By Ellen Arkfeld
Assisted suicide for psychiatric patients has been legal in the Netherlands since 1993, a country with some of the longest standing euthanasia practices. The main argument for euthanasia in the Netherlands is the autonomy of the patient. Whether psychiatric patients are able to objectively determine that their suffering is irreversible is coming under question in a recent study on assisted suicide in patients with mental disorders. Click here to …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
“Manitoba has an organ and tissue donor crisis,” explains the spokesperson for Manitobians for Presumed Consent. “The demand for organ and tissues far exceeds the availability. To make matters worse, the demand for organs is expected to drastically rise in the decades ahead. Manitoba has the worst organ donation rate in Canada, and Canada has one of the worst organ donation rates in the entire western world.”
Concerned citizen …

By Maria Coluccio
Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have provided millions of individuals with the opportunity to have biological children who otherwise would have never been able to do so. In 2013, around 68,000 babies were born using ART in nearly 500 clinics across the U.S. As prominent as these technologies are today, ART had some ethically troublesome beginnings. In an article about the first artificial insemination procedure, Elizabeth Yuko describes how …

By Raya Bidshahri
The Zika virus has been spreading through Brazil, and more and more babies are being born with abnormally small heads and serious birth defects. The virus is transmitted primarily though mosquito bites, but it can also be spread sexually and through blood transfusions. As a result, authorities in the region are taking drastic measures to contain the virus until a vaccine and better screening procedures can be developed.
Until such a time, different countries have …

By Ellen Arkfeld
In July, the Center for Medical Progress released controversial videos that appeared to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal tissue for profit. In these videos, the Center’s founders, anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, obtained footage using hidden cameras by posing as middlemen for researchers and offering to pay for fetal tissue in an attempt to catch Planned Parenthood employees selling it.
A grand jury was convened to determine whether any charges could …

By Farzana Paleker
An increase in the number of babies being born with microcephaly in Zika-affected areas of Brazil has sparked a heated debate over the country’s strict abortion laws. Abortions in Brazil are illegal except in instances of rape and in cases where fetuses are diagnosed with anencephaly, a condition resulting in an underdeveloped brain and an incomplete skull. The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus infection an international public …

By Farzana Paleker
An uptick in the use of heroin (and the sharing of dirty needles) has resulted in a 50 percent increase in the number of cases of recurrent heart valve disease. This phenomenon has presented Florida heart surgeons with an ethical dilemma: continue to provide these patients with expensive treatment, or turn them away.
This increase, surgeons say, places a huge burden on the state: tax money is used to provide …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Rene Tamjina-Pena’s latest documentary details the horrific story of several Mexican women who were sterilized in US hospitals during the 1960s and 1970s. No Mas Bebes depicts the women, often young, afraid, and unable to speak English, and explains how they ended up on operating tables despite a lack of complete consent (and in some cases despite a lack of any consent at all).
The documentary was released …

By Raya Bidshahri
The Francis Crick institute has been granted permission to genetically modify leftover embryos from IVF clinics. This is not the first time that researchers have been given approval to modify embryos. In April 2015, a group of Chinese scientists were granted approval to modify the gene responsible for  β-thalassaemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder.
The research could contribute volumes of game-changing knowledge to science. The focus of the experiments, which are …

By Ellen Arkfeld
Last year, Jennifer Duodna made headlines by developing CRISPR-cas9 technology, a genome-editing technique unprecedented in its precision, ease, and cost. With CRISPR, introducing a new gene to a genome is essentially as easy as mixing chemicals in a vial.
Josiah Zayner has taken this technology to the next level: all of this can be done in the comfort of your own home, and ordered for the reasonable price of …