A Catholic bioethics institute urged the U.K. government to speed up a review of the rights of the parents of sick children after doctors ended the life of a brain-damaged boy against the wishes of his parents.

MANCHESTER, England -- A vaccine produced with the help of cells derived from aborted fetuses could present an ethical dilemma for Catholics and others opposed to abortion, said a senior researcher from a Catholic bioethics institute.

In a crisis, hard decisions have to be made.

When there aren’t enough ventilators or Intensive Care Unit beds for everyone who needs one, it’s left to medical ethicists to provide guidance to clinicians faced with dire decisions about who lives and who dies.

A bioethicist who spent decades urging Catholics to plan for their last days by naming a substitute decision maker in an advance care directive is now incensed at the idea the government will likely allow the directive to be used to invoke euthanasia.

OTTAWA -- Increasing numbers of people killed by euthanasia are supplying a “boon” for organ transplant surgeries in Canada, according to an Ottawa newspaper. But politicians and ethicists say the practice is “rather horrifying” and raises questions of “coercion.”

WASHINGTON D.C. (CNA) - The Japanese government is expected to approve funding for a research project, led by stem cell scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi, to use stem cells to create animal embryos that contain human cells.

If it was up to Dr. Barrie deVeber, his name would not be on the institution dedicated to researching all aspects of human life.

WASHINGTON – The revelation in late November that a Chinese researcher had edited genes in human embryos and then implanted them in a woman was "a train wreck of a thing to do," said an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

When Archbishop Fergus P. McEvay started the St. Elizabeth Nurses in Toronto 110 years ago, it was all about the beginning of life. Four qualified midwives were stationed in the city’s poorer neighbourhoods to deliver babies, ensure the mother’s health and then get those babies baptized.

New federal government rules to monitor euthanasia and assisted suicide are opaque and weak at a time when legally induced deaths are rising at alarming levels, warn several organizations.

A private member’s bill that would decriminalize the purchase of sperm, eggs and rent-a-womb surrogacy would open the door to exploitation of poor women and legalize a form of child trafficking, according to a member of the 1990s Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies.

When I was a child I watched a movie called Village of the Damned. It was creepy and scary.

The pipette appears on the screen and sucks up a dot, which is actually human sperm that has been genetically altered. Then the small laboratory tool pierces the membrane of a human egg, releases the sperm, “and you have changed the genetic destiny of that embryo,” notes television host Bill Whitaker. “Yes, we believe so,” nods scientist Shoukhrat Mitalipov. 

VATICAN – Love is a miraculous force that helps the parents of sick children focus on the beauty of their children's lives and keeps the flame of hope for a cure alive, Pope Francis told an Italian couple and a group of their supporters.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, described a physician’s career this way: “Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous and judgment difficult.” So, who in their right mind would want to be a doctor?