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The film Go Now explores three key themes relevant to the way in which many men have been socialized to manage their health, including: 1. men's access to healthcare services [...]

The tobacco industry's involvement in the electronic cigarette research that informs public health policy is controversial. On the one hand, some are concerned that their involvement presents conflicts of interest that bias research outputs and invalidate the policies that use them. On the other hand, some have argued that the tobacco industry may support valid research and contribute to the goals of public health, for instance, if the interests of the e‐cigarette industry could be part of a tobacco smoking cessation policy. We approach this debate from the ethical perspective of the public interest and the public good, considering how legitimate researchers can square their expert opinion with validating tobacco industry‐funded research, given the perfidy of the tobacco industry and paucity of robust, conclusive evidence on the public health impacts of liberalizing e‐cigarette use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to quell ongoing debate about the ethics of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, there have been concerted efforts to develop ethical standards for both embryo and hESC research and to entrench these standards in law. Surprisingly these efforts have not included efforts at standardizing the meaning of the pivotal term 'embryo'. This paper reviews the legal framework for embryo research in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany and highlights the absence of any agreed upon standard for what counts as a human embryo. This is an important lacuna, especially in light of the most recent advances in stem cell research involving the reprogramming of human somatic cell nuclei to generate human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how reproductive autonomy of women and couples is affected by the availability of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Libertarians have argued that PGD enhances reproductive autonomy by increasing options available to prospective parents. We acknowledge that PGD presents prospective parents with more options, but note that the libertarian view of reproductive autonomy overlooks important aspects of the social practice of PGD by focusing too narrowly on the absence of explicit constraints as the main guarantee of reproductive autonomy. We endorse instead a feminist relational account of autonomy in which exercising autonomy involves paying attention to the relevant contextual features that configure and shape prospective parents' choices and understanding of their reproductive options. On this view, PGD has a negative potential to constrain reproductive autonomy. We recommend that this negative potential be addressed by making sure the availability of PGD is accompanied by increased attention to the relevant educational needs of prospective parents and the general public, as well as the availability of adequate social supports for people with disabilities, their care providers and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions and debates about the governance of human germline and heritable genome editing should be informed by a clear and accurate understanding of the global policy landscape. This policy survey of 106 countries yields significant new data. A large majority of countries (96 out of 106) surveyed have policy documents-legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes, and international treaties-relevant to the use of genome editing to modify early-stage human embryos, gametes, or their precursor cells. Most of these 96 countries do not have policies that specifically address the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos in laboratory research (germline genome editing); of those that do, 23 prohibit this research and 11 explicitly permit it. Seventy-five of the 96 countries prohibit the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos to initiate a pregnancy (heritable genome editing). Five of these 75 countries provide exceptions to their prohibitions. No country explicitly permits heritable human genome editing. These data contrast markedly with previously reported findings.

We examined whether access to US-approved orphan drugs in Canada has changed between 1997 (when Canada chose not to adopt an orphan drug policy) and 2012 (when Canada reversed its policy decision). Specifically, we looked at two dimensions of access to US-approved orphan drugs in Canada: (1) regulatory access; and (2) temporal access. Whereas only 63% of US-approved orphan drugs were granted regulatory approval in 1997, we found that regulatory access to US-approved orphan drugs in Canada increased to 74% between 1997 and 2012. However, temporal access to orphan drugs is slower in Canada: in a head-on comparison of 40 matched drugs, only two were submitted and four were approved first in Canada; moreover, the mean review time in Canada (423 days) was longer than that in the US (mean = 341 days), a statistically significant difference (t[39] = 2.04, p = 0.048). These results raise questions about what motivated Canada's apparent shift in orphan drug policy., (Copyright © 2016 Longwoods Publishing.)

Through an Access to Information Act request, we have obtained the consent forms used by the providers of every human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line approved for use by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and examined them to verify whether or not they meet the consent requirements established by Canadian law and regulations. Our findings show that at least seven out of ten consent forms studied did not satisfy these minimum requirements. We then outline various options for responding to this situation in terms of: (i) remedial measures for dealing with executive problems with regulatory oversight procedures; and (ii) remedial measures for dealing with the impugned lines.