Bioethics News.
05/21/2018
Medical Experts Blast U.S.C.’s Silence Over Gynecologist Scandal
The New York Times
For decades, allegations of misconduct dogged the primary gynecologist in the student health center at the University of Southern California. There were reports that he inappropriately touched students during pelvic exams and made sexual comments about their bodies.
Yet even after university officials suspended the doctor, George Tyndall, in 2016 and forced him to step down a year later, they did not report the accusations to the California Medical Board. When their internal investigation was complete, officials said that the findings were a personnel matter and that there was no legal obligation to notify the state oversight board, which investigates doctors accused of misconduct.
05/21/2018
It’s the Guns
The Atlantic
Americans of high-school age are 82 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than 15- to 19-year-olds in the rest of the developed world.
05/18/2018
In Germany, controversial law gives Bavarian police new power to use DNA
Science
An estimated 30,000 people demonstrated in Munich, Germany, last week to protest a new Bavarian law giving police new powers.
05/18/2018
Creepy ‘brain in a bucket’ study spurs medical, ethical debates
NBC News
Three weeks ago, a Yale University neuroscientist, Nenad Sestan, explored the ethical implications of experiments using human brain tissue in an essay in the journal Nature. Then last week Sestan’s own brain research was splashed across tabloids under lurid headlines like “Yale experiment to reanimate dead brains promises ‘living hell’ for humans.”
05/17/2018
Why it’s hard to prove gender discrimination in science
Nature
To prove gender discrimination in court, plaintiffs must show that they were denied opportunities or rewards because of their gender. Harassment can also be a sign of discrimination when the people responsible are in positions of power. However, recognizing and remedying these problems in academia is challenging for reasons that are deeply entrenched in the culture of science, and in how institutions have long operated, say legal and social-science scholars.
05/16/2018
Judge tosses California law allowing life-ending drugs
ABC News
A California judge on Tuesday threw out a 2016 state law allowing the terminally ill to end their lives, ruling it was unconstitutionally approved by the Legislature. Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia said lawmakers acted illegally in passing the law during a special session devoted to other topics, said lawyers for supporters and opponents. He did not address the legal issue of whether it was proper to allow people to take their own lives, and gave the state attorney general five days to appeal.
05/16/2018
At Google, ‘responsibility’ upstages new technology
Washington Post
In his keynote address on Tuesday, chief executive Sundar Pichai is expected to emphasize the theme of responsibility, the person said. Last year’s keynote was more focused on developments in artificial intelligence. The anticipated shift in tone at the event reflects increased public skepticism and scrutiny of the technology industry as it reckons with the negative consequences of how its products are used by billions of people.
05/16/2018
Is your pharmacist under a ‘gag rule’ about drug prices?
CNN
Independent pharmacist Ira Katz has been serving the eclectic community of Little Five Points in Atlanta for 37 years. But it wasn’t until Georgia passed a law last year banning “gag rules” that Katz could legally tell his patients they might save big bucks on their prescriptions if they paid cash or used a lower-priced generic. The gag rule was a clause in his contract with one of the pharmaceutical benefit managers, also known as PBMs, that manage most of our nation’s prescription drug programs.
05/15/2018
More evidence companies pay some doctors to prescribe opioids
NBC News
Perks such as payments, free meals and speaking fees may be strongly influencing some doctors to prescribe opioids, researchers reported Monday.
05/15/2018
Why Hemophilia Patients Could Pay $1.5 Million For Gene Therapy
Investor's Daily
BioMarin Pharmaceuticals (BMRN), Spark Therapeutics (ONCE) and UniQure(QURE) are racing to be the first to market with a gene therapy that treats hemophilia — a prospect that could offer revenue north of $1.5 million per patient, an analyst said Monday.
05/14/2018
Fewer African-Americans admitted to ICU for heart failure receive cardiologist care
Reuters
African-Americans have a higher risk of heart failure and are more likely to die from heart failure than other races, but they are less likely to receive advanced therapies for heart failure.
05/14/2018
As lab-grown meat advances, U.S. lawmakers call for regulation
Science
Lab-grown chicken, beef, and duck products are edging toward the U.S. market—despite enduring confusion about how they’ll be regulated. But language buried in a draft spending bill released by a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations panel this week suggests some lawmakers are eager to get rules in place. A one-sentence proposal in the bill would put the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in charge of regulating products made from the cells of livestock or poultry, and instructs the agency to issue rules about how it will oversee their manufacture and labeling.
