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Women who keep their disabled babies face coercion, discrimination and disdain
I recently attended the second oral evidence session of the Parliamentary ‘Inquiry into Abortion…

The RCGP Council should reject Clare Gerada’s attempt to push it neutral on assisted suicide and euthanasia
Next Friday, 22 February, the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) willconsider…

Panorama highlights liberal interpretation of abortion law by British doctors
Last Monday I took part in the BBC Panorama programme ‘The Great Abortion Divide’ (watch it on I-Player).
It…

Thirst for life – raising alcohol prices to save lives
A study released today by the Center for Addictions Research of British Colombia has found that a 10%…

Francis Report shines revealing light on the NHS
When some ill-advised bloggers in the US attacked the British National Health Service in the…

Radio Four debate on ‘change therapies’ for unwanted same-sex attraction
This morning I took part in a short documentary on the Radio Four Sunday programme on ‘change therapies’…

Survival of twins born at 23 weeks and new Inquiry into abortion for disability reopen debate on abortion upper limits
When twins Mackenzie and Cameron Glover were born 17 weeks prematurely on 17 June last year, they were…

Inquiry into Abortion on the Grounds of Disability – a chance to remove discriminatory laws?
For the first time for years a cross Parliamentary group will be thoroughly reviewing the law on abortion…

Warning sounded to UK as Oregon assisted suicide deaths hit record high
Lord Falconer has just announced that he is about to introduce a new bill into the House of Lords…

Flesh and Blood – giving more than money
A campaign to mobilise churches to increase the number of blood and organ donors in the UK has been launched…

Lord Falconer announces yet another bill on assisted suicide
Lord Falconer (pictured) announced this week(£) that he would launch another bill to legalise assisted…
Mitochondrial manipulated births: a muted reception
For a prospect anticipated for almost 20 years, the announcement in a Guardian exclusive of the successful birth of one or more babies from one or other technique of what is usually termed mitochondrial donation therapy (MDT) had a more muted reception the following day than might have been predicted. It came second after the […]
When is a ‘synthetic’ embryo a real embryo?
Embryonic stem cell-derived embryos (ESCDEs) have been around for a long time. Last year, an ESCDE, assembled from mouse cells in vitro, replicated natural mouse embryo development in utero up to day 8.5 post-fertilisation. In mouse gestation terms, this amounts to the completion of gastrulation and the start of organ formation and neurulation. In February […]
You wouldn’t do it to a dog! Current fetal pain relief in NHS abortions
This blog should perhaps carry one of those BBC-style warnings, ‘some viewers may find the following content distressing’. This is because it deals with something most of us would prefer not to think about – the dispatching of an unwanted, late-second or third-trimester fetus, or ‘feticide.’ We do not here comment on the morality of […]
Moral flip-flopping over doctors and the death penalty
I have long argued that ethicists who advocate euthanasia while at the same time being opposed to capital punishment have a morally untenable position and recent events have once again demonstrated why if you think it is wrong for doctors to administer death as a punishment, it is logically inconsistent to agree that they can […]
‘Because you’re worth it?’ The BMA and the junior doctors’ strikes
Easter 2023 is likely to be remembered for a long time in the NHS. Straight after a four-day bank holiday weekend, with many senior doctors already on leave, the BMA called junior doctor members in England out on a 96-hour total strike, without exempting emergency cover other than for major incidents. Their aim? A 35 […]
‘Of Mice and Men’
The Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in 2018 really hit the headlines when Prof He Janjkui announced he had carried out heritable genome editing of twin girls in China to make them more resistant to HIV infection. In contrast, the Third International Summit in London in early March 2023 got far less press […]
When is a baby not a baby?
Last week Panorama ran an ‘investigation’ into pregnancy advice centres which they claimed give misleading information to pregnant women. They found 57 centres listed online, could find no fault with the advice given by 34 of them and sent an undercover journalist in to investigate three. The programme was, as is typical, biased and unbalanced. […]
Neuro-silicon interfaces: a new mode of being?
The idea of humankind being merely machines has a long history, stretching back to Julien Offrey De La Mettrie’s Man a Machine, published in 1747. The ‘man-machine’ of the 18th century was, of course, a clockwork automaton. It was not until 1945 that Norbert Weiner, in his ground-breaking Cybernetics – Or Control and Communication in […]
Desperate for organs
‘What can a man give in return for his life?’ asks Jesus rhetorically of his disciples and the crowds following him (Mark 8:37, RSV). In doing so, he implicitly acknowledges that people will go to almost any lengths to save their own skins. They will also do the same for those they love. If the […]
I’m a Christian working in the NHS. The system is broken. Here’s how you can pray for us
I’ve just got home from a shift in the emergency department (ED). The hospital is in ‘critical incident’ due to overcrowding, but it’s been like this for weeks. 100 people or more in a department designed for 25. Queues of ambulances are unable to offload for hours because there’s no space. Patients who have had […]
Podbabies: Who are they kidding?
Ectogenesis – the gestation of children in artificial wombs – has long been considered by many feminist writers as the ultimate liberation for women from the tyranny of reproduction and the limitations it imposes on women’s autonomy. It has also been said to be necessary to ‘challenge traditional patriarchal family structures, and thence all other […]
An appreciation of Sir Eldryd Parry 1931-2022
Sir Eldryd Hugh Owen Parry KCMG OBE, a CMF member, died aged 91 on 13 November 2022. I wanted to write a brief appreciation of his extraordinary life of service in universities in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Ghana and the establishment of the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET). His numerous achievements and awards are recorded […]