While abortion is a common feature of the developed world, there remains some controversy about when it should be allowed. Only the United States and Canada still allow late-term abortion on demand because in the modern world a baby in the third trimester is already clear alive and will remain so with some care. In the third trimester the survival rate in America is 96%, only slightly below full-term children.

Can sound vibrations replace pesticides? Researchers are adapting different eco-friendly methods to try and boost harvests and open up a new chapter in sustainable farming.

Scientists in Northern Italy are experimenting with what they call eco-friendly sound and odor devices to fight off insects from their cultivated fields., though environmental activists don't accept the science of pesticides that have passed registration for 40 years and genetic modification almost as long so believing they will consider sound vibrations friendly is a stretch.

Between 2006 and 2011, high-dose opioid prescribing in Canada increased by 23 percent despite clinical guidelines recommending that most patients should avoid high-doses of these drugs, according to new research. 

Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) found that rates of high-dose opioid dispensing across Canada increased from 781 units per 1,000 people in 2006 to 961 units per 1,000 people in 2011.

Scientists have devised a new antibiotic based on vancomycin that is effective against vancomycin-resistant strains of  methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other disease-causing bacteria. The new vancomycin analog appears to have not one but two distinct mechanisms of anti-microbial action, against which bacteria probably cannot evolve resistance quickly.

Over half of the Earth's accessible agricultural land is already under cultivation because ecological factors such as climate, soil quality, water supply and topography determined the suitability of land for agriculture when people had to just find the best spots.

There are various knobs turning for the future of food. Science has made it possible for food to be grown with less environmental strain in more and more areas but climate change may impact global agriculture.

From government control of health care to new reproductive technologies in this century, we'll need to be able identify key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and find ways forward.

The Hastings Center and the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues have teamed up to publish a series of essays to highlight the best practices in teaching bioethics and to identify gaps in our knowledge of how best to inspire and increase moral understanding, analytical thinking in the moral domain, and professional integrity. The first three of these essays, which appear in the current Hastings Center Report, focus on bioethics education for practicing clinicians.