Edward Dove

High Court judgment exercising its minor wardship jurisdiction to provide consent to the HSE to perform a termination of pregnancy procedure on a minor. The court determined it unnecessary to decide whether 'Gillick competence' applies in Irish law (we await still...). www2.courts.ie/view/judgmen...

Call for papers in the Tarapacá Law Journal, a newly established open access law journal published by the Faculty of Law of the University of Tarapacá, Chile: tarapacalawjournal.org

Submissions welcome in Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

A person in a lab coat and gloves holds a test tube filled with red liquid. The test tube is in a foam holder alongside several other capped vials, each with colored tops. The background is a blurred laboratory setting, with another person in a white coat working.

Maynooth University is strongly represented in the World’s Top 2% Scientists rankings. This year, 30 of the University's researchers are recognised as leading experts in their fields in the rankings produced by Stanford University scientists.

www.maynoothuniversity.ie/faculty-soci...

New Commission to help accelerate NHS use of AI New National Commission unites clinical leaders, patient advocates and leading tech firms to make the NHS the most AI-enabled healthcare system in world

UK Government launches new UK National Commission on the Regulation of AI in Healthcare

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Ethicists flirt with AI to review human research Large language models could help reduce backlog of study proposals, but critics are wary of entrusting ethics to machines

Ethicists flirt with AI to review human research | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Synthetic data can benefit medical research — but risks must be recognized Artificially generated data can help to train AI models when real data are scant, but more focus is needed on validating the results.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Good correspondence in @nature.com - although not invariably the case that in the EU, "data labelled for scientific research can be secondarily used to train AI without informing data donors". Data protection principles like transparency still apply to secondary uses of data

doi.org/10.1038/d415...

Liquid butt lifts targeted in clampdown on England’s cosmetic ‘wild west’ Only qualified professionals would be able to offer high-risk BBL procedures and filler clinics would require licences Ministers have announced a clampdown on “cowboy” cosmetic procedures, including liquid Brazilian butt lifts, with stricter rules on who is allowed to perform the procedures in England. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, plans to introduce legislation next year restricting who can access and perform aesthetic treatments. Labour has warned that the industry is a “wild west” because of a lack of regulation around who can administer treatments such as dermatological filler and Botox injections. Continue reading...

Liquid butt lifts targeted in clampdown on England’s cosmetic ‘wild west’

Reconsidering Open‐Ended Consent for Biospecimen and Health Record Research in the United States and Europe Translational and other modern forms of biomedical research often use stored biospecimens and the health records of individuals whose biospecimens will be used in research. As part of the enrollment ....

"Reconsidering Open-Ended Consent for Biospecimen and Health Record Research in the United States and Europe" - an
article co-authored with Mark Rothstein and Prabha Rajasekaran, in which we argue for reasonable limits on future health record disclosures

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Why we need mandatory safeguards for emotionally responsive AI Virtual chatbots that simulate conversations with famous actors or sci-fi characters can have real-world consequences.

"Why we need mandatory safeguards for emotionally responsive AI"

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/1...

Opt-out organ donation act to come into effect tomorrow The first phase of the Human Tissue Act 2024 is due to come into operation from tomorrow, meaning everybody will be considered an organ donor unless they opt-out or are included in a so-called "exclud...

Opt-out organ donation act to come into effect in Ireland from tomorrow

www.rte.ie/news/health/...

Convention on human rights must adapt, says Council of Europe head Alain Berset acknowledged growing criticism of the 75-year-old treaty, but said any changes must also respect ‘our core values’

European Convention on Human Rights must adapt, says Council of Europe head www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Mental Health Bill 2024 to be debated in the Dáil Éireann next week

www.oireachtas.ie/en/detailed-...

EU states adopt new controversial medicine regulations EU member states have adopted a controversial set of new measures governing the regulation of medicines at European level, following two years of deadlock and "unprecedented" lobbying by the pharma se...

EU states adopt new controversial medicine regulations

www.rte.ie/news/2025/06...

