In 1979 China instituted the one-child policy, which limited every family to just one offspring in a controversial attempt to reduce the country’s burgeoning population. The strictly enforced law had the desired effects: in 2011 researchers estimated that the policy prevented 400 million births. In a new study in Science, researchers find that it has also caused China’s so-called little emperors to be more pessimistic, neurotic and selfish than their peers who have siblings. (Scientific American)

The poorest countries in the world are lagging behind higher-income developing countries in meeting the demand for modern contraception, U.S. researchers say. (UPI)

Some of the UK’s leading neuroscientists, stem cell biologists, psychologists and psychiatrists are uniting to break down scientific barriers in a bid to solve the mystery of mental illness and neurological conditions. (Wellcome Trust)

The People’s Republic of China’s new system for acquiring organs—and the man behind it, former Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu—has been lauded in some circles as a decisive break from the use of executed prisoners as organ sources. But critics regard the new arrangements as implicitly coercive, and argue that the lack of transparency allows organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and others to continue.  (The Epoch Times)

Women aged up to 42 will now get a free cycle, rather than the previous maximum age limit of 40, after undergoing a test to see how many eggs they have left. This is known as their ovarian reserve. (The Telegraph)

El Salvador’s Supreme Court heard opening arguments Wednesday in a landmark abortion case in which a woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus has not been allowed to terminate a pregnancy in which the fetus is given no chance of surviving. The Central American country’s laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman’s health is at risk. At present, the woman and any doctor who terminated her 23-week pregnancy would face arrest and criminal charges. (ABC News)

An eight-year old British girl of Indian descent was allegedly murdered by health care workers in India so they could harvest her organs, her grieving parents claim. (International Business Times)

An increasing number of childless Asian couples are travelling to India for fertility treatment because of a shortage of south Asian egg donors in the UK. (BBC)

The World Health Organization’s annual statistics show progress is being made around the world in cutting child mortality - but it will miss its target of a two-thirds reduction by 2015. (BBC)

Nine women have registered with Japan’s first “ovum bank” to donate their eggs to help infertile women, paving the way for fertility treatment to begin within the year at the earliest, a private group said Monday. (The Japan Times)

The Strasbourg, France-based court said Switzerland must specify whether its laws are meant to include people not suffering from terminal illnesses and, if so, spell out the conditions under which they can end their lives. (Washington Post)

A woman who was the first to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor has had her pregnancy terminated after the embryo showed no heart beat, doctors in Turkey said on Tuesday. (Fox News)

The clinical study demonstrates for the first time that the India-developed rotavirus vaccine ROTAVAC- is efficacious in preventing severe rotavirus diarrhoea in low-resource settings in India. ROTAVAC- significantly reduced severe rotavirus diarrhoea by more than half-56 percent during the first year of life, with protection continuing into the second year of life. Moreover, the vaccine also showed impact against severe diarrhoea of any cause. (News-Medical)

In the latest attempt to overturn the prohibition on doctors helping to end the lives of their patients, the court of appeal is considering three requests for legal guidelines to be relaxed. (The Guardian)

Each year, worldwide, nearly 1 million babies die on the day they are born, according to a new report from Save the Children. Giving birth is also risky for mothers; nearly 800 women die every day during pregnancy or childbirth. While we’ve made significant strides in reducing child and maternal mortality rates since the 1970s, there are still many lives to save. (CNN)

The 14 countries with the highest rates of first-day deaths are all in Africa. The top five are Somalia, Congo, Mali, Sierra Leone and Central African Republic. Eighteen out of 1,000 babies in Somalia die the day they are born. (Associated Press)

Eminent Belgian scientist Christian de Duve, aged 95, a winner of the Nobel prize for medicine, died on Saturday after committing euthanasia, which is legal in Belgium, his family said. (Times of India)

The Dubai Cord Blood and Research Centre (DCRC), the only stem-cell storage facility in the UAE run by the Government, reported a substantial increase in the number of registered units in a year. (The National)

Global Health Travel is offering baby sex-selection trips to Thailand and Malaysia. For $12,000, couples can spend 11 days in a luxury Bangkok hotel while they have IVF treatment to choose a baby boy or girl. (The Australian)

Successful IVF treatment brings joy to couples who needed medical help to get a child. But what is it like for the egg donors? Three egg donors share their experience with Felista Wangari. (The Nation)

Most parents who opt-out of vaccinations are being guided by “irrational fears” that are a luxury of living in the developed world, a leading world health expert says. (BBC)