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Bioethics news.

As Trump Praises Plasma, Researchers Struggle to Finish Critical Studies
Thousands of Covid-19 patients have been treated with blood plasma outside of rigorous clinical trials — hampering research that would have shown whether the therapy worked.
The New York Times, 08/05/2020
Public Health Expert Calls To Repair Distrust In A COVID-19 Vaccine
Scientists are in a sprint to find a vaccine that could stamp out the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said on Friday he’s “cautiously optimistic” that a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for distribution in early 2021. But it’s unclear how many people will actually get a vaccine if it’s approved. Only about half...
NPR, 08/04/2020
Against Personal Ventilator Reallocation
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to intense conversations about ventilator allocation and reallocation during a crisis standard of care. The ethical value of maximizing lives saved in a pandemic has received widespread support from clinicians and bioethicists for years, so much so that some consider it a fundamental tenet of public health ethics. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, approaches...
The Hastings Center, 08/02/2020
Should Youth Come First in Coronavirus Care?
If medical rationing becomes necessary, some older adults are prepared to step aside. But many have the opposite concern: that they will be arbitrarily sent to the rear of the line.
The New York Times, 08/01/2020
Who should get a coronavirus vaccine first?
Experts weigh priority for health-care and essential workers and people of...
The Washington Post, 07/31/2020
Medical Schools Have Historically Been Wrong on Race
While the blatant horrors of the past are gone, the ideas that fueled race-based medicine stubbornly linger. We can change.
The New York Times, 07/28/2020
A pandemic ethical conundrum: Must health care workers risk their lives to treat Covid-19 patients?
The sweep of Covid-19 across the globe has raised a fundamental question about medical ethics: Do physicians, nurses, EMTs, and other health care workers have moral and legal obligations to risk their health and lives to treat patients during a pandemic?
STAT, 07/26/2020
The Wilderness of Rare Genetic Diseases and the Parents Navigating It
“Rare parents” are often left charting a world of unknowns. But their persistence has paid off with more advanced treatment options.
The New York Times, 07/25/2020
Pandemic Language
Language used to describe the response to the pandemic can illuminate, and it can distort. Here I focus on language that obfuscates thinking about the pandemic.
The Hastings Center, 07/23/2020
Google Promises Privacy With Virus App but Can Still Collect Location Data
Some government agencies that use the software said they were surprised that Google may pick up the locations of certain app users. Others said they had unsuccessfully pushed Google to make a change.
The New York Times, 07/22/2020
Gene Therapy Shows Promise For Hemophilia, But Could Be Most Expensive U.S. Drug Ever
Jack Grehan, who was born with hemophilia, used to inject himself every couple of days with a protein he needs for his blood to clot. But not anymore.
NPR, 07/20/2020
A yearslong push to remove racist bias from kidney testing gains new ground
For years, physicians and medical students, many of them Black, have warned that the most widely used kidney test — the results of which are based on race — is racist and dangerously inaccurate. Their appeals are gaining new traction, with a wave of petitions and papers calling renewed attention to the issue.
STAT, 07/19/2020
Access to Therapeutic and Palliative Drugs in the Context of Covid-19: Justice and the Relief of Suffering
New ethical guidance from The Hastings Center responds to the challenges of allocating therapeutic and palliative medications under conditions of scarcity during Covid-19 outbreaks.
The Hastings Center, 07/17/2020
An invisible hand: Patients aren’t being told about the AI systems advising their care
Since February of last year, tens of thousands of patients hospitalized at one of Minnesota’s largest health systems have had their discharge planning decisions informed with help from an artificial intelligence model. But few if any of those patients has any idea about the AI involved in their care.
STAT, 07/16/2020
Citing Educational Risks, Scientific Panel Urges That Schools Reopen
Younger children in particular are ill-served by remote learning, according to a report issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
The New York Times, 07/15/2020
U.S. Hospitals Need to Study How Well Remdesivir Really Works
With only limited evidence of effectiveness, the drug should be put to a large clinical trial.
