11 February 2008
UK - Disabled Children Better Off Aborted: House of Lords Peeress -
Molly Baroness Meacher, a Peer speaking in the House of Lords said that seriously disabled children should be considered non-persons and would be better off having been aborted. The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to 22. Johhn Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, wrote that Baroness Meacher's comments support what SPUC has said about recent British legislation, that it creates a mandate to kill the disabled and vulnerable. SPUC has pointed out regarding the Mental Capacity Act, "that [the term] 'best interests' in that legislation can be defined in such a way that mentally incapacitated patients may now be killed in their 'best interests'." ...[more]
South Africa - Illegal abortion still haunting SA -
Illegal abortions remain a serious problem in Cape Town, although Johannesburg has a much bigger problem. This is according to Mothoso Gabriel, the regional director of Ipas, an international organisation dedicated to legalising abortion. It was difficult to know how many women had illegal abortions because there were no figures, but the numbers were high, she said. The department of health does not have figures on the number of illegal abortions performed or the number of women who develop complications after having one. Although public hospitals offered abortions for free, the lack of access to and education about the free service contributed to the illegal abortions problem, she said. ...[more]
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Finland - Patient gets new jaw from own stem cells - Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from adult stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Researchers said the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spare parts for humans a step closer to reality." From the outside nobody would be able to tell he has been through such a procedure," she said. The team used no materials from animals -- preventing the risk of transmitting viruses than can be hidden in an animal's DNA, and followed European Union guidelines. ...[more]
Japan - Ministry to widen ban on stem cell research - In a pre-emptive move to avert a debate over ethics, the Japanese education ministry will temporarily ban research to produce reproductive cells from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The versatile stem cells are produced from human skin, thereby averting ethical issues surrounding the use of human eggs or embryos. While production of iPS cells does not involve destroying fertilized eggs, as in the case with embryonic stem cells, the ministry decided to apply the same regulations. However, there are calls for making exceptions on certain research that would allow scientists to determine whether reproductive cells created from iPS cells are capable of fertilization. Debate has already started for a partial lifting of a ban on such research. Concerns over creating reproductive cells from iPS cells arise from suggestions that such tinkering could lead to human cloning. But others argue that reproductive research involving iPS cells could prove effective in studying the causes of infertility and sterility. ...[more]
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USA - Doctors Review End-of-Life Care Guideline - Dying patients need to be regularly monitored for pain, shortness of breath, and depression, say the new American College of Physicians (ACP) guidelines to improve end-of-life care. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the guidelines state that doctors should use proven therapies to treat these three common symptoms among dying patients and should ensure there's advance care planning for all patients with serious illness. The committee that prepared the new guidelines found there's a limited amount of high-quality evidence on end-of-life care, and that most of the evidence comes from studies involving cancer patients. That means that the new guidelines may not address other important aspects of end-of-life care, such as symptoms specific to heart disease, lung disease or dementia. There's also a lack of information about the value of nutritional support in end-of-life care, the ACP noted. ...[more]
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USA - Longer Drug Regimen Found to Help Babies Avoid H.I.V. - Over recent years, giving an antiretroviral drug to a woman infected with the AIDS virus in labour and to her baby at birth has reduced the risk of transmitting the virus to the baby. Yet many babies born uninfected go on to acquire H.I.V., the AIDS virus, in the lengthy period of breast feeding because of contamination of the mother’s milk. Researchers have now found that the incidence of the virus among breast-fed infants can be significantly reduced by extending antiretroviral drugs for much longer periods, up to six months. “Making breast feeding safe is an urgent need,” said Dr. Taha Taha, a researcher from Johns Hopkins who led a study in Malawi. Breast feeding accounts for up to 48 percent of H.I.V. infections among infants in developing countries. ...[more]
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USA - Drug-resistant staph found to be passed in homosexual intercourse - A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among homosexual men during sex, researchers said. They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.Sexually active homosexual men in San Francisco are 13 times more likely to be infected than their heterosexual neighbors, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention." This superbug can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can often only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics. It killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005, most of them in hospitals, according to a report published in October in the Journal of the American Medical Association. ...[more]
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International - UN to host first conference on human trafficking - The first international conference on human trafficking, one of the fastest growing crimes, will be held in Vienna to raise awareness about what has become a billion-dollar industry. The UN estimates that the global market value is in billions of dollars. The aim of the three-day conference, with an anticipated 1,000 participants from some 100 countries, is to raise public awareness of the issue, foster better coordination in the international fight against human trafficking and to come with new measures for combating it. According to UN estimates, about 2.5 million people from 127 countries have been trafficked to 137 countries for purposes such as forced labour, sexual exploitation, removal of organs and body parts, forced marriages, child adoption and begging. ...[more]
South Africa – Prostitute Turns to Labour Court – A Cape Town sex worker who says she was unfairly dismissed is seeking the Labour Court's help this week. This move comes after the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) dismissed her case, saying it did not have jurisdiction because she had been employed to do illegal work. WLC director and the sex worker's attorney, Jennifer Williams, said the application was not about legalizing prostitution but ensuring everyone in society was protected by law. ‘Kylie’ was employed by Brigitte's Massage Parlour in Cape Town as a sex worker from 1993 until she was dismissed on April 30 2006. ...[more]
