A British court still needs to decide whether to authorize the sterilization, at her mother’s own request, of a mentally disabled woman (see e.g. here and here). Reading only the headlines and initial paragraphs of the news entries devoted …

The “news” is that a 61 year old from Illinois served as a surrogate mother for her daughter’s son, carrying in her womb the embryo created using her daughter’s and her son-in-law’s egg and sperm. Anyone shocked? I guess no, and this is ins…

An article appeared last Wednesday on the “Daily Mail” referred to a report of the Healt Service Ombudsman concerning to the treatment given to the elderly in British Hospitals. The report recounted several cases of abuse and ne…

The seven-year period within which member states must implement the EU directive on herbal medicine ends next month. In the UK, the government last week announced that herbalists will now be regulated by the Health Professionals Council (HP…

The government is making plans to lift the ban on gay partnership ceremonies in religious buildings. Among the first to apply to perform such ceremonies are expected to be Quakers, and Liberal Jews. However, it is apparently “not clear whet…

In the current issue of Science Translational Medicine, Oxford neuroscientists in Irene Tracy’s lab have published a new study of the placebo effect with dramatic results. In their experiment, test subjects were subjected to pain in t…

When a lane is closed off for repairs, are you that driver who ignores all the  “change lane” signs as you zoom past the stationary line of traffic, then cut in at the very last moment? Are you someone who loves to go to the bea…

When is a little dioxin too much dioxin? Dioxin is a persistent organic pollutant (POP) that accumulates in the food chain and is highly toxic to living systems. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants commits signatories …

by Anders Sandberg Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington goes to war against bad science: Selective use of science ‘as bad as racism or homophobia’.  He argued: ‘We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of racism. We …

Last Sunday’s Melbourne Herald-Sun published an article reporting Julian Savulescu’s argument for enhancing the intelligence of babies through genetic modification. The argument turns on the social benefits of enhancement. Economic modeling…