Blog.
Author Archive: Jon Holmlund
I haven’t yet read the Senate Republicans’ draft health care bill, just out today. Until I do I’m not going to comment about it directly. The matter is a bioethics concern solely from the perspective of justice, really. What is the wisest, most just policy? And here one is forced, I think, into a fairly utilitarian assessment of what approach provides the best outcome for... // Read More »
06/15/2017
Single-Payer in California?
I’m not sure that even advocates of single-payer health care will find the spectacularly overreaching “Healthy California Act” (California Senate Bill 562) a good idea. Follow the link and read the text yourself—I link, you decide. While the bill appears at points to read like a re-assertion of current federal programs, and perhaps some related private insurance (e.g., Medicare Advantage), in fact it looks to... // Read More »
06/01/2017
Euthanasia in Canada: Early Returns
Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine carried a report from physicians in Toronto about early results implementing “Medical Assistance in Dying,” or “MAiD,” the preferred euphemism for doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia, in Canada. “MAiD” became legally sanctioned throughout Canada in 2016. It includes not only assisted suicide—where a doctor provides a patient with a drug prescription intended to be lethal if taken as directed—but... // Read More »
05/19/2017
Mailbag
Brief comments on four short articles from this week, on disparate topics: James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute (meaning he is politically right of center) pleads in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for compromise between Republicans and Democrats on further healthcare policy reform. Arguing that the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA) may never pass, he believes that a better result... // Read More »
05/11/2017
All we like SHEEFs, Part 2
Carrying on with last week’s musings… In thinking further, I think my attempt was confused by conflating the moral status of a SHEEF—a synthetic human entity with embryo-like features, something more than a clump of cells of human origin, but less than a human being—with reasons why I might want to hold that nobody should ever make certain sorts of SHEEFs. Again, SHEEFs are human,... // Read More »
05/05/2017
All we like SHEEFs (?)
So, how should we address the moral status of synthetic human entities with embryo-like features (“SHEEFs”)? First, we should consider that these are human, as opposed to non-human, if they arise entirely from cells of human origin. Human/non-human hybrid creatures are just that, and partially human, biologically. But are any of these human beings, as in, in California the crime of murder is described as... // Read More »
05/05/2017
All we like SHEEFs (?)
So, how should we address the moral status of synthetic human entities with embryo-like features (“SHEEFs”)? First, we should consider that these are human, as opposed to non-human, if they arise entirely from cells of human origin. Human/non-human hybrid creatures are just that, and partially human, biologically. But are any of these human beings, as in, in California the crime of murder is described as... // Read More »
On April 6, the journal Cell published work (subscription or online article purchase required) from the Salk Institute in San Diego, in which scientists have created a new “reprogrammed” stem cell. These cells are called “extended pluripotent stem cells” or “EPS” cells. They are different from embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are removed from intact embryos that arise from fertilization—typically requiring specific creation and destruction... // Read More »
04/13/2017
Reining in the SHEEFs
Consider the human embryo… Ordinarily, it arises from the union of a sperm and egg to form a zygote, which is totipotent, that is, able to develop into a full individual. In our time, fertilization can happen artificially, as with artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization, or naturally through the process that is accessible even to educated fleas. But the zygote develops into a multicellular... // Read More »
You may have seen one of the many news reports this week about an “adult” stem cell treatment gone bad. In it, doctors, not working in regulated industry or in the bounds of a clinical trial, injected stem cells derived from a person’s fatty tissue into the eyeballs of three people in an attempt to treat a vision-destroying condition called macular degeneration—and all three lost... // Read More »