Bloomberg, 07/13/2020
Patients should have a role in deciding the value of medicines
Policymakers increasingly consult value assessment models to help price new medical interventions. Value models use prespecified approaches and selected health outcomes to match the price of an intervention to its expected benefits. Who chooses the approach and outcomes, however, is at the center of a debate about the value of pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device-based interventions.
STAT, 07/12/2020
‘I feel like I am not welcome’: Medical, doctoral students from abroad grapple with uncertainty from new ICE rules
International students completing their medical and doctoral degrees in theUnited States are wrestling with frustration and uncertainty following the release of federal rules this week that could bar them from staying in the country.
STAT, 07/11/2020
MIT has removed a dataset which leads to misogynistic, racist AI models
MIT has apologized for, and taken offline, a dataset which trains AI models with misogynistic and racist tendencies.
AI News, 07/09/2020
The risks of COVID-19 liability waivers
The proponents of reopening America amid a pandemic like to put a positive spin on things, whether it is President Trump touting his rallies, college football pumping up enthusiasm for the fall season or college administrations telling kids to get ready to head back to dorms and classes.  But there is a catch. Many of those yelling for a return to normal have attached a...
Newsday, 07/08/2020
Red Flags Raised Over Chinese Research Published in Global Journals
Apparently fraudulent data in dozens of peer-reviewed articles spark fresh worries about ‘paper mills’ used by researchers under pressure to publish
The Wall Street Journal , 07/07/2020
On Racism: A New Standard For Publishing On Racial Health Inequities
Racism kills. Whether through force, deprivation, or discrimination, it is a fundamental cause of disease and the strange but familiar root of racial health inequities. Yet, despite racism’s alarming impact on health and the wealth of scholarship that outlines its ill effects, preeminent scholars and the journals that publish them routinely fail to interrogate racism as a critical driver of racial health inequities.
Health Affairs, 07/06/2020
Why Surviving the Virus Might Come Down to Which Hospital Admits You
In New York City’s poor neighborhoods, some patients have languished in understaffed hospitals, with substandard equipment. It was a different story in Manhattan’s private medical centers.
The New York Times, 07/04/2020
Researchers Debate Infecting People on Purpose to Test Coronavirus Vaccines
One way to quickly see if a coronavirus vaccine works would be to immunize healthy people and then deliberately expose them to the virus, some researchers are suggesting. For both ethical and practical reasons, the idea of challenge trials for a coronavirus vaccine has provoked fierce debate.
The New York Times, 07/03/2020
An experiment in end-of-life care: Tapping AI’s cold calculus to nudge the most human of conversations
Hospitals and clinics are running into thorny challenges and making weighty judgment calls as they try to weave a medical algorithm with momentous implications for end-of-life care into the fabric of a clinical team’s already complex and frenetic workflow.
STAT, 07/02/2020
Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified
The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is a safe, effective, and widely distributed vaccine. How soon can researchers achieve this goal? The answer largely depends on which strategies researchers are willing to adopt. One potential strategy is to conduct human challenge studies, in which researchers give an experimental vaccine to healthy volunteers and then test—or “challenge”—the...
The Hastings Center, 06/30/2020
Black Doctors Say Pandemic Reveals Enduring Racial Inequity Medicine Alone Cannot Fix
Three doctors say the pandemic revealed enduring racial inequity — and medicine alone cannot fix it.
NPR, 06/29/2020
Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic
The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Although many people have called out the inadequacies of our health care system, Covid-19 has exposed the most significant shortcomings. The need for change can no longer be ignored. Here are three lessons from this pandemic that should be leveraged for change.
The Hastings Center, 06/27/2020
When the Police Treat Software Like Magic
The arrest of a man for a crime he didn’t commit shows the dangers of facial recognition technology.
The New York Times, 06/26/2020
An Open Letter: Scientists and Racial Justice
The unjust killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, amplified by the health disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ethnic disparities of the political climate, have shined a spotlight on historical and ongoing institutional racism in America. Many professional scientific organizations have published statements opposing it. But statements have little impact unless actions result from them.
The Scientist , 06/25/2020