Proponents of euthanasia and aborting chronically ill fetuses use the same arguments that were once used by the Nazis to promote their eugenics program of mass extermination, according to the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper. (Washington Post)

Sixty-seven years ago, 14-year-old Charlie Follett was living in California’s Sonoma State Home. As he did most days, Follett sat in a field, singing popular songs to himself, enjoying the sunshine and the solitude. (CNN)

A paralysed man who wants a doctor to be able to lawfully end his life can proceed with his “right-to-die” case, a High Court judge has ruled. (BBC News)

Journal of Medical Ethics (Volume 38, Issue 1, January 2012) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Fear of a Female Planet: How John Harris Came to Endorse Eugenic Social Engineering” by Robert Sparrow.

• “Innovative Surgery: The Ethical Challenges” by Jane Johnson and Wendy Rogers.

• “A clear Case for Conscience in Healthcare Practice” by Giles Birchley.

• “When Should Conscientious Objection Be Accepted?” by Morten Magelssen.

• “Conscientious Objection in Medical Students: A Questionnaire Survey” by Sophie LM Strickland.

• “The Israeli Abortion Committees’ Process of Decision Making: An Ethical Analysis” by Nitzan Rimon-Zarfaty and Alan Jotkowitz.

• “Privacy, Confidentiality and Abortion Statistics: A Question of Public Interest? by Jean V McHale and June Jones.

• “Do Guidelines on Euthanasia and Physician-assisted Suicide in Dutch Hospitals and Nursing Homes Reflect the Law? A Content Analysis” by B. A. M. Hesselink, B. D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen, A. J. G. M. Janssen, H. M. Buiting, M. Kollau, J. A. C. Rietjens, H. R. W. Pasman.

• “Abortion Decisions as Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria in Research Involving Pregnant Women and Fetuses” by Carson Strong.

• “What Does ‘Respect for Persons’ Require? Attitudes and Reported Practices of Genetics Researchers in Informing Research Participants about Research” by Fiona Alice Miller, Robin Zoe Hayeems, Li Li, Jessica Peace Bytautas.

• “Research and Complicity: The Case of Julius Hallervorden” by Franklin G. Miller.

Humanity has long dreamed of perfection, striving to be faster, stronger and brighter, pushing nature to the limit. Four centuries before people were conceived in a petri dish, Swiss alchemist Paracelsus claimed flawless little beings could be grown in pumpkins filled with urine and horse dung, but there is no record he produced a crop. (Globe and Mail)

North Carolina will become the first state to compensate victims of a mass sterilization program that targeted poor minorities in a 20th century eugenics program, offering a $50,000 a person. (ABC News)

North Carolina officials have tracked down less than four dozen of the thousands of residents forced to undergo sterilizations between 1929 and 1974. (Washington Post)

Poor, a victim of child molestation and pregnant from rape, 14-year-old Elaine Riddick went into a North Carolina hospital in 1968 to give birth to her son. Though she wouldn’t know it until years later, she would leave the hospital robbed of the ability to ever bear children again. (ABC News)

Having a baby is a widely anticipated milestone for many adults, so it’s easy to imagine the shock endured by thousands of people who were forcibly sterilized by the government beginning before World War II. Now, North Carolina has become the first state to consider compensating the victims. (TIME)

Until the practice was terminated in 1974, state-sanctioned surgeries left as many as 60,000 Americans unable to bear children. Over 30 states were once involved in these programs; North Carolina is trying to make up for theirs.  (The Epoch Times)

Right now we are talking about a subject that may be shocking to many Americans. It might be very disturbing to them to know that this country, up to 33 states, was involved in eugenics. Our guest today is Daren Bakst with the John Locke Foundation. He is the director of legal and regulatory affairs at the foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina.  (The Voice of Russia)

Right to Life New Zealand and a group of parents of children with Down syndrome are taking the New Zealand Government to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in an attempt to stop early screening for Down syndrome during pregnancy.  (3 News)

Nature Medicine (Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2011) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “HPV protection in older groups may be in the eye of the beholder” by Nicola Jones, 637.

• “Jewish genetic screening grows despite questions about breadth” by Elie Dolgin, 639.

• “On thirtieth anniversary, calls for HIV cure research intensify” by Lucas Laursen, 643.

Head of the Medical Genetics Department of Iran dismisses the view that the rate of hereditary diseases have not increased in Iran, saying more than 50% of the first semester abortions are because of genetic abnormalities.  (Tehran Times)

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (Volume 8, Issue 2, June 2011) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “No Chance, No Value, or No Way: Reassessing the Place of Futility in Health Care and Bioethics” by Sarah Winch & Ian Kerridge.

• “Defining Medical Futility and Improving Medical Care” by Lawrence J. Schneiderman.

• “Medical Futility and the Death of a Child” by Nancy S. Jecker.

• “Same Coin-Different Sides? Futility and Patient Refusal of Treatment” by Eleanor Milligan.

• “Minimally Conscious States, Deep Brain Stimulation, and What is Worse than Futility” by Grant Gillett.

• “The Futility of Futility: Death Causation is the ‘Elephant in the Room’ in Discussions about Limitation of Medical Treatment” by Michael A. Ashby.

• “Futility Determination as a Process: Problems with Medical Sovereignty, Legal Issues and the Strengths and Weakness of the Procedural Approach” by Cameron Stewart.

• “Negative “GHIs,” the Right to Health Protection, and Future Generations” by Jan Deckers.

• “Unfit for Life”: A Case Study of Protector-Protected Analogies in Recent Advocacy of Eugenics and Coercive Genetic Discrimination” by Mark Musterhjelm.

• “Marginalizing Experience: A Critical Analysis of Public Discourse Surrounding Stem Cell Research in Australia” by Tamra Lysaght, John Miles Little and Ian Herold Kerridge.

• “Allhoff, Fritz, Patrick Lin, and Daniel Moore. 2010. What is nanotechnology and why does it matter? From science to ethics” by Jennifer Kuzma.

The state task force looking into how to compensate people who were sterilized under the direction of the state has moved its June 22 listening session to a larger location in anticipation of a big turnout.  (NewsObserver)

A call by WA’s chief medical officer to allow the creation of embryos using genetic material from three people has polarised WA’s two major church groups.  (The West Australian)

Good morning, I’m Mitch Wertlieb. All this week VPR is examining race as part of our 2011 collaboration with the Vermont Humanities Council’s Vermont Reads statewide reading program.  (VPR News)

The US activist group Final Exit Network (FEN) has erected billboards all over the US to support the right to “Die With Dignity” – what they have labeled the “ultimate right of the 21st century.”  (BioEdge)

Elderly people in the Netherlands are so fearful of being killed by doctors that they carry cards saying they do not want euthanasia, according to a campaigner who says allowing assistant suicide in Britain would put the vulnerable at risk. Kevin Fitzpatrick, a researcher with the pressure group Not Dead Yet, claimed that relaxing the law in this country would threaten old and disabled people as it would allow “moral judgments” that their lives were not worth living. (The Telegraph)

A new approach to testing the genes of early-stage fetuses could radically alter the experience of pregnancy and parenting. And we’d better start thinking about it now—before hype, fear, and the polarized politics of abortion distort the discussion. The technique being developed analyzes fetal DNA that is collected from women’s blood as early as five weeks into a pregnancy. So-called “noninvasive prenatal diagnosis,” or NIPD, may hit the market as a test for Down syndrome later this year. Soon after, refinements are likely that will allow identification of fetal genes at thousands of sites; two different research groups published papers claiming “proof in principle” of this prospect last December. (Science Progress)