Unesco Chair in Bioethics

First Announcement and Call for Abstracts

May 17-20, 2009

Canaan Spa, Zefat, Israel

(Brochure)

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has launched a science diplomacy centre, aiming to use science and scientific cooperation to promote international understanding.

The Center for Science Diplomacy, based in Washington DC, was officially announced last month (15 July) by AAAS chief executive Alan Leshner at a congressional session on fostering international science cooperation. (SciDev)

Hundreds of wealthy foreigners flock to China as a shortcut to the organ transplant that could save their life, but few know that their “donors” are often unwilling death-sentence convicts. A look behind the scenes of this morbid trade. (France 24)

oday, people with diabetes have a range of technologies to help keep their blood sugar in check, including continuous monitors that can keep tabs on glucose levels throughout the day and insulin pumps that can deliver the drug. But the diabetic is still responsible for making executive decisions–when to test his blood or give himself a shot–and the system has plenty of room for human error. Now, however, researchers say that the first generations of an artificial pancreas, which would be able to make most dosing decisions without the wearer’s intervention, could be available within the next few years. (Technology Review)

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researcher George Q. Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, has with HSCI colleagues Chad Cowan and Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital produced a robust new collection of disease-specific stem cell lines, all of which were developed using the new induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technique. The work is described in a paper published in today’s online edition of the journal Cell. (PhysOrg)

Blogs written by medical professionals may pose a threat to patient privacy, because the authors of the blogs may inadvertently reveal patient information, says a U.S. study that’s the first to examine the issue. (Healthday)

When is a life-threatening disease not worth treating? When something else will kill you first.

This week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued new guidelines for prostate cancer screening. (Slate)

The news from Barbara Wagner’s doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing.

The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.

What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50. (ABC News)

High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.

Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care. (New York Times)

Students on the UC Berkeley Campus were asked for their comments on an ad run in their school paper, The Daily Californian.  The ad offered $100,000 for the “right” donor.

Berkeley Students Respond to Egg Ad on YouTube

A “disease in a dish” method has been used on patients with 10 serious disorders to boost worldwide efforts to find new treatments.

American researchers have used a Japanese technique to turn cells from people with different diseases into stem cells with the same genetic errors.

Stem cells, which can be grown indefinitely in the lab, have the ability to grow into the 200 plus cell types found in the human body, from muscle to heart to brain cell.

They say these cell lines can be used to mimic human disease more reliably than mice and other animal models and will be a boon for efforts to find new treatments. (Telegraph)

A new study calls into question the use of two common infertility treatments for couples who have unexplained problems having children.

Doctors in Scotland tested a drug that stimulates ovulation and artificial insemination against doing nothing in couples who had no obvious reasons for their inability to conceive.

Among the three groups, researchers found little difference in the numbers of couples who had babies. The study was published Friday in the British Medical Journal.  (New York Times)