January 16, 2020
(Scientific American) – Whether it is ever acceptable to genetically engineer future children is a question for humanity, not for science. As such, governing the future of this technology is a responsibility for democracy. We the people must ask fundamental … Read More
January 16, 2020
(STAT News) – Alex Azar, who heads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, quickly congratulated his department’s funding and “American global health leadership” for the vaccine, which is called Ervebo. As recently detailed in STAT, the reality is … Read More
January 10, 2020
(STAT News) – As a bioethicist, I fear that this optimism may be blinding us to a genuine moral horror: being trapped in this way may be a form of unwitting medical torture. Owen and his team have been able … Read More
January 9, 2020
(New York Times) – My first visit to the Aktion T4 killing site at Brandenburg an der Havel was in autumn. My destination, where 9,000 disabled people were murdered as part of the Nazi “euthanasia” program, is embedded in the … Read More
January 3, 2020
(The Atlantic) – Many Americans are puzzled about why end-of-life care costs are so high, and why physicians cannot seem to reduce them. My father’s story is the answer. It has less to do with physicians’ and hospitals’ financial incentives … Read More
December 31, 2019
(Science News) – Some people see clinical trials as a chance for a miracle cure. In reality, these experimental drug tests and medical interventions often fail. With researchers in the United States now testing the gene editor CRISPR/Cas9 for the … Read More
December 26, 2019
(STAT News) – For decades, the foundational basis for determining if a drug should be approved is whether its benefits outweigh its known and potential risks for the intended population. At its core, this is a quantitative risk-benefit analysis. It … Read More
December 23, 2019
(The Conversation) – Biopiracy – the act of directly or indirectly taking undue advantage of research participants and communities in global health research – has a long and contentious history in Africa. A recent case occurred during the West African … Read More
December 20, 2019
(Science) – Although cognizant of the important bioethical and philosophical debates surrounding the issues raised, we focus on how legal systems may respond to these bioscience challenges to traditional binary, legal classifications. Determining whether some “thing” is now some “one” … Read More
December 18, 2019
(The Conversation) – The nation’s second-largest health system, Ascension, has agreed to allow the software behemoth Google access to tens of millions of patient records. The partnership, called Project Nightingale, aims to improve how information is used for patient care. … Read More
