Fertility specialists have developed a radical technique that can boost the chances of IVF couples having a healthy baby. Doctors in Nottingham who devised the procedure say it could raise live birthrates at their clinic to 78%, around three times the national average for IVF treatment in the UK. (The Guardian)

Public funding of assisted reproductive technology, including in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, broadens the range of couples who seek treatment for infertility by attracting a more diverse population, according to new research from Canada. (Medical Xpress)

Injectable nanoparticles developed at MIT may someday eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin. (Phys.org)

It was hailed some 15 years ago as the great hope for a biomedical revolution: the use of cloning techniques to create perfectly matched tissues that would someday cure ailments ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease. Since then, the approach has been enveloped in ethical debate, tainted by fraud and, in recent years, overshadowed by a competing technology. Most groups gave up long ago on the finicky core method — production of patient-specific embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from cloning. A quieter debate followed: do we still need ‘therapeutic’ cloning? (Nature)

Scientists have used cloning technology to transform human skin cells into embryonic stem cells, an experiment that may revive the controversy over human cloning. The researchers stopped well short of creating a human clone. But they showed, for the first time, that it is possible to create cloned embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to the person from whom they are derived. (The Wall Street Journal)

Bereaved parents agonising over whether to subject their dead child or stillborn baby to a full post-mortem now have an alternative that is potentially far less traumatic. For fetuses and infants under the age of one, MRI scans combined with minimally invasive procedures including blood tests are as effective as an autopsy at revealing the cause of death. (New scientist)

Admissions to U.S. hospital intensive care units jumped 50 percent from 2002 to 2009, but researchers are not sure why. (UPI)

The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, found U.S. cancer patients were 2.65 times more likely to file for bankruptcy than people without cancer. (UPI)

The study, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank, found that retirement results in a “drastic decline in health” in the medium and long term. (BBC)

Nurses will use extreme measures to save their patients and parents; but if they were dying, they prefer less aggressive ones for themselves, according to results from an international survey on nurses’ end-of-life preferences. (News-medical)

El Salvador’s Supreme Court heard opening arguments Wednesday in a landmark abortion case in which a woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus has not been allowed to terminate a pregnancy in which the fetus is given no chance of surviving. The Central American country’s laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman’s health is at risk. At present, the woman and any doctor who terminated her 23-week pregnancy would face arrest and criminal charges. (ABC News)

Understanding the concept of morphogen gradients—the mechanism by which a signal from one part of a developing embryo can influence the location and other variables of surrounding cells—is important to developmental biology, gene regulation, evolution, and human health. (Phys.org)

A couple who had been trying for a baby for almost a decade have made medical history after the birth of quadruplet girls - the first time four children of the same sex have been born from a single embryo in Britain. (The Telegraph)

An eight-year old British girl of Indian descent was allegedly murdered by health care workers in India so they could harvest her organs, her grieving parents claim. (International Business Times)

An increasing number of childless Asian couples are travelling to India for fertility treatment because of a shortage of south Asian egg donors in the UK. (BBC)

A study finds a gap between learning ethical terms and using them in a clinical setting, which can lead to a lack of shared understanding. (American Medical News)

The World Health Organization’s annual statistics show progress is being made around the world in cutting child mortality - but it will miss its target of a two-thirds reduction by 2015. (BBC)

The adoptive parents of a child born with male and female organs say South Carolina mutilated their son by choosing a gender and having his male genitalia surgically removed. (CNN)

Nine women have registered with Japan’s first “ovum bank” to donate their eggs to help infertile women, paving the way for fertility treatment to begin within the year at the earliest, a private group said Monday. (The Japan Times)

The Strasbourg, France-based court said Switzerland must specify whether its laws are meant to include people not suffering from terminal illnesses and, if so, spell out the conditions under which they can end their lives. (Washington Post)