What has happened to suicide rates in Victoria since the law came into force in June 2019? Rather than seeing a reduction, there has been an increase in unassisted suicides, and especially among those aged 65 or over. These have increased from 102 in 2018 to 156 in 2022, according to figures from the Victoria Suicide Register.
Date posted: 2024-01-25
A scientist working in Cambridge and California has just announced that she and her colleagues have made a 'synthetic human embryo'. They took a human embryonic stem cell line and used it to make what looks like an early human embryo.
Date posted: 2023-07-01
The movement to uphold the conscientious practice of medicine is a struggle for the soul of the profession.
Date posted: 2022-11-09
The law on assisted suicide or euthanasia is debated within every country and community, in the United Kingdom and in Belgium, among disabled and able-bodied people, and no one person represents a whole community. Nevertheless, it is clear that the disability rights movement in the United Kingdom, which has close links with the Paralympic movement, has been a source of spirited opposition to euthanasia. In contrast Belgium, which has embraced legal euthanasia, has a much less active disabled rights community and this is reflected across many areas of society not least in the scandalous disparity in the remuneration of Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
Date posted: 2016-10-14
Human cloning for research and a major expansion of research on IVF embryos are being permitted in the face of international condemnation when it is far from evident that there is an urgent necessity to justify such dramatic moves. Such practices are likely to lead to cloning for birth, to further erosion of public confidence in the ethics of scientific research, and to an invidious promotion of treatments which many patients will regard as unconscionable. Cloning should be prevented before the regulations come into effect.
Date posted: 2002-10-29
In a House of Lords debate, (Hansard Vol.62 1, No.16, col.35.37), the Lord Bishop of Oxford offered an account of Western Christian tradition in regard to the protection of the human embryo which could seriously mislead someone unfamiliar with Church history.
Date posted: 2002-09-24
A widespread consultation and examination of the question of a definition of death, at the political and legal level, would place this decision where it belongs, at the level of society and not just with medical practitioners. The combination of reasons behind the current practice has led to a consensus that is intrinsically unstable and a pattern of practice that is more questionable than it at first appears.
Date posted: 2002-09-04