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South Africa - Extent of child pornography unknown - A Human Sciences Research Council report on online child abuse has found that “the extent of the problem in SA is not known and may never be known”. The Film and Publications Board commissioned the report by the HSRC's professor Andy Dawes. This followed increasing concern regarding the spread and availability of child abuse. “Internet service providers and cell-phone distributors should refer clients who download or distribute child abuse images to the authorities for investigation. They should also, “establish an Internet monitoring system to monitor and remove child abuse image content, close sites, suspend services to the customer, and report to the authorities”. Dawes adds that buyers of computers and mobile phones should be supplied with information on the risks of exposure to child abuse at the point of sale. Various sources last year estimated the total number of images on the Internet as ranging from 1.7 billion to four billion. ...[more]
EU shock at child porn increase - The EU's Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini was "saddened and shocked" to hear that the number of sites with child-sex material went up 1500% from 1997 to 2005. Blocking credit card payment for paedophile material is one step advocated by his report. This would involve cooperation with credit card companies to get them to block certain sites from receiving money for the material they sell. Stopping access to sites is another possibility. This would mean internet service providers and search engines using technology available to hamper access to dangerous sites. Closing down sites is another option, although this could only be done if they are based in the EU. Young people are drawn to the internet by its fascinating variety. The Angelilli report aims to stop those who prey on children from using this interest against them. ...[more]
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New Zealand - Cannabis is bigger cancer risk than cigarettes: study - Smoking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk, scientists in New Zealand have found, as they warned of an "epidemic" of lung cancers linked to cannabis. In an article published in the European Respiratory Journal, the scientists said cannabis could be expected to harm the airways more than tobacco as its smoke contained twice the level of carcinogens, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons, compared with tobacco cigarettes. The method of smoking also increases the risk as the cannabis smoker inhales more deeply and for longer, facilitating the deposition of carcinogens in the airways." “Cannabis smokers end up with five times more carbon monoxide in their bloodstream (than tobacco smokers)," said team leader Richard Beasley, at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand. ...[more]
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USA - Congenital heart defects increasing among IVF twins - The prevalence of congenital heart disease (CHD) among in vitro fertilisation (IVF) pregnancies was similar to that of the general population, but there is an increasing risk of CHD among twins resulting from IVF. According to Mert Ozan Bahtiyar, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine, results showed that twin pregnancies conceived through IVF have a three-fold higher prevalence of CHD than singletons. He says that IVF twins are usually fraternal, but past studies of identical twins also showed up to a 13-fold increase in congenital heart defects. Bahtiyar said that previous reports of increased CHD risk in pregnancies conceived via IVF may be due, in part, to a higher frequency of multiple pregnancies resulting from this form of conception. ‘The increased twinning seems to be the cause of the abnormality and not IVF per se.’ ...[more]
UK - Over One Million Human Embryos killed - Following a UK Parliamentary question, data from a government organisation showed that over one million human embryos were killed in the UK in the past 14 years as 'waste' embryos from in vitro fertilisation (IVF) processes. The acquired data showed that 2,137,924 embryonic humans were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005, but about 1.2m were never used. Scientists killed the embryos who were not deemed strong enough for implantation, and froze those not considered 'waste' embryos. Those that survived the freezing process will die in ten years if not implanted. Lord Alton of Liverpool, an independent peer, tabled the question to parliament and obtained the statistics from the Department of Health. He said that embryos were being created and destroyed at "an incredible rate," and advocates embryonic adoption for those embryos that aren't used for implantation in IVF. ...[more]
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Zimbabwe - National Traditional Healers' Association Launches Registry of Practitioners Treating HIV/AIDS - The Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers' Association on Friday at a meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, launched a register of practitioners who treat HIV/AIDS. According to Tapera Dzviti, ZINATHA's secretary for information and policy, the group has reached an agreement with physicians to refer people living with HIV/AIDS to traditional healers. Traditional healers who have registered with ZINATHA will treat three people living with HIV/AIDS who are not taking antiretroviral drugs for a set amount of time while physicians administer tests to determine whether the patients' CD4+ T cell counts are improving. The group also called on the government to support its research. The government has established a Traditional Medical Practitioners Council to regulate and develop guidelines for the practice, and Dzviti said ZINATHA wants "to settle the issue" of healers taking money from HIV-positive people "once and for all" ...[more]
South Africa - Traditional healers to claim medical aids - Traditional healers now have health professional since the s Traditional Health Practitioners Bill has been enacted. One of the priorities of the interim 22-member National Traditional Healers' Council will now be to negotiate with medical aids to pay for treatments. According to Nceba Gqaleni, head of research into indigenous healthcare systems with the department of science and technology at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Nelson Mandela School of Medicine, claiming from medical aids should be a simple process once a coding system for charging had been established. A new interim national council that will become the supreme body governing all traditional healers, will be established according to Sazi Mhlongo, president of the National Traditional Healers' Association. The interim council is to include members from the legal fraternity, pharmaceutical companies and various community groups. All traditional healers will be required to register with the council before they can practise in South Africa. The interim council will gain full council status only after being assessed by the government over a three-year period. Rose Mdlalose, human resources programme and planning director at the Health of Department said the council would serve as the industry regulator and address various issues which affect the healers, including quality control, training and accreditation. ...[more]
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