Oregon is currently the scene of a controversy about the sale of so-called “suicide kits” or “helium hoods” (see here and here). These kits are sold by mail by a two-person company called The Gladd Group; one of its owners is reported to be…

Mortality rates for common forms of cardiac surgery have been made public in the United Kingdom for several years now. This information is individualised. If you are considering having a particular surgeon perform a common form of cardiac o…

Last month, doctors in France announced the arrival of the country’s first so-called ‘saviour sibling’. Born to parents of Turkish origin, Umut Talha (Turkish for ‘our hope’) was conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) using preimpla…

by Dominic Wilkinson If a patient’s family refuse to allow withdrawal of breathing machines should doctors provide long-term support in an intensive care unit for a patient who is clinically brain dead? Should doctors provide heart-lung byp…

Much of the ongoing debate about Libya has rested on what I believe to the mistaken philosophical premise that the United States, or any other potential intervening party, becomes more morally responsible for the fate of Libya if it chooses…

Midsomer Murders is an ITV drama based around English village life: it pulls in millions of viewers and has been running for over a decade.   The co-creator of the series has just been suspended for saying he deliberately kept ethnic minori…

Right now, by sheer chance I am sitting in the same chair, in the same place in Stockholm, as when I first heard the news about the Chernobyl accident. But today it is the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan that has had an explosion.There are…

Despite the protestations of Albert Sydner, the father of a young soldier killed in Iraq, the American Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the Westboro Baptist’s right to picket military funerals. The religious group has demonstrated at 20…

According to a recent study, around 350 patients die in Australian hospitals every two weeks. The figure would be expected to be much higher in the UK. Prof Jeff Richardson, from Monash University, appropriately said, “The issue of ad…

Not long ago a study on British veterinarian suicide rates [Bartram, D.J. and Baldwin, D.S., ‘Veterinary surgeons and suicide: influences, opportunities and research directions’, Veterinary Record 162(2): 36-40] received a bit of media atte…