IT was the tragic end to a winter break: caught off guard by an avalanche, Prince Friso of Holland was crushed under a heavy wad of snow for 23 minutes, his brain starved of oxygen. Now, six months after the Austrian skiing accident, the 43-year-old prince is still in a deep coma in a London hospital - and his country is debating whether he should be allowed to die. (The Australian)

Reports of “superbugs” that can evade our strongest antibiotic treatments are becoming uncomfortably commonplace (think MRSA), but that’s no reason to become complacent about the growing threat from invisible armies of microbes. (CNN)

Some of the most widely promoted public health interventions are not necessarily the most effective. (American Medical News)

When it comes to taking motherhood to an extreme, Frieda Birnbaum is unsurpassed — literally. In 2007, at age 60, she became the oldest American woman to give birth to twins. (ABC News)

The Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) has set up a special ethics committee to help expedite the resolution of 900-odd complaints of medical negligence that piled up over the dozen years that the council remained defunct. (Indian Express)

An agreement on joint guidelines on euthanasia was reached between the associations representing doctors and pharmacists in the Netherlands, officials said. (UPI)

They beat like real heart cells, but the rat cardiomyocytes in a dish at Harvard University are different in one crucial way. Snaking through them are wires and transistors that spy on each cell’s electrical impulses. In future, the wires might control their behaviour too. (New Scientist)

Rates of medical exemptions from vaccination requirements are higher in states where exemptions are easier to get, potentially compromising immunity and posing a threat to other children, according to public health experts at Emory University. (ABC News)

The more abortions a woman has before her first child, the more likely she is to give birth prematurely, a study has suggested. (BBC News)

A bionic eye has given an Australian woman partial sight and researchers say it is an important step towards eventually helping visually impaired people get around independently. (Reuters)

More than 40% of tuberculosis infections that are resistant to front-line treatments are also resistant to some common backup drugs, according to research published this week in The Lancet. (Nature News)

The United States lags France, Britain and Germany in reducing the number of preventable deaths, researchers found. (UPI)

A new issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is now available in print and online.

Articles include:

Scientists have found that a man’s fertility could be restored by the growing of early stage sperm from a skin sample. (Telegraph)

They are spending up to £30,000 a time on trips to New York, to guarantee a boy or a girl, according to a clinic. (Telegraph)

In 2014 billions of viewers worldwide may remember the opening game of the World Cup in Brazil for more than just the goals scored by the Brazilian national team and the red cards given to its adversary. (Scientific American)

Italy’s ban on screening embryos for diseases before they are implanted in a womb violates the rights of a couple whose first child was born with cystic fibrosis, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday. (Washington Post)

When members of the public participate in research studies, they are often given incentives - such as cash or gift cards for food - as compensation or reimbursement for their time and effort. (Medical News Today)

India’s rising global presence is often associated with its booming tech sector. But in many poor countries, India’s role is that of a low-cost pharmacy. (TIME)

The Food and Drug Administration approved a new once-a-day H.I.V. treatment from Gilead Sciences that contains four different drugs in one pill. But the price Gilead plans to charge for the new drug — about $28,500 a year — was criticized as excessive by one AIDS activist, who said it would put additional pressure on the already strained public health programs that pay for the majority of H.I.V. medications. (NY Times)

Ireland awaits a September report on its abortion laws by a European Court of Human Rights panel of experts at a time of rising political tensions over the issue and a backdrop of steep declines in the popularity of religion. (Forbes)