The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released an ethics statement that a clinician must perform requested abortion-related services or refer patients to someone who will, potentially violating federal laws preventing “abortion-related discrimination and protecting a doctor’s conscience rights.” 
The ethics statement has been met with opposition and concern by many including Michael Leavitt, Health [...]

If there is a right to die there will be a duty to end life: Bioethics and Euthanasia. 
A French teacher suffering from a rare case of cancer that has left her disfigured lost a request Monday that she had lodged in a court to be allowed to die by euthanasia. Chantal Sébire, 52, suffers from [...]

WHEN IS A person dead — or dead enough?
The question has long influenced decisions about when it’s appropriate to end medical treatment for people who are hopelessly ill. However, a quieter debate has simmered for years about how the concept of death informs the practice of organ transplantation. Transplant surgeons rely on strict definitions of [...]

A woman dying of Alzheimer’s has a fever. Should she be given antibiotics? Many people would say yes. But a provocative new study suggests that antibiotics are overused in people dying of dementia diseases and should be considered more carefully because of the growing problem of drug-resistant superbugs.
The study raises ethical questions about when it’s [...]

As a former chairman of George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass is well acquainted with controversy, and with the treacherous terrain at the nexus of science and politics. The council, tasked with advising the president on such hot-button issues as stem cell research and cloning, has sometimes been dismissed as a vehicle [...]

The state Board of Medicine has suspended a Hurricane doctor for six months after he gave a dying patient a muscle-paralyzing drug as part of “end of life” care.
Dr. Sean DiCristofaro will start serving his suspension Friday. DiCristofaro told the medical board he administered the drug after the patient was gasping for breath and his [...]

An Australian euthanasia campaigner says a Wellington woman who killed herself with his assistance was of sound mind. Philip Nitschke says the 68-year-old was not suffering depression before she died in 2006 as some of her friends are claiming. He says the woman knew what she was doing when she took his advice and smuggled [...]

Turning health workers into torturers: Last week, a judge reserved his decision and continued a temporary injunction to keep Samuel Golubchuk, an 84-year-old man with brain damage and multi-organ failure, hooked up to a ventilator and other life-support in a Winnipeg intensive-care unit. Mr. Golubchuk’s doctors want to stop the ventilator, believing it to be [...]

As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter’s wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible. In bold letters it warned, “Do Not Resuscitate.”
The DNR order goes everywhere with Katie, including her 2nd-grade classroom at Laremont School [...]

More than one in three doctors said they had, at some time, given a patient drugs in response to the request of hastening death, an Australian survey has shown.  The Victorian study of over 900 doctors also revealed three quarters of respondents had withheld life-sustaining treatment at a patient’s request.
Despite this, just over half, 53 [...]