Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 299, No. 7, 20 February 2008) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:
“Who Is Accountable for Racial Equity in Health Care?” by Jan Blustein, 2008, 814-816
“Drug-Resistant Bacteria” by Joan Stephenson, 2008, 755
“Promoting Self-Change from Addictive Behaviors: Practical Implications for Policy, Prevention, and Treatment” by Lisa J. Merlo and Mark S. Gold, 2008, 838-840

George Soros is a big fan of euthanasia and assisted suicide and wants to see it legalized everywhere. Toward this end, Soros has donated millions to groups promoting the cause–which I believe to be an ultimately abandoning policy that implicitly tells people with terminal illnesses and other serious conditions that their lives are not as valuable or worth protecting as those of other people.

The assertions made by Soros in this feature about his philanthropy around issued of death and dying, are, I think, quite telling about his ultimately disdainful perspective about people who are approaching the end of their lives:

Death has replaced sex as the taboo subject of our times,” said one of the world’s richest men and leading philanthropists, George Soros, when he launched the Project Death in America fund at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1994. It promotes euthanasia or assisted suicide, and has been succeeded by the Open Society Institute’s International Palliative Care Initiative . Soros’s mother committed suicide, as a member of the Hemlock Society. His father died a lingering death from cancer, and Soros was “disappointed” at the way the old man clung miserably to life.

Poor George. His mother had the good grace to get it over quickly so he wouldn’t have to face the months of pain and grief that come when those we love enter into their final days. But his father wanted to live until the actual end of his life, and for that he did not measure up in his son’s eyes. I wonder if Soros’s father sensed his son’s “disappointment,” and if so, how that didn’t drive him over the edge to wanting suicide?

How cool are those Gardasil Girls? Riding horses, flinging softballs, bashing away on drum sets: on the television commercials, they are pugnacious and utterly winning. They want to be “One Less,” they chant — one less victim of cervical cancer. Get vaccinated with Gardasil, they urge their sisters. Protect yourselves against the human papillomavirus, or H.P.V., which causes cervical cancer. (New York Times)

Among the sharpest policy disputes between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is whether all Americans should be required to get health insurance, as Sen. Clinton proposes. She has said repeatedly that her plan is the only one that would cover everyone.

Now, after months on the defense, Sen. Obama is hitting back by emphasizing the downside of her policy: mandating insurance means penalties for those who fail to get it. His policy requires parents to insure their children, with penalties for those who don’t, but his mandate is much less sweeping than the one proposed by Mrs. Clinton, which affects all Americans. (Wall Street Journal)

One of California’s largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy. (Los Angeles Times)

The article, entitled “Ending the Life of a Newborn”, penned by a pair of bioethicists - Hilde Lindemann and Marian Verkerk - ostensibly sets out to clarify eight separate “misunderstandings” about The Groningen Protocol. In the process, the pair defies initial expectations by boldly and unapologetically pointing out that the protocol is in truth much more extreme than most of its critics believe it to be; the authors, however, argue that its extremity is in fact its true strength, the true evidence of its ethical nature. (Catholic Online)

Public concern about social and ethical issues associated with scientific advancements in genetic medicine is widespread. Genetic testing, gene therapy trials, and stem cell and human embryo research are discussed by media around the world. (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News)

In some cases, doctors say, patients who could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of diseases like breast and colon cancer refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences. (New York Times)

AT&T Inc. (ATT) is partnering with Tennessee to provide the country’s first statewide system to electronically exchange patient medical information, the telecommunications company said Monday. (AP)

I understand why no politician wants to get between a childless couple and the doctors who offer an answer to their prayers. This is the longing that burns and scars so deeply that we don’t know how to talk about it and so privately that we don’t want to try. But as medicine redraws the map of what’s possible when it comes to making children, we all have an interest in asking how far we should be allowed to go. (TIME)