Stem cell researchers at the University of California (UCLA) have grown functioning cardiac cells using mouse skin cells that had been reprogrammed into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells.

The finding is the first to show that induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells — can be differentiated into the three types of cardiovascular cells needed to repair the heart and blood vessels.

US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama is being taken to task for his recent Father's Day message in which he said that fatherhood begins at conception. A pro-family group says Obama's seemingly "pro-family" statements stand in a stark, disturbing contrast to his radical support for abortion, which is anything but "pro-family."

A TV advertisement begins with a clip of Obama's recent Father's Day speech at a Chicago Church in which Obama was addressing the problem of absent black fathers. He said, "We need fathers to recognise that responsibility doesn't just end at conception."

Controversial advice for Alzheimer's sufferers to conceal their disease if they plan to end their life early has been challenged by disease experts.

Euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke has said he will urge Alzheimer's patients who contact his organisation, Exit International, not to go to a doctor, to avoid legal complications around their premature death.

In a blow to the euthanasia movement, a jury has found one woman guilty of the manslaughter and another an accessory to the manslaughter of Alzheimer's sufferer and former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie. Mr Wylie's partner Shirley Justins, 59, and his long-term friend Caren Jenning, 75, were accused of plotting to kill him. Justins was found guilty of manslaughter and Jenning of being an accessory to manslaughter.

Mr Wylie, 71, died in March 2006 from an overdose of the veterinary drug Nembutal, which Jenning had bought and illegally imported from Mexico, and which Justins had given to him in their Cammeray home.

An English teenager died from complications two weeks after taking two abortion pills (RU486), her mother told an inquest into her death this week.

Manon Jones, 18, described by her mother as a devout Christian teen, opted to terminate her pregnancy at six weeks because she feared the pregnancy would cause conflict within her "Muslim" boyfriend's family, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

The teen took the first dose of medication to terminate the pregnancy on June 10, 2005, and the second two days later. On June 15, Jones felt light-headed and experienced heavy bleeding so her boyfriend took her to Southmead Hospital in Bristol, England for a scan. She was told the scan was "normal," the report said.

Researchers in Melbourne will be the first in Australia to test the power of egg-free human embryonic stem cells, which could provide the cure for a range of life-threatening conditions without exciting any of the moral opposition that surrounds therapeutic cloning.

Andrew Laslett of the Australian Stem Cell Centre will today announce that a shipment of the cells - induced pluripotent (iPS) cells - arrived at the centre in May and that he and colleague Naoki Nakayama began working with them last Thursday.

This is the first time scientists outside the US and Japan have gained access to iPS cells, artificially created without donated human eggs or embryos.