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Author Archive: Jon Holmlund
08/10/2018
Mumbling orphans—a bit more
Mark McQuain has raised the persistent, vexing issue of the pricing of drugs for rare diseases—in the case at hand, Sarepta’s eteplirsen (Exondys 51) for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the disease over which the late comedian Jerry Lewis lost sleep every Labor Day weekend for years. Mark provided an excellent summary (he calls it “crude,” but …
07/26/2018
PAS and “plain old” suicide
Last week, the folks from the Manhattan Declaration (whose key concern is freedom of religion) sent an email with a series of links—perhaps expanding their remit a smidge—one of which dealt with doctor-assisted suicide. “Doctor-assisted suicide is contagious,” it said, along with this: “Doctor-assisted suicide increases overall suicide rates among the non-terminally ill everywhere it’s …
07/19/2018
Britain’s experts on gene-edited babies
Some of the cable news shows ran segments on the report released this week by Britain’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, “Genome editing and human reproduction: social and ethical issues.” Full disclosure: I have not yet read the full report, only the short summaries (all of which are available for free download at the link here). …
07/13/2018
Raiding the CRISPR
A couple of gene-editing news items from this week’s science literature: First, Nature reports that a group in my “back yard,” at the University of California San Diego, has tested gene editing using the CRISPR approach in mice. Recall that CRISPR is an acronym for a particular molecular mechanism, first discovered in bacteria, that is …
That’s only a slight paraphrase of a news feature article this week in Nature. The clearly-written article is devoid of scientific jargon, with helpful illustrations, open-access online, and readily accessible to the non-specialist. Check it out. Key points include: Scientists who do not find it ethically unacceptable to create and destroy human embryos solely for …
Continue reading "Labs are growing human embryos for longer than ever before"
06/08/2018
More on physician-assisted suicide
Recently, Dr. Arthur Caplan of NYU, on the Medscape service (subscription required), took on the question of whether physician-assisted suicide (PAS) should be allowed for old folks just because they are old, or because they want to die together. There have been reports of just that. While he supports PAS for terminal illness but objects that PAS for “suffering” in general is just too fuzzy,... // Read More »
05/25/2018
Coming home to roost
Hoo boy. Scientists who want to study human embryonic development have heretofore been self-limited by a 14-day rule: embryos can only be experimented on up to 14 days of age, when they start to develop a nervous system. This is an attempt to avoid censure for unethical experimentation on human subjects, and is seen as something of a concession, since it does not accept that... // Read More »
Readers of this blog probably saw this week’s news that a California judge blocked the state’s End of Life Options Act, the one that legalized doctor-assisted suicide in California. The law passed after apparent failure in a regular California Legislature session, when its sponsors brought it up again in a special session that was supposed to be about Medicaid funding. The judge said that inserting... // Read More »