medical ethics

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration recommends the agency, for the first time, approve a new kind of treatment that uses genetically modified immune cells to attack cancer cells.

Charles Byrne was about 7 feet 7 inches tall, an 18th century marvel whose height came from a pituitary tumor. He asked for privacy in death, but his skeleton is still on display in a London museum.

Terminally ill patients want easier access to candidate medicines still in the earliest stages of testing. While 33 states have passed laws to enable that, ethicists also warn of big risks.

An independent federal panel says the experimental procedure needs to be proven safe, and even then should only be tried with male embryos because of concerns about passing down genetic errors.

Young doctors being trained at dozens of hospitals around the country are being asked to work up to 30 hours straight as part of a study. Critics say the study is risky and unethical.