“Snowflake” babies, embryo “adoption,” and being pre-born again
[The Village Voice] JUNE 16, 2009 - In November, Lauren, a pretty 36-year-old physician’s assistant with a passing resemblance to Frances McDormand, traveled from her home in New York’sHudson Valley to a Knoxville, Tennessee, fertility clinic to claim three embryos left over from another couple’s in vitro fertilization cycle.
Lauren and her husband [...]

[Billings Gazette] JUNE 2, 2009 HELENA – The assisted-suicide case before the Montana Supreme Court is drawing a barrage of briefs from legislators, physicians and groups.
The state of Montana has asked the court to reverse a lower-court ruling that Montanans have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide.
Before a Tuesday deadline, at least 14 motions to participate [...]

No Quick Fix as Demand Already Exceeds Supply
[Washington Post] As the debate on overhauling the nation’s health-care system exploded into partisan squabbling this week, virtually everyone still agreed on one point: There are not enough primary-care doctors to meet current needs, and providing health insurance to 46 million more people would threaten to overwhelm the system.
Fixing [...]

WASHINGTON [Reuters] – Seven years is an appropriate time period to protect brand-name biotechnology medicines from cheaper generic rivals, White House officials said in a letter released on Thursday.
The amount of protection for brand-name companies is a sticking point among lawmakers working to set up a legal pathway for approval of generic forms of biotech [...]

[IBJ] The past decade has often been rough for Eli Lilly and Co., but a new economic impact study commissioned by the company suggests the drugmaker’s contribution to the state’s economy has actually increased over that time. 
The new study by an Indiana University professor calculates that Lilly accounts for $8 billion, or 3.3 percent, of Indiana’s [...]

 
[NPR] Climate change is a potential environmental disaster — but it’s also potentially an economic opportunity. President Obama spoke of it in economic terms Tuesday when he urged the House of Representatives to pass legislation that would address global warming.
“The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation [...]

[NPR] AP, June 19, 2009 · One in six people in the world — or more than 1 billion — is now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a U.N. agency said Friday.
Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they [...]

[WSJ] WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–A plan unveiled this week by the pharmaceutical industry to reduce health-care costs in the U.S. by $80 billion will help consumers’ wallets but will put the government on the hook for a greater share of drug costs, according to health-care experts.
President Barack Obama Monday embraced a plan under which pharmaceutical companies [...]

Researchers Say Doctors Need to Do a Better Job of Informing Patients of Lab Test Results
[WebMD Health News]  Primary care clinicians and their staffs sometimes fail to inform all patients of the results of lab or screening tests —  or fail to keep records that patients were informed and thus have no proof, says a [...]

[Medical News Today] It is unethical to stop healthy people from taking methylphenidate (Ritalin) to enhance their mental performance, says John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester, in an article published on bmj.com today. He adds that society “ought to want [enhancement]” and that “it is not rational to be against human enhancement.” 
In total [...]