Printed from: https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/authors/?id=1&index=180
A high profile disagreement between doctors and the parents of a baby with a rare facial disorder was finally resolved after a seven hour High Court hearing in Leeds, when the parents agreed to an urgent tracheotomy (BBC News, 7 March). Twelve week old Maria Aziz Al-Rafi, the only survivor...
The Cloning Saga Peter Saunders reviews recent developments in the cloning debate. 'A milestone in scientific depravity' was one commentator's reaction to the 25 November announcement that American scientists had produced a cloned human embryo. 'Advanced Cell Technology', the Massachusetts-based biotechnology company responsible, were adamant that their intention...
I paid for my trip to India in stress and sweat. Not out there, but in the mad rush to clear my desk before departure, and in the bulging in-tray and looming deadlines on return. However the blessing I received in ten autumn days, through being involved in the EMFI...
Poverty and health are closely linked; but it is not as widely known that communicable diseases now account for 77% of the 25-year difference in life expectancy between rich and poor nations. Tropical climates, poor nutrition, ignorance about prevention and treatment of disease and poorly developed health systems all contribute....
Screening for Cystic Fibrosis and Down's syndrome is to be made available to all mothers and pregnant women under new government proposals unveiled in April by Public Health Minister Yvette Cooper (BBC News Online 2001; 30 April). Mark Barron, communications manager of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, is not alone in...
On 30 November 2000 the Government voted to lower the age for consent for anal sex from 18 to 16, by invoking the Parliament Act to overrule the House of Lords and pass the 'Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill'. Less than a month later, research released at a British Psychological Society...
The cloning of human embryos for research is now legal in the UK. New regulations under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act will allow 'therapeutic cloning' to produce stem cells for use in treating degenerative diseases. The legislation was passed, by a 366-174 majority in the House of Commons in...
The cloning of human embryos for research is now legal in the UK. New regulations under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act will allow scientists to clone human embryos to produce stem cells for use in treating degenerative diseases. The legislation was passed by a 366-174 majority in the...
From a Christian perspective, the moral status of the embryo is one of the key pressure-points in ethical debates about post-coital contraception, therapeutic cloning, preimplantation diagnosis, and artificial reproduction. The issue, which has profound implications for our practice as doctors, has divided Christians for centuries and remains controversial within CMF.[1,2,3,4,5]...
A new era of cancer treatments,vaccines, personalised pills,extended lifespan and treatments for genetic diseases?The June announcement by the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics that they had deciphered the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome has been hailed as altering the whole basis of medicine. Perhaps,but we need to be...
