Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | yesterday
I thought Thanksgiving was an apt time to discuss a Pennsylvania university's new requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees. An historically black college, Lincoln University said that the school is responding to deadly rates of obesity and diabetes, especially in the African-American community.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was named yesterday by President Obama to chair a new advisory panel on bioethics.
Physorg (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
(PhysOrg.com) -- Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells -- adult cells reprogrammed to look and function like versatile embryonic stem cells -- are of growing interest in medicine. They may provide a way to create different kinds of patient-matched stem cells as treatments for disease, while sidestepping many of the ethical questions surrounding stem cells created from embryos. However, the production...
Red Orbit (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Typically conducted in richer, developed countries but now increasingly done in the developing world, genome wide association (GWA) studies raise a host of ethical issues that must be addressed, argues a Policy Forum article published this week in PLoS Medicine.
Physorg (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Typically conducted in richer, developed countries but now increasingly done in the developing world, genome wide association (GWA) studies raise a host of ethical issues that must be addressed, argues a Policy Forum article published this week in PLoS Medicine.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear." That chilling quote comes about half-way through a Guardian story today about Rom Houben, who for 23 years was thought to be in a vegetative state, but in fact was conscious -- though he could not communicate.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Death row inmates and advocates on both sides of the capital punishment debate across the country have had their eyes on Ohio since the recent announcement that this state will pioneer the use of a single drug to execute inmates.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Such is the title of the latest article in the Chicago Tribune by Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan. The article is subtitled: ‘Researchers' fears about misuse of their work come true'.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Three years after embryonic stem cell cloning was legalised in Australia, advocates are finally facing up to the critical issue: where will all the eggs come from? Cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is impossible without a continuous – and large - supply of women's ova. In South Korea, the now discredited Dr Hwang used 2061 eggs taken from 169 women and failed to produce a single...
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
The government agency tasked with funding crucial life science research needs to focus more attention on ethical quandaries and nefarious business practices that often obscure the path from discovery to public benefit, says a strongly worded letter to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), signed by more than 100 biomedical researchers, journal editors, and health...
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Gregory Pence writes: At the end of December 2000 on a cold night, my brother Bob called. "Dad's not doing very well," he said. "If you want to see him before he dies, you'd better fly up here." I didn't believe him. At age 88, my dad had weathered crises before, and he had told me many times that he didn't want to die and wasn't ready to die. For a decade, my saintly mother had...
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Judy Illes has a dilemma. What happens when someone who has agreed to participate in a medical study undergoes a brain scan during which the researcher happens to discover an anomaly, a potential health risk?
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to 10 top medical schools Tuesday to ask what they are doing about professors who put their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals — and why that practice was any different from plagiarism by students.
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
When it comes to paying for a health care overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich. The poll, conducted by Stanford University with the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul that is being considered in Congress, including taxing insurers on high-value coverage packages derided by President Barack Obama and...
Bioethics.net (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
The agenda of the November 16-19 General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops takes up a number of hotly contested issues, including a pastoral letter on marriage and revised ethical guidelines regarding the medical provision of hydration and nutrition to patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS).
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