Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (OnlineEarly) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:
“Developing a Senior Healthcare Practice Using the Chronic Care Model: Effect on Physical Function and Health-Related Quality of Life” by Ronald Stock, Eldon R. Mahoney, Dan Reece, Lorelei Cesario, May 22 2008

Big money is out there for the brightest minds to shove utilitarianism and the goal of human enhancement down our throats. Australian Professor Julian Savulescu (now in the UK)–who I have seen debate and believe me he is one scary cat–has just picked up an 800 thousand pound grant to begin a eugenics, er neuroethics, center at Oxford. From Bioedge’s report:

Professor Savulescu said: “Neuroscience studies the brain and mind, and thereby some of the most profound aspects of human existence. In the last decade, advances in imaging and manipulating the brain have raised ethical challenges, particularly about the moral limits of the use of such technology, leading to the new discipline of neuroethics.

Professor Savulescu has become notorious for arguing that we should genetically enhance the human species by improving IQ, behaviour, mood, character and morality. “Biological manipulation to increase opportunity is ethical,” he once said. “If we have an obligation to treat and prevent disease, we have an obligation to try to manipulate these characteristics to give an individual the best opportunity of the best life.” He has even argued that parents have a moral responsibility to select the best children they could have. It will be interesting to see what sort of ideas about brain manipulation will emerge from the well-funded new centre

So, they make up a new field whole cloth dedicated to destroying universal human equality and the intrinsic worth of merely being human and the money comes pouring in. And with the money and the prestigious academic affiliation comes awesome power to influence young and bright minds who are society’s leaders of tomorrow. And, being very bright, they see which way the financial winds are blowing and what they need to believe–or say they believe-in order to climb the ladder of success.

What chance do you think there would be for someone as bright as Savulescu, and with the same credentials, to receive such major funding and Oxford offices if he held opposite views? Good luck with that and don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But that’s the high academy/foundation nexus today. And these folk are determined to tear down what they consider the ancien regime. And unless “the folk” stand up to it, the forces that be will bulldoze the very concept of universal human rights directly into a landfill–claiming as they go that they are the “enlightened” ones, the “brights.”

This is exactly how it was with the first eugenics movement. The people who paid were not the connected but the powerless. And those who urged their sterilization and even killing were at the top of the social/academic/political/legal and even liberal religious heaps.

Bitter? A bit, I admit. Scared? A lot.

Adult cells of mice created from genetically reprogrammed cells–so-called induced pluripotent stem (IPS) stem cells–can be triggered via drug to enter an embryonic-stem-cell-like state, without the need for further genetic alteration. (ScienceDaily)

Edith Isabel Rodriguez writhed for 45 minutes on the floor of the emergency room lobby at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital as staffers walked past and a janitor mopped around her. Her boyfriend called 911 from a pay phone outside the hospital, pleading futilely for help. (Los Angeles Times)

Just four factors can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman will become pregnant through “test-tube” baby technology known as in vitro fertilization, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

The European Commission has unveiled a healthcare package designed to make it easier for patients to get medical treatment elsewhere in the EU.

Under the proposals, patients would not have to get their doctor’s approval for non-hospital care abroad. (BBC)

New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation agreed on Tuesday to increase the monitoring of patients at a public psychiatric ward in Brooklyn. The agreement came after a videotape surfaced showing a patient collapsing onto a floor after waiting nearly 24 hours to be seen, and lying there for about an hour while hospital workers did nothing for her. The patient soon died. (New York Times)

A state court jury on Tuesday found two major pharmaceutical companies defrauded Alabama in a long-running Medicaid drug pricing scheme and ordered the firms to pay more than $114 million in damages. (AP)