Military hierarchies are, by necessity, rigid structures. DARPA’s ‘Mosaic Warfare’ project aims for something much more fluid and adaptable, with AI doing the logistical grunt work so human commanders can get creative.
Drawn by payments of up to $10,000, an increasing number of women are offering to sell their eggs at U.S. fertility clinics as a way to make money amid the financial crisis.
The draft NIH guidelines on stem-cell research are a good first step, but some revision is needed. The proposed guidelines on federal funding for stem-cell research issued in April by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are a welcome effort to assert ethical and regulatory leadership over this field — especially given the vacuum in oversight left by the previous US administration. Yet concerns aired by the scientific community during the public comment period that closed last week have underscored the need for the NIH to revise the guidelines to allow the responsible progress of research.
The Supreme Court in the US state of Montana is due to begin hearing arguments to decide if severely ill people there have the constitutional right to ask their doctor to help them die. A lower court judgement last December decided that they did, but now the state of Montana is trying to have that ruling overturned.
A hospital mix-up last January forced would-be mom Carolyn Savage and her husband Sean to make a heartrending decision. Ten days after the Savages went to a fertility clinic to have embryos transferred in hopes of conceiving, they got a devastating phone call. Savage had successfully gotten pregnant, but the baby wasn't hers—the embryo belonged to Detroit-based couple Paul and Shannon Morell. The Savages were stricken. "It was such a nightmare and, in a way, I felt violated," Carolyn Savage told CNN last week. Yet what had the potential to be a scarring and devastating turn of events ended up forging an incredible, if unlikely, bond between two families. Savage decided not to abort the fetus, and to give the biological parents the baby.
A lesbian couple has won a landmark case against a Californian clinic, where doctors allegedly cited their religious beliefs as grounds to refuse the couple IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment. Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside, and her spouse, Joanne Clark, sued doctors Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody, at North Coast Women's Medical Group in Vista for discrimination in 2001. The doctors treated Ms Benitez with fertility drugs and provided her guidance about self-insemination but allegedly told her they would not inseminate her, due to their religious objections. The couple was, however, referred to another clinic by the North Coast doctors, which they were told would have no moral objections. Ms Benitez underwent treatment and the couple have since had three children. The discrimination case was finally settled after eight years for undisclosed sum of money.
Thousands of patients are suing AstraZeneca in US courts, claiming the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel caused weight gain and diabetes. The patients allege Seroquel, its second biggest selling drug worth $4.5bn (£2.7bn) a year, was marketed without adequate warning about possible side effects such as massive weight gain and the development of diabetes. However, this is denied by the company.
A judge in the US state of Minnesota has ordered a former nurse accused of encouraging suicide on the internet to stay offline. William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, is charged in connection with the deaths of Briton Mark Drybrough in 2005, and Canadian Nadia Kajouji in 2008. He allegedly posed as a female nurse, advising people in chatrooms on how to take their own lives. He reportedly admitted helping up to five people kill themselves.