Bioethics in the News

Thanks to the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity for combing through the news and bringing these to the attention of readers:

CHINA OFFICIAL’S MANDATORY ‘TWO CHILDREN’ PROPOSAL DRAWS REBUKE
(Medical Xpress) – China should roll back its one-child policy and instead mandate that all couples have two children, a family planning official has said, drawing criticism Friday from a ruling Communist Party newspaper.   Read More

STEM-CELL TREATMENT BEATS MEDICINE IN SEVERE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
(Bloomberg) – Stem-cell transplants were more effective than the standard medicine used to treat people with severe multiple sclerosis, a trial found.   Read More

DYING DUTCH: EUTHANASIA SPREADS ACROSS EUROPE
(Newsweek) – In 2013, according to the latest data, 4,829 people across the country chose to have a doctor end their lives. That’s one in every 28 deaths in the Netherlands.  Read More

CANCER PATIENTS, DOCTOR SUE TO ALLOW PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED DEATH FOR TERMINALLY ILL
(Los Angeles Times) – A group of cancer patients and physicians filed a lawsuit Wednesday to clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally ill patients in California to obtain prescription drugs from their physician to hasten their death.   Read More

WORLD HAILS UK VOTE ON THREE-PERSON EMBRYOS
(Nature) – Following a February vote in the UK House of Commons, the world may once again look to Britain to push the envelope in fertility treatments, 37 years after IVF was pioneered there.   Read More

Gendercide

My friend Dorian sent me a copy of a chilling article from The Economist titled, "The Worldwide War on Baby Girls." Often we view gendercide as "an unintended consequence of China's one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance." Yet that can't be the whole story. Modernization and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of a child, which people do even in areas without the one-child policy. And that's bad news for girls. And to make matters worse, according to WHO, female suicide rates in China and South Korea are among the highest in the world. "The journalist Xiran Xue thinks they cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters."

Where have all the young girls gone?