GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: French court green lights export of sperm to circumvent dead donor rule

domingo, 5 de junio de 2016

French court green lights export of sperm to circumvent dead donor rule

French court green lights export of sperm to circumvent dead donor rule

by Xavier Symons | 4 Jun 2016 |

A French Court has ruled in favour of allowing a dead man’s sperm to be sent to a foreign IVF clinic, despite France’s prohibition on insemination using sperm from deceased males.

The country’s Council of State (Conseil d’Etat) ruled in favour of a Spanish national, Nicola Turri, who had requested that the sperm of her deceased Italian husband, Mariana Gomez-Turri, be exported to Spain, where she now lives.

The couple was living in France when Turri was diagnosed with cancer of the lymphatic system. He froze his sperm before starting chemotherapy, a routine procedure due to the fact that treatment can cause infertility. Turri died in 2015.

The court acknowledged that Spanish law permits post-mortem insemination, and decided that the denial of the application would constitute “an excessive interference” with the widow’s “rights to respect for private and family life”.

The woman’s lawyers called the decision “extraordinary and unprecedented”. The court believed that the decision was consistent with a commitment to maintain the integrity of French law. “Neither Ms Gomez nor the child will have links with France,” said the court’s spokesperson, “because the husband wasn’t French.”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/french-court-green-lights-export-of-sperm-to-circumvent-dead-donor-rule/11901#sthash.gA6oUi1N.dpuf

Ali defeated Sonny Liston in 1964

The death of Muhammed Ali at the age of 74 is reminder of the uneasy ethical status of boxing. Only in boxing is the brain the target. Ali’s Parkinson’s disease was probably a result of punishing blows to the head over the course of his career. Gloves probably make the problem worse, as they increase the weight and the force of impact. Headgear may not protect boxers from rotational acceleration.

John Hardy, a neuroscientist at University College London, wrote a couple years ago: “nothing can be more killing of joy than personality changes, violence, substance abuse and dementia. I also think it is demeaning as a society for people to get pleasure out of watching others fight and that we should consign this public spectacle, as we have done public executions, to the dustbin of history.”

What do you think? Should professional boxing be banned? It seems hard to justify a sport which, in the words of Joe Frazier, who beat Ali in the brutal “fight of the century” in 1971, “boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.”