a natural repair system, so that when you damage a tissue, they come from the marrow in great numbers," says Darwin J. Prockop, of Tulane University.
A Baltimore company called Osiris says that it has discovered that certain types of stem cells secrete a factor that actively inhibits the immune system, making the commercial preparation of "universal cells" possible. It has already achieved promising results with adult stem cells which heal damaged heart muscle in pigs and regenerate cartilage in the knees of goats.
Adult stem cells are more limited in the range of tissues into which they can develop than embryonic stem cells. However, this may make them safer and involve fewer side effects, say some scientists. "The adult stem cell has somewhat less capacity to do what it wants, but it may be somewhat more programmed to do the right thing," said one biotech researcher.
Why hasn't the promise of adult stem cells been better publicised? Technology Review blames politics. "Among many researchers, it has become almost politically incorrect to speak with unguarded enthusiasm about adult stem cell research -- not because the research isn't exciting, but because such praise has inevitably provided ammunition to opponents of embryonic stem cell research." -- Technology Review, November top
EMBRYOS: Reproduction without sperm Researchers in the US claim that they have discovered a way to make unfertilised eggs grow into early embryos without sperm, a process known as parthenogenesis. A report in the London Times said that these embryos would be destroyed for their stem cells, but that that in any case they would be incapable of developing into children. However, Dr John Fleming, of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in Adelaide, asserted that there is no reason why clones produced with this technique could not live into adulthood. -- London Times, Oct 23; Adelaide Advertiser, Oct 23 top
SPARE EMBRYOS: Couples change their minds Couples who undergo IVF often change their minds about what should be done with extra frozen embryos, according to an American study. More than 70% of the couples surveyed felt differently after IVF, many of them favouring keeping the embryos frozen. Only 10% were willing to donate embryos for research. -- Reuters, Oct 23top
SEX SELECTION: UK considering IVF "gender variety" The Scotland on Sunday newspaper says that the British regulator of IVF, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, may soon allow parents to pick male or female children purely to balance their families. This follows the decision by American IVF doctors to lift a ban on sex selection for social reasons. -- Scotland on Sunday, Oct 21 top
CHINA: Organs harvested on death row Executed Chinese prisoners are being stripped of their organs for transplants into wealthy patients in operations that bring Chinese hospitals tens of millions of dollars a year, says the New York Times. There were more than 5,000 reported kidney transplants last year in China, which cost US$6,000 for Chinese residents and between US$10,000 and $50,000 for foreigners. Prisoners are said to be the only source for transplants. China has no clear guidelines on brain death and sometimes organs are harvested from prisoners who are still alive.
There is no shortage of organs. China executes more prisoners than all other countries combined -- an estimated 10,000 people in 2001. Prisoners are not asked for their consent and families are rarely told. Under Chinese law, the procedure is legal on unclaimed bodies -- but they are normally unclaimed because most families cannot afford to pay large fees.
Military and paramilitary hospitals dominate the harvesting and transplanting business because they have close ties with court officials who supervise executions. The number of transplant operations has soared in the last decade and modern centres have opened around the country. -- New York Times, Oct 18 top
WRONGFUL BIRTH: Storm in France over damages for crippled child The French equivalent of the High Court has ruled that damages should be paid to the parents of a child and to the child because he had not been aborted. A doctor failed to diagnose the German measles when the mother of 18-year-old Nicolas Perruche was pregnant with thim. He was born deaf and blind and with a weak heart. She says that she would have aborted him if she had known.
Although the court avoided using the terms "wrongful birth" or "quality of life, its decision has been widely criticised. An advocacy group for the handicapped found the decision so offensive that it plans to sue the court. An early advocate of abortion, Dr Jacques Milliez, head of gynaecology at the Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris, said that "this is the first time that doctors have been condemned for not having killed". A professor of family law at the University of Bordeaux, Jean Hauser, said that if doctors were held responsible for the condition of the babies they deliver, "they will be encouraged to recommend abortions at the first suspicion of abnormality". -- New York Times, Oct 21top
ABORTION: Abortions after 24 weeks not rare in Australia The author of a survey of specialists in detecting abnormalities in unborn children claims that at least 84 abortions at or after 24 weeks had been carried out in Australia in the last three years. Julian Savulescu, of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, told the World Congress on Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology that the real figures are probably several times higher. Killing a 28-week-old foetus is a crime in Victoria, although with current medical technology, foetuses of 24 weeks are viable. Of the ultrasonologists Savulescu surveyed, 64% said that they would agree to carry out a late abortion in some circumstances. About 10% would do it under any circumstances. -- The Age, Oct 25
Ultrasound specialists want Medicare to subsidise a screening test for Down syndrome. Nuchal translucency tests can detect 80% of Down syndrome children at 11 to 13 weeks of pregnancy. Once the condition has been confirmed with other tests, the children will normally be aborted. "Poor women can't get access to this, and I think that's unfair," says Melbourne obstetrician Lachlan de Crespigny told the ABC. -- The Age, Oct 24; ABC Health Dimensions, Oct 23
At the same congress, US foetal diagnosis and therapy expert Dr Ruben Quintero, said that the lives of hundreds of unborn children could be saved by operating on them in the womb. He has performed the surgery on hundreds of children. -- Australian, Oct 24top
HUMAN RIGHTS: Ban on reproductive cloning A bioethics committee of 52 science ministers at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris has reaffirmed its opposition to reproductive cloning and insisted that the human genome should not be used for financial gain. It also called for an update of the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights. "Bioethics is today a key issue in the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms," it said. -- UNESCO press release, Oct 24top