Bioethics.net

A disease that kills millions of pigs a year may soon meet its match — if two federal agencies can agree on the idea.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus is one of the latest examples of a condition that scientists believe they can beat with genetic engineering, and one that’s caught up in a disagreement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over how quickly such methods should be approved, and by whom.

The spotted wing fruit fly is one of the world’s major crop destroyers. Scientifically known as Drosophila suzukii, this peppercorn-size insect uses a serrated organ to lay its eggs inside—rather than on top of—unripe fruit, damaging raspberry, strawberry, and cherry crops across the globe. Now, scientists may have found a way to fight this pest using a strategy called gene drive, which can spread genes rapidly through a population.

As Congress deliberates how to respond to the surging opioid epidemic, a number of bills have been introduced to support the development and Food and Drug Administration approval of a non-opioid pain medication. But the problem in American medicine is not a lack of alternatives to opioids, but the minimal utilization of the many non-opioid treatments for pain that already exist.

My patient and I were locked in a game of decision-making hot potato. “What would you do, Doc?” he said. We’d been discussing whether he should get screened for prostate cancer. Such questions trouble most doctors. We often lob the choice back to patients, or “on the one hand, on the other hand” so much that they start sympathizing with Harry Truman, who reportedly joked he wished for one-handed advisers.