This from the bioethics.net blog: A woman’s 21-year-old son dies in a Texas bar fight. The bereaved mom wants the son’s clearly virile and tenacious genes to live on in the next generation and fights to have his sperm collected and stored so that someone may carry his seed. She says, on the one hand, […]
Category: In the News
Sperm Banks and Product Liability
The New Scientist is carrying this rather peculiar story: a sperm bank in New York is being sued under product liability law by a girl who claims that her conception was from “faulty” sperm. The 13-year-old girl named in the suit has Fragile X syndrome; apparently, she does not have to show that the sperm bank […]
Drug Policy Transformed?
I’ve spent the morning looking over the Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s consultation paper, A Comparison of the Cost-Effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, which was published today. The full report is available as a .pdf here (note the filesize – at 445k, it’s HUGE) – or there’s a summary on Transform’s blog, here. […]
Suicide Documentary on the BBC
In case you missed it, there’s a little under a week left to listen again to last night’s Radio 4 documentary on the Swiss assisted suicide movement: follow this link. For what it’s worth, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a little scare-mongering and tabloid. (So the mentally ill or non-terminal might be able to […]
Failed Asylum Seekers and the NHS
The Court of Appeal has ruled today (Monday) that those who have not resided lawfully in the UK for at least a year are not entitled to receive free health service treatment. Lord Justice Ward said: “Failed asylum seekers ought not to be here. They should never have come here in the first place and […]
A Big Week for Little Cells
Stem cells have been in the news rather a lot lately. President Obama has, it’s currently being widely reported, lifted Dubya’s restrictions on human embryonic stem-cell research, much to the chagrin of some, and the delight of others. (Interestingly enough, among the worriers we find a surprisingly large number of British commentators who point out […]
Terry Pratchett on Assisted Dying
The creator of Discworld writes to The Times: There may have to be […] legal requirements that should be satisfied, but they should not be such that they become a barrier to the patient’s wishes. […]
It’s the End of the Father as we Know Him (and I Feel Fine)
It’s another blow to fatherhood, the traditional family, and all things good and pure, squeals the Daily Heil.* What could raise such spleen? By the looks of it, it’s Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008), although the paper doesn’t have the good grace to provide a link. This piece of legislation reduces […]
Purdy and the Role of the Law
Having spent a chunk of my weekend reading the Purdy ruling, one of the things that it seems to illustrate is the way in which ethics and law sometimes seem to come apart. The ruling notes that Purdy and Puente are faced with “an impossible dilemma”, and that “although Mr Puente would be willing to […]
Update on Purdy
Debbie Purdy has lost her case for clarification of the law on assisted suicide. Details are all over your preferred news source: the BBC site seems to have crashed at the moment. I’ll post something more thought-through later. […]