A secretive experiment revealed this week, in which neurosurgeons transplanted brain cells into a patient with Parkinson’s disease, made medical history. It was the first time such “reprogrammed” cells, produced from stem cells that had been created in the lab from the man’s own skin cells, had been used to try to treat the degenerative brain disease. But it was also a bioethics iceberg, with some issues in plain sight and many more lurking.

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The political spin promising a quick vaccine for COVID-19 is false. The average time to make a vaccine is 20 years.

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Worry that ‘all hands’ responses may expose doctors and nurses to infection prompts a debate about prioritizing the survival of the many over the one.

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Some private clinics are charging UK patients thousands of pounds for unproven and unregulated treatments using the “healing powers” of stem cells.

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Conscientious objection—everybody seems to be talking about it these days. What are the rights of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, or other healthcare workers to say that something may be legal but they refuse to do it?

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Because of rare illness, Louise Moorhouse is on a special diet of pills or foul-tasting shakes. There’s a drug that would allow her to eat like anyone else – she took it for three years during a clinical trial. But the NHS won’t pay for it, reports the BBC’s Deborah Cohen – and the drug company stopped giving it to her once the trial was over.

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The University of Illinois at Chicago’s acclaimed child psychiatrist Mani Pavuluri put vulnerable children at serious risk in one of her clinical trials by testing the powerful drug lithium on children younger than 13 — violating research rules, failing to properly alert parents of the study’s risks and falsifying data to cover up the misconduct.

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France has banned several types of textured breast implants that have been linked to a rare form of cancer.

The ban, which covers macro-textured and polyurethane implants, took effect on Friday. It was announced this week by France’s National Agency for Safety of Medicines and Health Products, or ANSM, in a letter to manufacturers.

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New research suggests that a controversial gene-editing experiment to make children resistant to HIV may also have enhanced their ability to learn and form memories.

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Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but scattered outbreaks have occurred in recent years. This year there have been five — in New York, Texas, and Washington State — for a total of more than 120 cases.

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