The BBC yesterday reported that the government is looking into calls to remove the ban on creating human-animal hybrid embryos using cells from dying children. As things stand the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Bill being consider…

However it is likely in the not-too-distant future that we will be able to identify dietary supplements that enhance our health and not just prevent disease. If we take the wellbeing of members of our community seriously there is good reaso…

The Guardian, Times and BBC are today reporting that National Heath Service funding for homoeopathy is on the decline. A survey conducted by Pulse has found that only 37% percent of the UK’s primary care trusts are still funding homoe…

When our biological make-up renders us insufficiently suited for the way the world is, technology offers us a choice: we can either make ourselves better suited to the way the world is, or make the world better suited to the way we are. A …

      Last Friday’s issue of Science contained a paper announcing the creation of a synthetic chromosome by a team of scientists headed up by the biologist and entrepreneur Craig Venter. Venter is a very controversial fi…

The price of strong egalitarianism in health-care is high.

Earlier this month, Gordon Brown, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, voiced his support for a presumed consent system for post-death organ donation in the UK. At present, organs may be procured from a dead body without the family’s cons…

The distribution of research funds is clearly not based on purely objective criteria. Most countries have different ways of how to deal with this issue – all face different, but serious problems. Bruce Knuteson (MIT) has developed a formula…

Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm (currently reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events) recently suggested that elite athletes might have an obligation to implant chips or carry GPS transmitters in orde…

Research published this week in the British Medical Journal shows that babies born by elective caesarean section are more likely to have breathing trouble after birth. This is especially the case for babies who are mildly premature (1 to 3 …