On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos destroyed at an IVF facility were children subject to the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, opening the door to civil and criminal liability. The state’s largest fertilization centers immediately “froze” their services. Two weeks later, now aware of the implications of this ruling, the Alabama legislature undid (some of) the court’s damage, providing legal immunity for IVF providers and receivers. But fear remains.
medical ethics
Last week, many in the community of pain patients and their physicians did a victory lap over the decision by the Supreme Court in the case of two pain specialists, Xiulu Ruan, MD, and Shakeel Kahn, MD. Their separate cases were joined, and the opinion of the “Supremes” was misinterpreted in some quarters. They were not found innocent; the Court found that the instructions to the jury were in error and remanded the case back for adjudication. I have been following the case for a long time now, and it continues to gnaw at me in a contrarian way.
Catchy phrase, but let me ask you this: does it have a different meaning to you when spoken at a Women’s Day rally as opposed to an anti-vaccine mandate confab? It does for me; I wonder why.
A recent Pennsylvania Supreme court ruling, recognizing what it means to be a doctor, is not a solution but a problem. Authors in The New England Journal of Medicine beg to differ.
When lawyers and marketing firms can directly target patients via their mobile phones – while, yes, even in the ER – the time is yesterday to preserve the once-presumed protected health information.
A premature infant is born with a form of severe lung injury that carries a 20% chance of survival. Her physician decides to throw a medical “Hail Mary” and try an untested adult technique to bypass the injured lungs. The infant survives, and after a few more tries, the physician realizes that the survival rate may be as high as 80% with this new treatment. Does he know enough that the treatment should become standard practice, or is a randomized clinical trial required?
Dr. Oz is a fraud who ought to be fired from Columbia University and have his medical license revoked. Instead, he's headed to the White House.
From a security standpoint, the only thing that matters is that our soldiers are effective at killing people and breaking things. Does acupuncture help accomplish that? We presented one opinion last week. Now, here's a second viewpoint on the matter.
No, I'm not speaking of Jonathan Goldsmith, the guy who just pretended to be The Most Interesting Man in the World. I'm speaking of the real deal, my grandfather, Dimitri Berezow -- a man who survived Stalin and Hitler, cheated death on multiple occasions, and went on to live the American dream. His was an impossibly unique story – one that seems too extraordinary to be true (and yet is) – capped with a cautionary tale about modern healthcare.
Before conducting any clinical trial – which is a nice way of saying "human medical experiment" – doctors and scientists first have to demonstrate that there's sufficient biomedical evidence to justify doing it. But a new study suggests that more than half of clinical trials don't meet this essential standard.
A young man who recently received a lung transplant, following a terrible case of pneumonia that caused his lungs to collapse, has died. He made national headlines because his petition to receive new lungs was initially rejected because he had smoked marijuana.
A doctor talking about gun safety is not advocating gun control. Let's get politics out of medicine.