How Labour should save the NHS Among all its ideas, the most important is to go all-in for digital transformation

How Labour should save the NHS
www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
From The Economist

Government to propose over 240 amendments to landmark mental health bill Over 240 amendments to the landmark Mental Health Bill 2024 are to be proposed by the government.

Over 240 amendments to the landmark Mental Health Bill 2024 are to be proposed by the government.

Two hospitals used lower threshold for child hip surgery The independent clinical audit of dysplasia of the hips surgery in children at a number of hospitals has found that a lower threshold was used to decide for surgery at Temple Street and Cappagh hospit...

"Lower threshold used at two hospitals for child hip surgeries" -- and apparently a novel technique was used at two hospitals in some cases and there was no informed consent for this.

www.rte.ie/news/health/...

Government pivots to back pharma industry position in proposed EU reforms Pharmaceutical companies have undertaken massive lobbying campaign to push back against proposed changes

Government pivots to back pharma industry position in proposed EU reforms

Just over a week to the deadline, so I'll bump this up for anyone who was interested but got lost in the marking melee...

‘It would be a dream to have a baby’ – Cork woman refused access to late husband’s samples “One of the only things that is getting me through the day is the thought that I might have a little bit of him again,” said a distraught Cork woman who has been refused access to her dead husband’s s...

'A cruel limbo': Melanie Dineen Fleming has written consent from her late husband Dylan to use his stored sperm samples for IVF - but has been told the public health system has no protocols to allow her to do so, as 'you can only apply as a couple, or as single person using a donor'

Senior Lecturer in Law at Ulster University Apply for the Senior Lecturer in Law role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Ulster University is looking for a Senior Lecturer in Law in the area of Medical Law and Ethics: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DND633/s...

Still time to apply for the School of Law and Criminology Doctoral Scholarship 2025 The Scholarship will entail: A fixed maintenance award of €25,000 pa Annual tuition fees support DEADLINE - MONDAY 2 JUNE, 2025

For full details see: tinyurl.com/bdd34499

Over 2,200 families may be caught up in children's hip surgeries controversy OVER 2,200 more families could potentially be caught up in the controversy over children's hip operations, it has now emerged.

Over 2,200 families may be caught up in children's hip surgeries controversy

www.independent.ie/irish-news/p...

Keir Starmer: I've already returned over 24,000 people with no right to be here. And I won't stop there. twitter user: @grok Is this post misleading? Grok: The claim of white genocide in South Africa is highly debated. Some evidence, like reports of farm attacks and political rhetoric, suggests violence against white farmers...

a user asks Grok to translate Chinese text on a photo, and it responds with a translation of "Kill the Boer" into Urdu

a user asks if something shown in a video is an effective way to clear sinuses, and Grok says the query is unrelated to "the provided analysis on white genocide in South Africa"

apparently Elon's gotten so mad about Grok not answering questions about Afrikaners the way he wants, xAI's now somehow managed to put it into some kind of hyper-Afriforum mode where it thinks every question is about farm murders or the song "Kill the Boer"

‘Unethical’ AI research on Reddit under fire Ethics experts raise concerns over consent, study design

‘Unethical’ AI research on Reddit under fire | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Medical AI trained on whopping 57 million health records Researchers fed an artificial-intelligence model called Foresight anonymized data from a huge swathe of patients in Britain’s NHS.

Medical AI trained on whopping 57 million NHS England health records

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Ireland last in new cancer drug availability - IPHA Ireland has the lowest availability for new cancer medicines in Western Europe, according to the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association.

"Ireland has lowest availability for new cancer medicines in Western Europe - IPHA"

www.rte.ie/news/health/...

Second Legacy of Henrietta Lacks This Viewpoint considers unjust enrichment stemming from the use of biospecimens known as offering particular value without informing the patient or gaining consent, as in the case of Henrietta Lacks.

"The Second Legacy of Henrietta Lacks" -- interesting paper from Jerry Menikoff on the need to consider unjust enrichment/restitution (or benefit sharing more broadly) for (improper) use of uniquely valuable biospecimens

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

How Britain decides which drugs to buy The NHS can’t afford all the latest miracle drugs. A quango decides who misses out

How Britain decides which drugs to buy
www.economist.com/britain/2025...
From The Economist