Euthanasia in France and Netherlands

Lawmakers in France today approved passive euthanasia, but, "while a first in France, the legislation falls far short of laws in Netherlands and Belgium that allow active euthanasia under strict circumstances, and Switzerland, which allows certain forms of patient suicide."

AP reports on the incredible announcement from Amsterdam that Groningen Academic Hospital has created an independent board to review cases for euthanasia of terminally ill persons with "no free will," which includes "children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident." The Health Ministry is preparing an answer to the regulations.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief. The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.

An AIDS Vaccine that Works??

Nature Medicine reports that a French research trial fuels hope for prevention and mollification of the effects of HIV infection. Even as preliminary data, this is promises to be the biggest news in the history of HIV & AIDS research and will be cause for much discussion about next steps. The sample size is very very small and it is very important that the results not be blown out of proportion, which no doubt they will - although at the time of this posting lots of American papers are clueless about this finding. But let's just say that the research pans out ... what happens then? Let your mind wander back to the early science and policy wars over the way in which AIDS research is prioritized, and then consider a political world in which gay marriage might have been the defining issue in an election that brought to power a president who "owes" fundamentalist protestants and despises the UN...

France on hES: Here Come the Cells

CordesNews reports that France is set to import hES cells under its new "law on bioethics", passed in July of this year. "Supernumerary frozen human embryos conceived in vitro and without a parental project" may be used to derive cells, create lines and in experiments utilizining the derived cells.