Abortion in Ireland: committee votes for constitutional change

A committee set up to deliberate on Ireland’s strict abortion regime has voted for the constitutional rules to be changed.

The Citizens’ Assembly, a randomly selected group of 99 members of the public chaired by the supreme court judge Mary Laffoy, met on Saturday to discuss the contentious issue for the final time.

At the heart of the assembly’s work is examining the eighth amendment to the republic’s constitution, which gives equal right to life to the mother and the foetus. In the first of a series of votes by members on whether to advise constitutional reform, the assembly voted 87% in favour of change.

A series of other votes are being held over the weekend to determine the specific changes the assembly will recommend.

Since 2014 in Ireland, a pregnancy can be terminated under the Protection Of Life During Pregnancy Act if there is a risk to the woman’s life, including from suicide. The procedure can involve a medical or surgical termination, or an early delivery by induction or caesarean section.

There has been a strong campaign for women to be allowed to have an abortion in cases of rape and incest, or if there has been a fatal foetal abnormality diagnosis.

Figures from the Health Service Executive showed 26 terminations were carried out under the legislation in 2014 and again in 2015. In both years, 14 were because of a risk to the life of the mother from physical illness, three in relation to suicide and nine following emergencies arising from physical illness.

In 2013, Amanda Mellet became the first of three Irish women to formally ask the UN to denounce the prohibition on abortions in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities as “cruel and inhumane”.

Mellet and her husband took their case to the UN’s human rights committee after they were forced to go to England to terminate the pregnancy.

Last year the UNHRC ruled that by forcing Mellet to leave Ireland to have an abortion, the state had inflicted trauma and distress on her.

For the first time in its history, Ireland compensated Mellet as a result of the ruling. Under the country’s laws, if Mellet and the other two women had remained in the republic they would have been forced to give birth to stillborn babies.

On Saturday, Judge Laffoy said the result of the vote provided a mandate for changing the status quo and, if implemented by the government, it would require a constitutional referendum, the Irish Times reported.

Opening the session, she praised the commitment of the assembly members.

“This exercise in deliberative democracy allowed us to withdraw from the polarising perspectives and begin first and foremost with the facts.”

Abortion in Ireland: committee votes for constitutional change

Politicians manipulate NHS for votes, finds BMA survey

The Ipsos MORI new survey identified two thirds of the public are in favour of medical professionals obtaining a greater say in how the NHS is run.

Practically half believed that politicians should have reduced or no involvement in how the NHS is run and one particular in 3 agree that Parliament must set overall targets for the NHS.

The day to day running of the NHS is now governed by NHS England, which is supposed to be separate from Parliament and the Department of Wellness but doctors say that even this is being manipulated for political obtain.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of BMA Council, mentioned: “The NHS remains 1 of the most politicised public solutions in the Uk. Whether it is the targets forced on physicians, GP appointments that are much more about box-ticking than clinical care, or brief term, headline grabbing policy initiatives – all of these are becoming completed for political expediency and to win votes. As a consequence, patient care is taking a back seat to scoring factors more than the dispatch box.

“With each and every government comes a new reform of the health service, sometimes more than one and each time the experience, expertise and passion of these operating in the NHS is ignored and chipped away. As a latest report by the Kings Fund highlighted, successive Governments have talked of liberating or shifting the stability in the NHS, and nevertheless there is an ‘irresistible tendency for ministers to want to be seen top the NHS.’

“The Government promised to eliminate micromanagement from the NHS and however the opposite has took place. There are even claims that NHS England, set up to be independent of Whitehall, is being manipulated for political purposes.

“Now, a yr out from the up coming election, we’re previously seeing politicians lining up politically motivated, not clinically driven alterations to GP services. Demands to provide appointments within 48-hrs, or to increase access to seven days a week may possibly search good on a leaflet but they really don’t deal with the difficulties that have left GPs struggling to deliver the care, time and appointments their patients need.

“Doctors want to see politics taken out of the NHS once and for all. It is clear that the public really feel the exact same way. Yes, politicians ought to be accountable for the working of the NHS, but when it comes to selections on patient care it is time to let doctors to do what they do very best – lead the delivery of high good quality patient care.”

Wellness Minister Dr Dan Poulter said: “Our reforms minimize pointless red tape and gave medical professionals and nurses, who know their sufferers greatest, the energy and freedom to make selections in the greatest interests of their neighborhood neighborhood.”

Politicians manipulate NHS for votes, finds BMA survey

FDA Advisory Panel Votes In Favor Of Approval For Merck"s Vorapaxar

(Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Medicines Advisory Committee voted ten-1 in favor of approval for vorapaxar, Merck’s Merck’s novel thrombin receptor antagonist. The “roller coaster ride” cliché may have been invented for this drug, which was the topic of tremendous early hopes followed by main disappointments and, finally, a subsequent revival.

The committee voted in favor of the drug for use as an adjunctive therapy for the reduction of atherothrombotic events in individuals with a background of myocardial infarction (MI). Panel chairperson Philip Sager explained that “this drug addresses a true unmet medical require and can make a real variation for sufferers.”

The University of Colorado’s Mori Krantz provided the a single unfavorable vote, however in his comments he indicated that he was not completely opposed to approval. He characterized his vote as a “formal dissent” and explained that he desired to get on the record his concerns about the large amount of individuals who would need to be taken care of with vorapaxar to stop a single occasion and his dread that the bleeding problems observed in the study may be amplified in the real world.

Sanjay Kaul stated that Merck ”convincingly demonstrated that the advantage exceeded the risk in the chosen patient cohort. Like all advancement programs, it has it’s fair share of warts, but there is an unmet need in this population where we have no safe and effective therapies accessible. Hopefully, if accredited it will be utilized in situations that optimize its advantage-risk profile.”

The panel spent much of the day wrestling with the complicated questions raised by the drug’s troubled history, in which a single massive trial, TRACER, was stopped early due to large charges of significant bleeding and the other trial, the TRA2P trial, was redesigned in midstream. But eventually the panel believed that TRA2P had been able to show that vorapaxar was successful in a post-MI population in which sufferers with a historical past of stroke had been excluded.

FDA Advisory Panel Votes In Favor Of Approval For Merck"s Vorapaxar