The Karnataka high court on Tuesday directed the state government to furnish medical records of HB Karibasamma, a 70-year-old woman seeking the court’s permission for euthanasia. Justice Ajit Gunjal while hearing the petition asked the government to provide the records in a week’s time. Gunjal also issued notices to the ministry of parliamentary affairs, ministry of law and justice, and the chief secretary, Karnataka. This is the first case in the Karnataka high court seeking permission for mercy killing. Pramila Nesargi, senior counsel and former chairperson of the State Women’s Commission, representing Karibasamma, said the petitioner could be granted the right to die with dignity as she did not want to be a burden on the society.
Aruna Shanbaug, the brain-damaged woman who has lived in a Mumbai hospital for 38 years, should continue to live, the Supreme Court of India has ruled. Since the hospital staff are effectively her "next of kin", a request for euthanasia made on Aruna's behalf by activist Pinki Virani was turned down.
With surrogacy costing up to $70,000 in the US compared to only $12,000 in India, many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad. It's a multi-million dollar industry that sees rural Indians receive the equivalent of 10 years' salary. Over the course of nine months, we follow the lives of two women, who in each other seek solutions to the problems of poverty and infertility, and explore whether it's a relationship that is exploitative or mutually beneficial.
The high cost of surrogacy in Europe and the US means many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad. Carolina, from Ireland, travelled to India to pay Sonal to carry her baby. The World Service's Your World followed the two women as they came to terms with the emotional costs of the surrogacy.
Truth is often stranger than fiction, and nowhere is this more evident than when examining the real stories related to international commercial surrogacy that have occurred in the last few years. This Article utilizes these recent cases to analyze this industry using a bioethical lens. Bioethicists use stories effectively to demonstrate how theory and normative ideals apply to real world situations. By detailing examples of some of the unique scenarios that have arisen in far-flung cities of India, the United States, and the Ukraine, this Article highlights some of the bioethical dilemmas such stories raise. This Article examines these stories using the classic theoretical bioethics framework to demonstrate the need for clarification of state or national regulation and international guidelines related to international surrogacy.
In the second part of a special report, Nina Lakhani exposes how survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster became unwitting guinea pigs in studies funded by Western drug companies. Secret reports seen by The Independent reveal that drug trials funded by western pharmaceutical firms at the Indian hospital set up for survivors of the Bhopal disaster violated international ethical standards and could have put patients at risk.
AT LEAST 15 children born through surrogacy to Irish couples abroad are caught in a legal limbo which has left them either stateless or unable to get an Irish passport. This is despite the recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction – established more than a decade ago – which urged the Government to regulate surrogacy. Meanwhile, many parents say delays in resolving their children’s legal status is a source of ongoing stress and is likely to involve expensive legal action. One Dublin couple in their 30s, who have been stranded abroad in India for several weeks, say they are “tearing their hair out” waiting to have their child’s status regularised. “We are tired and angry with the Irish authorities,” said one of the parents, who declined to be named.
The husband of a pregnant woman who died in an Irish hospital has said he has no doubt she would be alive if she had been allowed an abortion. Savita Halappanavar's family said she asked several times for her pregnancy to be terminated because she had severe back pain and was miscarrying. Her husband told the BBC that it was refused because there was a foetal heartbeat. Ms Halappanavar's death, on 28 October, is the subject of two investigations. An autopsy carried out two days after her death found she had died from septicaemia, according to the Irish Times. Ms Halappanavar, who was 31 and originally from India, was a dentist. Praveen Halappanavar said staff at University Hospital Galway told them Ireland was "a Catholic country". When asked by the BBC if he thought his wife would still be alive if the termination had been allowed, Mr Halappanavar said: "Of course, no doubt about it."