December 26, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Medical authorities are reclassifying life-saving procedures to make a political statement. The intent when managing PPROM is to balance the needs of mother and baby, and the best-case scenario is to preserve both their lives. The … Read More
December 24, 2024
(STAT News) – In the wake of the tragic murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, all of us who serve in health care must take time to pause and reflect on how we move forward. As a religious sister and … Read More
December 20, 2024
(National Post) – A new report from Health Canada confirms that more than 60,000 lives have been lost to “medical assistance in dying” in Canada between 2016 and 2023. Euthanasia was supposed be the exception to the rule, but Canada … Read More
December 16, 2024
(Undark) – When providing health care for new immigrants and refugees, the world’s faraway conflicts fall sharply into focus. I work in a clinic in Toronto that largely serves patients who are newcomers to our country, many of whom are … Read More
December 16, 2024
(New York Times) – The people of UnitedHealth Group are nurses, doctors, patient and client advocates, technologists and more. They all come to work each day to provide critical health services for millions of Americans in need. We know the … Read More
December 11, 2024
(STAT News) – Decades ago, the health insurance business put in place a dike to hide and contain the public’s disdain for for-profit health insurers, and to keep reformers at bay. Now, that dike might collapse. As the former VP … Read More
December 10, 2024
(Undark) – New dialogues are emerging about what comes next in biology, 25 years after completion of a draft of the human genome. In today’s world, post-genomic is built on two important ideas: that, as previously mentioned, doing genomics is … Read More
December 9, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Karmic justice strikes as Jay Bhattacharya, a dissenting physician who was made a pariah during Covid, is nominated as director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bhattacharya believes “very strongly that I have a purpose … Read More
December 4, 2024
(The Guardian) – I gave away my genetic information to a now imploding company for results that inspired nothing but ambivalence 23andMe is facing implosion. As the once-promising genetic testing company flounders – losing 98% of its $6bn value, all … Read More
December 4, 2024
(New York Times) – In the time since she left us, I have thought often of Orli’s question. All that spring, Orli asked, pointedly, why did we think a cure was still possible, that cancer would not continue to return? … Read More
December 2, 2024
(The Spectator) – Those all seem to me good, cogent and to my mind compelling arguments for rejecting the proposed bill on Assisted Dying. Yet I can’t help thinking that Christian faith still has something deeper to bring to this … Read More
November 27, 2024
(Nature) – By changing how contracts are done, institutions can move away from exploitative research practices. Historically, the people and institutions that carry out research related to Indigenous peoples have assumed that they own those data — they can share … Read More
November 26, 2024
(Wired) – The genome-editing technology can be supercharged by artificial intelligence—and the results are already being felt. In my field, Crispr gene editing and genomics more broadly, we often deal with enormous datasets—or, in many cases, we can’t deal with … Read More
November 25, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Actress Liz Carr warns that no society can permit assisted suicide without endangering the disabled. When an able-bodied person says something like that about himself, it’s a tragedy, and society seeks to prevent suicide. Plaques offering … Read More
November 20, 2024
(The Conversation) – Current treatment for T1D involves lifelong insulin injections. While effective, patients taking insulin risk developing low blood glucose levels, which can cause symptoms such as shakiness, irritability, hunger, confusion and dizziness. Severe cases can result in seizures … Read More
November 19, 2024
(The Conversation) – Thanks to bestselling authors like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, the public has become increasingly aware of the rapid rise in mental health issues among younger people in many western countries. Their warnings about the destructive impact … Read More
November 18, 2024
(The Conversation) – Halassy is a success story of self-experimentation in medicine. She joins other examples, like Barry Marshall, who won the 2005 Noble prize in medicine following his work ingesting the Helicobacter bacterium to prove its role in gastritis … Read More
November 15, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Women are also often subjected to medical advice designed to protect a potential fetus, whether they are pregnant or not. Official guidelines on how much mercury-containing fish it is safe to eat can be different for … Read More
November 8, 2024
(The Conversation) – The argument across these different domains is essentially the same: The time for AI skepticism has come and gone. The technology will shape the future, whether you like it or not. You have the choice to learn … Read More
November 8, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Technologists say chatbots are a remedy for the loneliness epidemic, but looking to an algorithm for companionship can be dangerous. As researchers who have spent years studying the relationships that ever more people are forming with … Read More
November 5, 2024
(Undark) – Experiencing a severe side effect is rare, but officially documenting such cases is vital to designing better vaccines. I wrote about the experience in 2021 in The Boston Globe, after the FDA attached a warning to the J&J shot, citing an … Read More
November 1, 2024
(Aeon) – For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does But there is another origin of our impulse to concede mind to devices of our own … Read More
October 21, 2024
(Aeon) – While Chalmers’s p-zombie is a part of a philosophical hypothetical concerned with the nature of mind and consciousness, the non-philosophical take on people as NPCs is deeply morally worrying. Having taught and written for a number of years … Read More
October 18, 2024
(MedPage Today) – Last month, California passed a bill ensuring that doctors, not artificial intelligence (AI), have the final say on patients’ treatments and services. The bill, SB1120, allows insurance companies to use AI to review doctors’ recommendations for medical … Read More
October 17, 2024
(Fast Company) – During Helene and Milton, the AI tool I used most—AI RI—was developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. It gives updated hourly odds on the chances of a nascent hurricane going through a bout of rapid … Read More
