Health Glance
The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate. The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade.
But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.
The human foetus feels no pain before 24 weeks, according to a major review of scientific evidence published today. The connections in the foetal brain are not fully formed in that time, nor is the foetus conscious, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
A top German court has ruled that it is not a criminal offence to cut off the life support of a dying person if that person has given their consent. The Federal Court of Justice acquitted a lawyer who had advised the daughter of a comatose woman to cut off her feeding tube.
The controversy over adding sodium fluoride to water supplies in both the U.S. and the UK is intensifying as two separate stories out of India reveal that children are being blinded and crippled partly as a result of the neurotoxin being artificially added to drinking water.
A group of doctors who've tracked 9/11 rescue workers' illnesses urged the Obama administration to "prevent a repetition of costly mistakes" made after the terrorist attacks by protecting Gulf Coast oil spill workers from toxic exposure.
It is the world's oldest euphoric drug – and yesterday the first medicine made from cannabis was licensed in the UK.
