[AP] WASHINGTON — Harry and Louise are coming back to television screens across the country to talk about overhauling health care. This time, they’ve switched sides.
TV ads featuring the fictional couple played a big role in derailing President Bill Clinton’s effort to revamp the medical system in the 1990s. Back then, actors Louise Caire Clark [...]

[NYT] LONDON — The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of [...]

[WSJ] The Food and Drug Administration approved labeling that will allow 17-year-olds access to the Plan B emergency-contraceptive pill without a prescription.
The agency also approved a one-dose version of the product called Plan B One-Step that will also be available over the counter to women age 17 and older. Both products are sold by Duramed Pharmaceuticals, [...]

 
[AP] WASHINGTON – House Democratic leaders, pledging to meet the president’s goal of health care legislation before their August break, are offering a $1.5 trillion plan that for the first time would make health care a right and a responsibility for all Americans. Left to pick up most of the tab were medical providers, employers and the wealthy.
“We [...]

A study involving higher-resolution genetic screening suggests that healthy embryos may be wasted during IVF.
[Technology Review] Genetic tests designed to weed out embryos that are unlikely to grow into healthy babies after in vitro fertilization (IVF) are often administered to couples receiving treatment even though it seems to have little impact on pregnancy rates. A new [...]

[Newswise] UCLA researchers have found that embryonic stem cells and skin cells reprogrammed into embryonic-like cells have inherent molecular differences, demonstrating for the first time that the two cell types are clearly distinguishable from one another.
The data from the study suggest that embryonic stem cells and the reprogrammed cells, known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, [...]

“We’re not mad Frankensteins working away in our laboratories to create designer babies”

Professor Tony Rutherford
British Fertility Society

 
[BBC] A gene mapping test that can test embryos for almost any inherited disease could be available in the UK within a year, say researchers.
Unlike current tests doctors do not need to know the specific gene mutation involved.
At the same [...]

[US News] As the White House readies its plan for finding “common ground” on reproductive health issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan’s two major components: preventing unwanted pregnanciesand reducing the need for abortion.
Many abortion rights advocates and some Democrats who want to dial down the culture [...]

[NYT] JUNE 30, 2009 – Need a kidney? You may be able to buy one in Pakistan, which has become one of the world’s largest “kidney bazaars,” according to an article published in the May-June issue of The Hastings Center Report, a bioethics journal.
But who sells their kidneys, and what becomes of these people afterwards? The article, [...]

“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 [...]