Armin Meiwes, the German man who says that eating human flesh made him feel complete, has been convicted of manslaughter. "Prosecutors branded Meiwes a "human butcher" who acted simply to "satisfy a sexual impulse", and had sought a life sentence for murder. But his lawyer, Harald Ermel, successfully argued that the death was "homicide on demand" - a form of mercy killing - because the victim had given his consent to be killed and eaten." See "German cannibal gets eight-and-a-half years" in The Guardian.

The New Zealand novelist and memoirist Janet Frame has died in Dunedin at the age of 79. The New York Times writes in an obituary, "Ms. Frame's work used her own disturbing life to weave fictional nightmares that reflected, in her words, the "homelessness of self." After a suicide attempt she spent eight years in mental hospitals in New Zealand, receiving 200 electroshock treatments. She was about to have a lobotomy when a hospital official read that she had won a literary prize. She was released."

"Makers of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have refused to disclose the details of most clinical trials involving depressed children, denying doctors and parents crucial evidence as they weigh fresh fears that such medicines may cause some children to become suicidal." See "Antidepressant Makers Withhold Data on Children" in The Washington Post.

The Bush administration, responding to pressure from the food lobby, has rejected a link between junk food and obesity in a confidential letter to the director general of the World Health Organization. See "US government rejects WHO's attempts to improve diet" in the British Medical Journal.

"Until little more than a century ago, the only aims of medical care were the cure of disease and the relief of human suffering. But the definition of "human suffering" has gradually changed. We now find ourselves faced with the reality that it is no longer sufficient to prevent or treat sickness of the body or mind, but that physicians are expected to address increasing attention—and society's dollars—to the millions who are dissatisfied with what nature and their own DNA have given them." Sherwin Nuland writes about Sheila and David Rothman's The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement, for The New York Review of Books, in "Getting in Nature's Way."

Just added two more of Carl's articles to the site, both written for the Wilson Quarterly: Humanity 2.0 (PDF) covers a World Transhumanism Association meeting at Yale. Adventures in the Gene Pool (PDF) looks at genetic ancestry tracing services.

"The taking of pills and injections of anabolic steroids created virile features and heightened confusion about an already uncertain sexual identity, Krieger said, influencing a decision to have a sex-change operation in 1997 and to become known legally as Andreas." Jere Longman writes about the aftermath of the East German sports doping program for the New York Times in "East German Steroids' Toll: 'They Killed Heidi.'"

"It sounds like science fiction gone mad - a fantastic edifice housing thousands of cryonically preserved bodies awaiting reanimation. But construction work on Stephen Valentine's creation, the Timeship, starts in two years." Steve Rose writes about it for The Guardian in "House of the Temporarily Dead."

"The near universal shudder that greets the prospect of face transplants is not a fundamentally moral matter at all. It's about our increasingly precarious sense of identity, the same anxiety tapped by reproductive cloning - you would go on even after your death but it would be another you." Arlene Judith Klotzko discusses face transpants in The Prospect.

"Once a drug is approved, some patients are going to demand it as an enhancement, and some doctors are going to give it to them. This is an unsavory fact of medical life: Market demand is an essential component of this dynamic, as is cultural desire, and self-propelling economies build up around drugs that offer minimal efficacy and maximal fantasy fulfillment." Stephen Hall reviews The Purusit of Perfection by Sheila and David Rothman in The New York Times Book Review.

"When doctors and trainees meet with reps, they change their prescribing habits and are far more likely to prescribe the drugs described, even when they are more expensive or have no benefit over alternatives. They are also more willing to request illogical changes to hospital guidelines that govern which drugs can be prescribed. Estimates suggest that roughly $1 billion was spent advertising antidepressants to health professionals in 2000." See Dan Shapiro's "Drug Companies Get Too Close for Med School's Comfort" in the New York Times.

"Not too many presidential commissions produce reports that include chapters on the well-being of the soul, advising the American population that 'the place of memory in the pursuit of happiness suggests something essential about human identity.'" The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook reviews Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, the latest report from the President's Council on Bioethics.

Virginia Postrel's "populism rests on a defense of shopping as self-expression, and her libertarianism views expression as the first prerogative of freedom. Yet she always takes the side of commerce. The "expressions" she most often talks about are those of GE Plastics, Starbucks, Apple and other companies." So argues The American Prospect's Mark Greif in his review of Postrel's The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are building a better mouse, and if elite athletes have their way, humans may be next. Michael Sokolove writes about the genetically engineered athlete for the New York Times Magazine in "The Lab Animal."

"Studies have shown that up to 34% of Americans occasionally suffer from confused, ambivalent or conflicted feelings over complex ethical issues. But now there is help. You can turn that gray fog to clear-eyed, confident certainty with Moral Claritin." See cartoonist Tim Kreider's "The Pain - When Will It End?"

The drug industry is about to launch a new PR campaign to remind Americans how much they need sleep, and sleeping pills, writes Andrew Pollack in The New York Times. Read what industry-funded psychiatrists say in "Putting a Price on a Good Night's Sleep."

When our sense of self comes so much from the skin’s surface, how could cosmetic surgery not change who we are? Virginia Blum looks at the culture of cosmetic surgery in her new book, Flesh Wounds, reviewed in Ms. by Alexandra Hall.

"Cognitive therapy and medication are regarded as equally effective in treating depression. But they work in very different ways, according to a study released yesterday comparing brain scans of depressed patients before and after treatment." See the abstract in The Archives of General Psychiatry or "Mental Health: Double-Teaming Depression" in the New York Times.

Now that their dietary supplement of choice is to be banned, ephedra users are looking for alternatives. See "Slim Pickings: Looking Beyond Ephedra" in the New York Times.

Nanette Gattrell, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, writes about her own experience on Wellbutrin (bupropion) in "A Doctor's Toxic Shock" in the New York Times Magazine.