July 25, 2007
Massachusetts passed state-wide guaranteed health care last year, and it now has an insufficient number of primary care physicians. From the Wall Street Journal story: On the day Ms. [Tamar] Lewis signed up, she said she called more than two … Read More
July 23, 2007
I once favored Canadian-style health care for the USA, but no more. Having visited that wonderful country frequently and paid much attention to its politics and culture, I reluctantly concluded that full nationalized funding–even with doctors remaining in the private … Read More
July 23, 2007
Actually, perhaps an effective drug treatment that can prevent the plaque from destroying areas of the brain. From the story: Biologists have developed a compound which has successfully prevented the disease killing brain cells, improving memory and learning ability that … Read More
July 20, 2007
Now with the Lake County (IL) Coroner supporting some murder/suicides of the elderly, it is worth looking at some of the professional literature on the subject. It isn’t merely another “choice,” but often is a result of spousal abuse and … Read More
July 20, 2007
Lake County, Illinois Coroner Richard Keller, is apparently a fan of elderly couples engaging in suicide pacts or murder/suicide. From the story: “Murder-suicide of an elderly couple, is that such a bad way to go?” he wrote [in his blog]… … Read More
July 19, 2007
They can’t blame Bush for this one: A Singapore company that made a big splash when it announced it would soon be offering ES cell therapies to human patients–has backed off. From the story in Science July 2007: Vol. 317. … Read More
July 19, 2007
A young UK woman named Laura Price, age 30, has died waiting for a vital brain scan from the NHS. From the story: Laura Price…was found dead in her home just hours after she had been discharged from casualty. The … Read More
July 17, 2007
In postmodernism, facts don’t matter as much as desired narratives, and now this view is being proposed as a way to define death itself–which would permit people to choose ahead of time when they were to be considered to have, … Read More
July 16, 2007
There was a good column in the July 16 Boston Globe by Vivek Ramashwamya, a biology student, urging restraint by scientists in the creation of human/animal chimeras. He writes: If the creation of these new organisms bothers us as a … Read More
July 15, 2007
So much for “donating” organs. Britain’s most senior doctor will recommend that when a person dies, that his organs be taken–unless he or she previously opted out–barring concerted objections from family. Known as “soft presumed consent,” such a plan could … Read More
July 11, 2007
Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, has commented on a phenomenon I have also noticed: The propensity of the media to continually distinguish Terri’s case from other examples when purportedly unconscious people awaken, or dehydrations are stopped because the patient is … Read More
July 11, 2007
The Seattle Times has a hopeful story about a patient who couldn’t find a compatible bone marrow donor, being effectively treated for leukemia by umbilical cord blood stem cells. UCB stem cells are much easier to match than bone marrow, … Read More
July 11, 2007
I do not believe for a second that in the long term, embryonic stem cell research will be limited to early pre-implantation embryos destroyed in Petri dishes. Indeed, as I have repeatedly noted, New Jersey has already legalized human cloned … Read More
July 9, 2007
There is a historical exhibit about eugenics at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. From the column by Rick Martinez, in The News and Observer, it seems the curators did a fine job. Here are few excerpts from … Read More
July 9, 2007
Philip Nitschke, the “Down Under Kevorkian,” is running for political office (again). Apparently, like his American soul cousin, he can’t get enough publicity. Let’s see what his plank would be: Oh, yes: Suicide pills available for sale in super markets; … Read More
July 7, 2007
Doctors and a San Luis Obispo hospital are being accused in a lawsuit of mistreating Reuben Navarro, a disabled dying patient toward the end that he would die sooner rather than later and that his organs could then be be … Read More
July 6, 2007
Here is an interesting–and predictable–turn of events: Two nurses are being investigated by law enforcement for engaging in assisted suicide, although the facts look more like a euthanasia. From the story: Two Portland-area nurses gave [cancer patient Wendy Melcher] massive … Read More
July 6, 2007
Get this story out of Euthanasia Land–a.k.a. the Netherlands: A physician has lost his medical license for attempting to treat his dying cancer patient with an alternative treatment. I am not for quackery, of course, and the physician may well … Read More
July 5, 2007
Last week I posted here at SHS about an opinion column in the Hastings Center Report urging that assisted suicide be made available to some mentally ill people. I expound on that issue in greater length and detail in this … Read More
July 5, 2007
What a pleasant surprise: An opinion column in the New England Journal of Medicine opposes medical futility. Written by Harvard Medical School professor Robert D. Troug, M.D., it makes some very good points about the problem with even the best-intended … Read More
July 4, 2007
Oops. Here we have been told that PGD, that is, removing one cell from an early embryo and testing to determine whether it is deemed worthy of implantation, does not harm embryos. Not so, perhaps. According to a study published … Read More
July 3, 2007
Patents. You don’t hear too much about the issue in the ESCR debate, but patent some-would-say obstructionism, at least as much as those purportedly caused by President Bush’s funding policy, have allegedly impeded ESCR. Now, it appears that the iron … Read More
July 3, 2007
When it is politically expedient to pretend that it isn’t yet human life: There is long discussion happening at a previous post (click here to check it out), that has evolved into a discussion, among other matters, of whether a … Read More
July 2, 2007
Patrick Bell, a graduate student at Seattle University and a valued staffer at the dreaded Discovery Institute, won third prize in the MPA/MPP You Tube “Change the World in One Minute” Public Policy Challenge. You see, the DI and people … Read More
July 2, 2007
A dearth in human eggs and the potential harm to women’s health sometimes caused in obtaining them through current means, has both stymied human cloning research and moved biotechnology toward exploiting poor women for their eggs in their zeal to … Read More
