Guwahati: The code of ethics for doctors will become a law in Assam, enabling patients to claim damages from medical practitioners even for absenteeism.
The announcement came on a day when the axe fell on five more government doctors for dereliction of duty. All five were found absent when a magistrate conducted a surprise check on [...]

In Louisiana this week, Dr. Anna Pou received news that ended two years of anxiety. A grand jury refused to indict her on charges that she murdered nine terminally ill patients with a lethal cocktail of painkillers in a dark, fetid New Orleans hospital three days after Hurricane Katrina struck.
By all accounts, Pou is a [...]

Frozen ova may be the ‘bright new dawn in reproductive medicine’, writes Amanda Hooton. But we mustn’t count our chickens too soon.
Early last year, a baby was born in Melbourne as a result of assisted reproductive technology. Many people described the birth as miraculous, a word used a fair bit in this field. Even so, [...]

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the jailing of a tuberculosis (TB) patient who failed to comply with her treatment regimen. Ruby Washington had been diagnosed with noninfectious TB in 2005 by the staff of a TB control clinic. When she failed to appear to receive medication, the City of Milwaukee Health Department issued a directly-observed therapy [...]

In what is being called a “wrongful birth” case, a jury awarded more than $21 million Monday to a couple who claimed a doctor misdiagnosed a severe birth defect in their son, leading them to have a second child with similar problems.
But because the doctor works for the University of South Florida, the family will [...]

The European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO) has published a set of bioethics guidelines designed to help scientists undertaking nutrigenomics research using human subjects.
Nutrigenomics is the study of how nutrients and genes interact and how genetic variations can cause people to respond differently to food nutrients.
Emerging in 2000 as a new field of research, scientists predict that [...]

Robert Veatch weighs his words carefully when he talks about how people pass away. Most simply die. Some “become dead”. Others are “made dead”.
Some end-of-life cases are so unclear, he thinks, that people should be able to choose in advance the definition of death they want to be used to declare them deceased.
“Most ordinary people, [...]

A terminal leukaemia patient must have daily blood transfusions or die. A family begs doctors to do everything possible to keep their elderly mother alive. Parents cannot accept their newborn baby will not survive.
End-of-life issues top the list of ethical dilemmas hospitals face as medical progress enables doctors to extend an endangered life to the [...]

Desperate to stop doctors from operating on her ailing baby, Tina Carlsen smuggled him out of Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center last year.  Because she’d already lost custody of her son, Carlsen’s actions earned her jail time and a criminal record. And it all happened because Carlsen, like many other parents, disagreed with doctors [...]

The New Orleans DA’s office drops all charges against the two nurses, but Dr. Pou’s fate still hangs in the balance. By Kevin B. O’Reilly, AMNews staff. July 23/30, 2007
Two nurses accused last year of conspiring to murder four hospital patients in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 could be forced to testify [...]