Crackdown on internet suicide
Promoting suicide through the internet will become a crime in Australia with fines of up to A$110,000, under new laws introduced by the Federal Government. Justice and Customs Minister Chris Ellison says that the internet should not be used to provide information "that encourages vulnerable individuals to take their own lives". The new measures would reinforce existing bans on importing and exporting documents relating to suicide kits.

The minister's office cited two expert studies from 1997 and 1999 which had studied the role of the internet in promoting suicidal behaviour. There are more than 10,000 web sites about suicide, some of which give instructions on how to kill oneself.

Euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke slammed the proposed legislation. He said that the government had already made it impossible for suffering people to obtain drugs to commit suicide and was now going to stop them from obtaining information about it. ~ Age, Apr 4,8; Cybercast News Service, Apr 7;

Scottish med students wink at cheating
A survey of Scottish medical students suggests that they often do not object to such forms of academic misconduct as forging a doctor's signature on assignments, passing off previously submitted work as new and plagiarism. In fact, many students became more tolerant of these abuses as they progress through their course. In Year 1, nearly all students thought that it was wrong to falsify physical exam information. By Year 4, only just over half thought so, although in Year 5, almost three out of four disapproved.

The authors of the study believe that the medical school environment may dehumanise students. "Could it be that medical schools, instead of developing integrity and honesty in students, may inadvertently be promoting dishonesty and a lack of integrity?" they ask. They also expressed a concern that the students' attitudes might end up as part of medical practice. ~ Journal of Medical Ethics, April  

Singaporean researcher sacked after ethics breach
The head of the Singaporean National Neuroscience Institute has been sacked for not obtaining informed consent from Parkinson's disease patients in a research project. British-trained epilepsy expert Simon Shorvon is alleged to have obtained blood samples from patients without informing their doctors and to have administered the drug L-Dopa to patients without their consent. His research was suspended in January.

A government inquiry has suggested that overworked hospital ethics committees could be partly to blame for the breaches. The ethics boards at the two major hospitals review more than 200 research applications a year, although they can probably handle only 100 properly. ~ AFP, Apr 8; Straits Times, Apr 9  

IVF contributes to rise in US premature births
Premature births have become the number one problem in obstetrics in the US, partly due to the increasing number of IVF twins and triplets and the growing number of women postponing childbirth until their 30s. Other factors are at work as well, including stress, infections, genetics, immune system problems and hormone levels. Prematurity has now surpassed birth defects as the leading cause of death in the first month of life.

Doctors are perplexed by the growing number of preemies. One in eight babies born in the US is premature, nearly twice as many as in most European countries. "Almost all the studies that have tried to reduce prematurity have failed. It's very discouraging," says Dr Robert L. Goldenberg, a leading researcher in the field. An American charity, The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, recently launched a five-year US$75 million campaign to solve the problem. ~ New York Times, Apr 8  

European parliament votes to ban all cloning
In a vote which has dismayed British supporters of embryo research, the European Parliament has voted for a ban on both reproductive cloning and research cloning by a margin of between 40 and 60 votes out of 626. However, before the ban becomes effective, the parliament must vote on it again and it must receive the backing of individual member states. The UK government has vowed to fight the ban.

At the moment, member states take very different stands on embryo research. Research cloning is legal in the UK, but in Germany extracting embryo stem cells from embryos is illegal (although importation of stem cell lines is not). Some countries have no regulations at all.

In a familiar division of opinion, supporters of stem cell research described their opponents as "the religious right", while the other side insisted that embryos are human beings. "From the moment of the conception you create all the individual characteristics of a person," said Marialiese Flemming, the Austrian Christian Democrat who tabled the amendments calling for a ban. ~ BBC, Apr 10; Cybercast News, Apr 10  

UK court clears the way for "designer baby"
A UK couple has won their fight to create a baby whose bone marrow cells will be used to save their chronically ill four-year- old son. Raj and Shahana Hashmi won the support of the UK Court of Appeals after a lower court ruled last December that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority did not have the right to authorise the creation of a "designer baby" using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. ~ AP, Apr 9

Before a judgement was handed down in her favour, Mrs Hashmi said that she would go to the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago for embryo screening if she could not do it legally in the UK. The same clinic reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine that it has successfully screened embryos to eliminate those with a gene for severe birth defect called holoprosencephaly which can cause mental retardation and facial disfigurement. It affects an estimated 1 in 10,000 live births, although sometimes the symptoms are mild.

For Dr Yuri Verlinsky, the Institute's founder and director, this new test confirms that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is a viable option for couples at risk of having a child with some sort of defect. "To me, freezing a six-celled embryo is better than aborting a fetus," he says. Dr Verlinsky is well-known for pushing the ethical standards of IVF to the limit. Last year he screened embryos for a woman who did not want her child to inherit her early-onset Alzheimer's gene. It was probably the first time that PGD had been used for an adult disease. ~ Chicago Tribune, Apr 10  

Record books open for oldest mother
A 65-year-old retired schoolteacher in India who has been married for 50 years has become the world's oldest mother. Her healthy 3kg boy was conceived through IVF using an egg from the woman's niece and sperm from her niece's husband. The average life expectancy for Indian women is only 63.

Doctors were initially reluctant, but yielded after Satyabhama Mahapatra and her husband Krishnachandra pleaded with them. "Even after all this time they still desperately wanted a child, because in India it's somehow shameful to have no offspring," said Dr Suresh Kumar Agrawal, of the Ashoka Super Speciality Women's Hospital. "These people, as old as my parents, were pleading and touching my feet as a mark of respect."

Pending verification of the mother's age, Dr Agrarwal plans to notify the Guinness Book of Records and its Indian counterpart, the Limca Book of Records. His own name has already been recorded in the Limca Book of Records for delivering five intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) babies in one hour in one day. ~ Hindustan Times, APR 10; BBC, APR 9  

US cloning company scratching for funds
Advanced Cell Technology, the American biotech which hit the headlines in 2001 for creating cloned human embryos, is struggling to keep afloat. ACT's CEO, Michael D. West, has had to stitch together many deals to finance his company's research into therapeutic uses of embryonic stem cells. Amongst them have been a US$1 million loan from ImClone Systems Inc, the New York biotech whose former CEO was disgraced in a highly publicised insider trading case and Robin Cook, the best-selling author of medical thrillers. "The difficult funding environment has slowed the progress of all cell therapy companies," says William Woodward, of Anthem Venture Partners, which has a small shareholding in ACT. "They're going to have to continue to raise funds because the science is going to take a while."
Robin Cook's latest novel, Seizure, appears to have germinated through his involvement with ACT. In what may be the world's first novel about embryonic stem cell research, a power-hungry Southern senator irrationally opposed to virtually all biotechnology confronts an ambitious stem cell scientist. The senator is fighting to ban all cloning technology, but when he develops Parkinson's disease, he secretly becomes a guinea pig for the new therapy with "horrifying" and "bizarre" results. A page-turner "torn from the headlines", burbles the blurb for the book, which will be released in July. ~ Boston Globe, Apr 9; Putnam press release  

IN BRIEF: Gene bank; James Watson; coma girl; fertility resort; Scottish sperm