[AP] China’s plans to vaccinate 100 million children and come a step closer to eradicating measles has set off a popular outcry that highlights widening public distrust of the authoritarian government after repeated health scandals.

Since the Health Ministry announced the World Health Organization-backed measles vaccination plan last week, authorities have been flooded with queries and [...]

[Scienceblog] People want to be informed and asked for consent before deciding whether to let researchers share their genetic information in a federal database. This is according to a team of investigators at Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington (UW). The team’s report, called “Glad You Asked,” is in the September 2010 [...]

Contrary to the Machiavellian cliché, nice people are more likely to rise to power. Then something strange happens: Authority atrophies the very talents that got them there.
[WSJ] When CEO Mark Hurd resigned from Hewlett-Packard last week in light of ethics violations, many people expressed surprise. Mr. Hurd, after all, was known as an unusually effective [...]

[The Hill]  A group of bipartisan senators this week introduced legislation to entice drug makers to focus more intently on cures for uncommon children’s diseases.
Sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), the Creating Hope Act aims to solve a nagging problem inherent to the market-driven world of pharmaceutical manufacturing: [...]

Coalition government promises to abolish respected regulator in effort to cut back on quangos.
[Nature] In the ethically fraught field of human-embryo research, Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has long been regarded as a world leader in regulating and advising scientists.
But now the HFEA faces the axe, and researchers and politicians are chorusing their [...]

[SeattleTimes]  A simple bowl of white rice sits on a conference table inside the Seattle headquarters of global-health nonprofit PATH.  What looks and tastes like ordinary rice is actually the product of two decades of research and development.

For every 100 grains of rice, the bowl contains one grain of Ultra Rice. It’s actually not rice [...]

[wsj] Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for [...]

[reliefweb] A new position paper by three human rights organizations, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL), Al-Mezan and Adalah, reviews Israel’s exit policy at the Erez Crossing regarding Gaza patients seeking medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. The paper argues that there is a consistent Israeli policy of distinguishing between life-threatening cases and cases that affect quality [...]

[Reuters] Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday.
They found a way to interpret “real time” brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen [...]

[Medscape] The proportion of organ donors from U.S. minority groups has increased substantially in the past 20 years, following national education efforts to raise awareness of the need, a new study finds.
Kidney transplants, for example, have a greater chance of success when the donor and recipient are as genetically similar as possible. But historically, organ [...]