Medico-Legal
Blowing smoke in the face of the evidence
Two major cigarette manufacturers are threatening legal action against the Irish government over plans for a law requiring them to sell cigarettes in plain packets. The move coincides with Addiction publishing a collection of peer-reviewed research papers from 2008 to 2015 that bring together key parts of the evidence base for standardised packaging of tobacco products.Three-parent babies IVF 'breaches EU law'
Britain recently became the first country in the world to allow the creation of three-parent babies. Now 50 MEPs have written to UK Prime Minister David Cameron warning that the new laws breach the EU's Clinical Trials Directive which ban genetic alterations which can be passed down to future generations.State must pay 'moonlighting' nurses contract
Government 'ineptitude' was the cause of KZN Health hiring some of its own striking nurses who were moonlighting for a recruitment agency contracted to assist during the crisis, says an IOL report.Judge: 'Therapeutic sterilisation … not eugenics'
A British mother-of-six with learning disabilities can be sterilised, a judge has ruled. Health authority and social services bosses had asked him to authorise forced entry into the woman’s home, the use of 'necessary restraint' and sterilisation, at a hearing in the Court of Protection – where issues relating to sick and vulnerable people are examined.First UK FGM case collapses
British prosecutors have been accused of pursuing a ‘show trial’ after a National Health Service (NHS) doctor facing a landmark female genital mutilation case (FGM) was acquitted in less than half an hour, reports The Daily Telegraph.Basson allowed to apply to sack HPCSA chair
The Pretoria High Court has granted an application by Apartheid-era chemical weapons expert Dr Wouter Basson to prohibit the continued involvement of the chair of his ongoing Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) sentencing inquiry, reports Health-e.