Book Review: Ethical Problems and Genetics Practice
One of the difficulties in teaching medical students about the ethics of clinical genetics is that it's often hard to get them to appreciate the multitude of problems raised in everyday practice...
Dr Morven Shearer
BioNews Articles by Dr Morven Shearer
The far-stretching reach of Mississippi's personhood amendment
On 8 November the Mississippi electorate voted against an amendment to the Bill of Rights in their state Constitution which would have redefined life as beginning at the moment of fertilisation — the so-called 'personhood amendment' (Proposition 26)...
Right to life vs right to found a family: The case of Costa Rica
Costa Rica is being taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for failing to lift a national ban on IVF, which is sometimes the only medical intervention that can resolve a case of infertility or sub-fertility (1).The Costa Rican law making IVF illegal came into force in 2000. The country's Constitutional Court ruled IVF violated Article Four of the American Convention on Human Rights - 'the right to life' - by defining life from the moment of fertilisation (2). The IACHR orde...
The ethics of womb donation and transplantation
Last month news broke of an experimental womb transplantation surgery planned for early next year. With it came the possibility of women with an absent or non-functioning uterus carrying a child to term (see Roberts, 2011)....