At least two lawsuits filed at a top European court claim Russia violated Europe's Human Rights Convention by removing organs from the recently dead without telling relatives.
All patients in England suffering from a disease which causes blindness are to get access to a sight-saving drug. Lucentis treats age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of sight loss in the country.
A euthanasia advocate, who was convicted in June after assisting in the death of Alzheimer's sufferer Graeme Wylie, has taken her life. Caren Jenning, 75, who was convicted of being an accessory to manslaughter after helping Mr Wylie take a lethal dose of veterinary drug Nembutal, had been suffering breast cancer.
In a blow to the euthanasia movement, a jury has found one woman guilty of the manslaughter and another an accessory to the manslaughter of Alzheimer's sufferer and former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie. Mr Wylie's partner Shirley Justins, 59, and his long-term friend Caren Jenning, 75, were accused of plotting to kill him. Justins was found guilty of manslaughter and Jenning of being an accessory to manslaughter. Mr Wylie, 71, died in March 2006 from an overdose of the veterinary drug Nembutal, which Jenning had bought and illegally imported from Mexico, and which Justins had given to him in their Cammeray home.
A woman with multiple sclerosis has begun a High Court challenge to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering travelling to Switzerland - where assisted suicide is legal - to end her life. But she fears her husband, Omar Puente, could be prosecuted for going with her when he got back to the UK.
A widow is battling to use sperm taken from the body of her dead husband, in a British legal first. The woman, who cannot be named, wants to use sperm taken from her husband after he died unexpectedly during a routine hospital operation last year. The mother-of-one applied for an emergency court order allowing his sperm to be taken shortly after he died and it is now being stored in a clinic. The law allows sperm only to be used with the written consent of the donor.
BBC Radio 4's Law in Action will be broadcast on Friday 15 October, 2004 at 1600 GMT. Abortion law is under close scrutiny, after it was revealed that an NHS-funded charity is helping women to get illegal late abortions abroad.
Test Santé vient de publier les résultats d'une enquête sur les actes de fin de vie et l'euthanasie. Elle est le prolongement de l’enquête récente sur les soins palliatifs. Pour cela, Test Santé a donné la parole aux personnes concernées : proches, médecins et infirmiers. Il en ressort que les soins palliatifs, aussi efficaces soient-ils, n'empêchent pas certains de souhaiter mourir. L’enquête souligne le fait que la demande vient le plus souvent exclusivement du patient lui-même (47% des cas contre 38% de la famille), et c’est encore plus vrai pour les patients en soins palliatifs (61%). Par ailleurs, Test Achats constate que l’euthanasie joue un rôle dans le débat sur la qualité de la fin de vie et que celle-ci est meilleure lorsque l’euthanasie est appliquée «à un moment plus naturel de la mort » (ou même avant dans certains cas) plutôt qu’après un acharnement thérapeutique.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service says the lack of abortion services for women who are 20-24 weeks pregnant is a scandal. The charity is the UK's largest abortion provider, and carries out 80% of terminations after 20 weeks.
A UK charity has insisted it is not breaking the law by referring women abroad for late abortions. The Sunday Telegraph has reported that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service helps set up hundreds of late abortions without medical justification. BPAS says not referring patients abroad would be "morally reprehensible".
A judge is to be asked to institute criminal proceedings against the Spanish clinic which was exposed as carrying out illegal late abortions on hundreds of British babies. A denuncias - the Spanish term for an accusation of criminal activity - will this week be laid against the Ginemedex clinic in Barcelona, citing the extensive video and audio evidence collected by this newspaper, proving that it is flouting abortion laws. The judge will decide whether to order a full police investigation into the scandal, which was uncovered when staff at the clinic agreed to carry out an abortion on an undercover reporter who was 26 weeks, or almost six months, pregnant, even though both she and the baby were healthy.
A leading British provider of abortions did not break the law when it told women who wanted late terminations about a clinic in Spain that would perform them, a report by Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England, concluded last week. Professor Donaldson investigated the charity the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) after a newspaper reported that it was illegally referring women to Spain for abortions after 24 weeks’ gestation, the limit in Britain for abortions for "social" reasons. Professor Donaldson has decided that BPAS did not break the law by telling women about the Spanish clinic. But he criticised it for giving out the clinic’s telephone number too readily and for not giving appropriate advice to women seeking a late abortion.