In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. It’s the latest advance from the booming field of regenerative medicine, making body parts in the lab. (AP)

It’s a condition practically unheard of in the United States and most Western countries. But in a culture where a woman’s status and dignity is decided by her ability to provide a husband with multiple children, it can be a fate worse than death. (CNN)

A blockbuster paper that reported the creation of human stem cell lines via cloning has come under fire. An anonymous online commenter found four problems in the paper, which was published online 15 May in the journal Cell. (Nature)

The nation’s record-low teen birth rate stems from robust declines in nearly every state, but most dramatically in several Mountain States and among Hispanics, according to a new government report. (AP)

A new, streamlined approach to genetic engineering drastically reduces the time and effort needed to insert new genes into bacteria, the workhorses of biotechnology, scientists are reporting. (Phys.org)

Thinking about death is frightening, but planning ahead is practical and leaves more room for peace of mind in our final days. In a solemn, thoughtful talk, Judy MacDonald Johnston shares 5 practices for planning for a good end of life. (TED Talk)

An expert panel of scientists and clinicians is warning people against going overseas for costly and unproven stem cell treatment for cerebral palsy. (ABC.net.au)

Leroy Hood, head of a prominent research institute in Seattle, Washington, violated conflict-of-interest rules when he reviewed a friend’s grant, California’s stem-cell agency disclosed in a letter to the state legislature. (Nature)

Italian lawmakers on Wednesday gave their final approval to a law that allows limited use of a controversial type of stem cell therapy which has been condemned by many scientists but has given hope to families of terminally-ill children. (AFP)

Heinrich Rohrer, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing a microscope that made it possible to see individual atoms and move them around, an achievement that led to vastly faster computing and greatly advanced molecular biology, died on Thursday night or early Friday morning in Wollerau, Switzerland. He was 79. (New York Times)

The number of Botox procedures among 20-somethings rose 8 percent in 2012 to 92,955 from the prior year, according to the 2012 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (ABC News)

An important new study suggests that statins, the cholesterol-lowering medications that are the most prescribed drugs in the world, may block some of the fitness benefits of exercise, one of the surest ways to improve health. (New York Times)

Female genital mutilation, the cutting of sexual organs, is thought to affect 66,000 women in the UK. (BBC)

The American Cancer Society - one of the nation’s best known and influential health advocacy groups - is 100 years old this week. (AP)

A 33-year-old Polish man received a life-saving total face transplant just three weeks after being disfigured in a workplace accident, in what his doctors said Wednesday is the fastest timeframe to date for such an operation. (AP)

More and more studies show that being overweight does not always shorten life — but some public-health researchers would rather not talk about them. (Nature)

A research program that should eventually allow all cancer patients to have access to genetic testing has been launched with £2.7 million ($4 million) funding from the Wellcome Trust. (Medical News Today)

If online oversharing is a public health problem, then the state’s decision to harness it for its own purposes means that huge, powerful forces within government will come to depend on it. (The Guardian)

DNA methylation, the addition of a methyl group to specific locations on a DNA strand, plays a critical role in determining which genes are active in a cell at any given time. It plays an important role in embryonic development, cell growth and reproduction, and many diseases, including cancer. Now, researchers collaborating at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign have developed a novel single molecule test for detecting DNA methylation that should greatly simplify and advance the study of this important genomic process. (Nanotechnology Now)

If you land in an intensive care unit sick enough for doctors to consider withdrawing life support, be warned. Whether and when to pull the plug may depend in large part on the practices and culture of the ICU itself — perhaps more than your needs or wishes, a new study finds. (NBC News)

Members of the National Bioethics Committee of Jamaica (NBCJ) are benefiting from training to strengthen the body’s capacity to address the ethical and moral implications of medical and biological research. It is the third such session under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s(UNESCO) Bioethics Programme. (Jamaica Information Service)