The Delaware House of Representatives has passed a resolution in support of protecting the life of Loren Richardson, who like Terri Schiavo before her, is the subject of a bitter court fight over removing her feeding tube. The resolution states:

This Resolution establishes protections for mentally disabled individuals in the State of Delaware. The impetus for this Resolution comes from the case of Lauren Richardson, a 24-year-old Delaware woman who, after suffering brain injuries and impaired consciousness, now faces the possible removal of her nutrition and hydration, despite the absence of her clearly specified and legal consent to any such a course of action. The State of Delaware has, through recent legislation prompted by the abuses at the Delaware Psychiatric Center, endeavored to protect the rights of mentally disabled patients in the First State. Lauren, as a mentally disabled person, is enumerated those same protection and rights.

Too many of us dismiss people like Lauren–and I am not referring here to her mother who wants treatment stopped–as “vegetables” (a word that should not be used as it is as demeaning and dehumanizing as the odious N-word), “brain dead” (as the Orlando Sentinel unrepentantly did for so long regarding Terri), or other such denigration. Meanwhile, some bioethicists look longingly at these people as “living cadavers” who can be harvested for their organs or used in medical experimentation.

Good for the Delaware Assembly for not shrinking from such demagoguery.

But why do people in the French health care system get more? The answer is they spend more. (BBC)

Lengner and fellow Whitehead postdoc Marius Wernig developed the new technique, which was published today in Nature Biotechnology. It’s technically daunting and — from the perspective of a public frustrated at delays in promised stem cell therapies — incremental. But it’s also the sort of keystone advance that lays the foundation for future breakthroughs. (Wired)

Germany, by many measures, has one of the world’s most successful health care systems — providing good care for everybody for much less than many other countries spend. (NPR)

When Roger Kusch helped Bettina Schardt kill herself at home on Saturday, the grim, carefully choreographed ritual was like that in many cases of assisted suicide, with one exception. (New York Times)