A new worry has hit parents: digital drugs. The idea is that sounds can affect brain states, so by listening to the right kind of sounds desired brain states can be induced - relaxation, concentration, happiness, PMS relief or why not hallucinations? Apparently "idosers" walk around high on sound. Just the right thing for a summer moral panic - kids, computers, drugs and pseudoscience.
Continue reading "Silicon dreams: digital drugs and regulation" »
In the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, doctors from Denver reported on three controversial cases of heart transplantation from newborn infants. These cases are striking for several reasons. They were examples of so-called ‘donation after cardiac death’ (DCD), an increasingly frequent source of organs for transplantation, but done very rarely in newborns. They are controversial because the transplanted organs were hearts that were ‘restarted’ in recipients after they had stopped in the donor. Transplant surgeons waited only a relatively short period after the donor’s heart had stopped (75 seconds) before starting the organ retrieval process. These transplants raise serious questions about the diagnosis and definition of death.
Continue reading "When the heart stops: harvesting organs from the newly (nearly) dead " »
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 and 100-year-olds able to have children
- Embryos created from stem cells, increasing the ease of embryo research and genetic engineering of children
- … with the resulting greater availability of embryos making it easier to create cloned humans
- Artificial wombs, enabling babies to develop outside the mother’s body
- … which, some worry, could become compulsory as an alternative to abortion, or to avoid premature birth or fetal alcohol syndrome
- ‘Genetic cassettes’ implanted in embryos to counteract the effects of inherited diseases
- Increase in litigation following evidence that IVF babies may later suffer adverse effects from the environment in which they were grown as embryos
Continue reading "Reproductive science: is there something we're missing?" »
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 drugs that remove heavy metals from the blood. It's based on a the theory - unsupported by conventional science - that mercury in vaccines triggers autism.
Chelation therapy is widely used, but its benefits and effects are not well understood. The NIMH have therefore argued that there is a "public health imperative" to test the drug. But opponents claim that any such study would be unethical, since the quality of the trial is likely to be poor, and any results - especially negative ones - would be unlikely to alter the behaviour of parents who support the therapy.
Continue reading "Testing alternative therapies" »
In Australia recently, there has been heated debate about a series of
photographs of naked and semi-naked children by photographer Bill
Henson. The debate was reignited this month when Art Monthly, a major
Australian art magazine, decided to put a picture of a nude 6 year old
girl on its front cover. Politicians have attacked the photographs and
the magazine’s editors
Continue reading "Art or child porn?" »
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 no longer conceived, and women use frozen sperm, or artificial gametes to reproduce.
Continue reading "What’s wrong with the hermaphrodite world?" »
It has been reported in the newspapers today that in many parts of the country smokers have been refused access to in-vitro-fertilisation treatment. This appears to be contrary to the national evidence-based guidelines for fertility treatment. Is this unfair?
Continue reading "Discrimination and infertility treatment" »
A medicine for children that has been shown to be effective in a wide range of conditions is to be released soon in the UK and is already available in the US. It has been exhaustively studied, and has no side effects. It is extremely cheap to produce, and will be readily available. Yet GPs, academics and ethicists are up in arms about the new drug. What is all the fuss about?
Continue reading "A pill-full of sugar helps the medicine go down" »
Abortion remains a crime for most Australians. Laws are inconsistent between states. In contrast, long ago the UK Abortion Act 1967 repealed and replaced its antiquated legal statutes on which much of Australian abortion law is still based.
The government in the state of Victoria asked the Law Reform Commission to provide legislative options to decriminalize abortion. Law reform is expected later this year.
Continue reading "Abortion for Fetal Abnormality?" »
Jim Todd reports about his measles experience at BBC News. A number of years back such a report about how a case of adult measles feels would have been absurd, since so many had suffered it. A few years back it would have been absurd because measles was rare thanks to vaccination. But now, due to a reduction in vaccinations, the risk of measles is rising. Health chiefs in London are stepping up the vaccination program to try to stave off the rising number of cases. The key problem is that in many areas of London only 62% of toddlers
have been immunised, compared to the 95% that is needed to achieve herd immunity.
Vaccinated people act as firebreaks: if enough people are immune to a
disease long chains of infection become improbable, and epidemics do
not occur. Given this, should measles vaccination be compulsory?
Continue reading "Preventing Polka-Dot Problems: Should Measles Vaccination be Compulsory?" »
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