Nature reports that in response to analysis done by bioethicist Robert Streiffer (and published in the Hastings Center Report), Stanford University may withdraw the use for research of several of its publicly funded stem cell lines because …

House prices have been falling quickly in both the US and, more recently, the UK. Newspaper reports tend to use negative language to refer to this fall. For example, todays edition of The Independent says: Today’s gloomy data, which i…

Climate change will impact the well-being of future generations, directly by, for example, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heavy storms. It will have also indirect impacts on human heath – via cardiovascu…

Drug scandals again tarnish the Tour de France. Last week three riders, Spaniards Manuel Beltrain and Moises Duenas and Italian climber Riccardo Ricco, winner of two mountain stages, failed tests for the banned performance enhancer EPO. Thi…

Yesterday the world celebrated the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the ex-Bosnian Serb leader who has twice been indicted by the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, and is charged with – among other atrocities — ordering his forces to ki…

The Guardian reports that the world is not on track for meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal to halt and reverse the increase in Malaria by 2015. While the funding for malaria prevention has increased up to $1 bn per annum, this is no…

Thirty years after the first test-tube baby, Nature asks various experts for their views on what the next thirty years of reproductive medicine will bring. Some of the more startling predictions are: No more infertility, with both children …

The journal Science is today reporting on a controversial plan by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to test an alternative treatment for autism on children. The treatment, known as chelation therapy, involves the use of drug…

Much of the discussion has focussed on the question of whether such photographs are ‘art’, on the intent of the artist, and on the question of whether the children photographed are capable of consent. Defenders of the photographs have point…

Making headlines last week, Melbourne bioethicist Rob Sparrow argued that in order to create the best future for their children, parents should select only girl children or hermaphrodites. He imagined a “post-sex” world in which males are …