Gold tickets are already gone, but there are still seats left for the Rise of Atheism convention to be held in Melbourne, the first global meeting of its kind.

A READER - a qualified scientist I'll call Ron - asks for my view on a dilemma that pitted his personal and professional integrity, and belief in absolute truths, against his love for a dying friend.

The Xenotransplantation segment is about 9 minutes 35 seconds in.

The Bankwest press release was crafted to provoke controversy. "More Australians Choose a Good Time over Kids Education." It had the same flavour as the bank's offering when it released similar market research last year. "Aussie families prefer holidays and Botox to private school education."

Parental leave - or maternity leave, as we tiresomely insist on thinking about it - is back in the news. Australia's National Employment Standards now includes the right of workers to request 12 months of unpaid parental leave in addition to the year to which they are already entitled. A right to request flexible working arrangements to care for a child under school age is also part of the "Fair Work" mix.

With no room at the Women's, patients are at the mercy of religion.

A district court judge has questioned the fairness of convicting a man who pleaded guilty to rape, for continuing to perform sex acts on an unconscious woman. Was the man really treated unfairly, or is the judge confused about what consent is all about?

Rugby league star Matthew John's infidelity has raised the issue of staying with a partner who has strayed. Greg Cary talks to author Ruth Simons, about the thought processes behind cheating.

A disturbing trend is emerging in the writings of those opposed to legal abortion. Since the passage of Victoria's Law Reform Act last year, they have been campaigning against the limits the new law imposes on the rights of healthcare professionals to conscientiously object to involvement in abortion.

Even if we eliminate people smugglers, the people needing smuggling won't disappear.

Would you want to know if you were carrying a gene that could kill you? What if there's a risk of passing it to your kids? Truly riveting television filled with Australians grappling with this issues in real life, with Leslie and Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu doing our best to offer insightful ethical comment.

Every Monday, Radio National Life Matters deconstructs some old piece of wisdom with two guests. This week Leslie and Tim Wilson ask whether the grass is really greener on the other side.

"From Hero to Zero" ran the headline, a nice one to describe the fall from grace last week of the Federal President of the Prisoners of War Association of Australia, Rex Crane.

Your children have a right to sex education. This right is a component of their sexual rights, themselves a subset of the human rights guaranteed to them in international laws, human rights documents and other consensus statements.

There is little evidence to support racial motives behind criticism of Obama.

Circumcision used to be the done thing. Now, only around 10 per cent of Australians circumcise their male infants. But in Tasmania, they are trying to find a way to stop them. A recently released Tasmanian Law Reform Institute issues paper makes no bones about its desire to use the criminal law to prosecute some hapless Jewish, Muslim or Aboriginal parents for circumcising their boys.

RU486 is available, but in Queensland a teenager is charged over an abortion.

In the 9 August 2009 Body Issue Leslie, Federal Minister Kate Ellis, Ad man Russell Howcroft and plastic surgeon Howard Webster chat with Libby Gorr about "The Future Perfect."

Years ago, when I was doing a Masters of Bioethics under renowned philosopher Peter Singer at Monash University in Melbourne, I signed up to the newly founded Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry.

In her chapter in The Sorting Society: The ethics of genetic screening and therapy (ed. Loane Skene and Janna Thompson), Leslie advocates a balance between the rights of parents to decide if, when and what sort of children they bring into the world, and the need for social equity and justice.