05/10/2018
Salmon spawn fierce debate over protecting endangered species, thanks to a single gene
Science
They concluded that the genetic change that produced spring-run Chinook occurred only once in the species’s history. And new data published on 29 April on bioRxiv show that in rivers where spring runs disappeared decades ago, less than 1% of the remaining fish carry a copy of the early migration version of the gene. The scarcity of that gene makes it very unlikely a spring run will reappear once lost.
05/09/2018
Which Anti-Depressant Is Right for You? Your DNA Can Shed Some Light
Washington Post
Genomics is coming to psychiatry, with some doctors using a gene test to figure out the most effective anti-depressant for a patient.
05/09/2018
In monkeys, researchers find possible biological marker of autism
STAT
Researchers have been left empty-handed so far in their quest to uncover some measurable biological signal that could be used to diagnose autism spectrum disorder, leaving clinicians to identify the condition just based on a child’s behavior. But on Wednesday, scientists reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine that a hormone that regulates blood pressure could be one of those signposts.
05/08/2018
Ebola outbreak declared in Democratic Republic of Congo
CNN
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo declared an outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, a rare and deadly disease, on Tuesday, the World Health Organization reported. The declaration came after laboratory results confirmed two cases of the disease in the province of Bikoro in the northwestern part of the country.
05/08/2018
How Orphan Drugs Became a Highly Profitable Industry
The Scientist
Government incentives, advances in technology, and an army of patient advocates have spun a successful market—but abuses of the system and exorbitant prices could cause a backlash.
05/07/2018
Families of Children with Rare Diseases Fuel Gene Therapy Research
The Scientist
It’s a compelling narrative: A parent learns that his or her child has a fatal disease with no cure, and, though not a scientist, embarks on a quest to find some treatment. Such stories have played out in the plotlines of films such as Lorenzo’s Oil and Extraordinary Measures, on national morning shows and local news segments, and on crowdfunding pages to drum up support for the cause.
05/04/2018
Up to 270 women may have died after England breast cancer screening failures
CNN
As many as 270 women in England may have died because they were not called for a final breast cancer screening, the British government disclosed on Wednesday. UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced an independent inquiry into the failings, attributed to a computer algorithm error. An estimated 450,000 women failed to get a letter inviting them to their final screening, he said.
05/04/2018
Genome writing project aims to rally scientists around virus-proofing cells
Science
Launched in 2016 with the sprawling ambition to build large genomes, the synthetic biology initiative known as Genome Project–write (GP-write) is now, slowly, getting down to specifics. Ahead of a meeting today in Boston, GP-write’s leadership announced a plan to organize its international group of collaborators around a “community-wide project”: engineering cells to resist viral infection.
05/03/2018
Iowa lawmakers pass the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban — as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected
CNN
The Republican-led legislature in Iowa has passed a bill that, if signed into law, will become the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban: It forbids doctors from performing the procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected. In many cases, that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women even know they’re expecting.
05/02/2018
The CEO Who Injected Himself With An Experimental Herpes Therapy Was Found Dead In A Sensory Deprivation Tank
Buzzfeed
Traywick, 28, was found in a spa in Northwest DC, according to police. Staff discovered him in a sensory deprivation flotation tank, according to his colleague Tristan Roberts.
His body was taken for an autopsy, and his cause of death was not immediately known. Their investigation is still ongoing, but the police say they don’t suspect foul play.
Traywick was the CEO of Ascendance Biomedical, a tiny, controversial biotech startup on a mission to speed up the process of getting potentially life-saving treatments to patients.
At a biohacker conference in Austin in early February, Traywick made himself a guinea pig, injecting his leg with a never-before-tested, non-FDA-approved, gene-altering herpes treatment made by the company.
05/01/2018
Federal appeals court hears CRISPR patent dispute
Science
Here’s a double-negative brain twister with potentially huge financial ramifications and a Nobel Prize resting on the answer: For an invention to be “nonobvious”—and therefore patentable in the United States—should there be no guarantee of success when researchers embark on experiments that lead to the invention? That mind-bending question was the centerpiece of a case heard today by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., over the lucrative patent portfolio surrounding the revolutionary genome editor commonly known as CRISPR.
04/30/2018
Took an ancestry DNA test? You might be a ‘genetic informant’ unleashing secrets about your relatives
USA Today
You just wanted to find out if you were Portuguese or Spanish, but instead you found out you were related to a mass murderer. This is a reality in a world where the alleged Golden State Killer, now known as Joseph James DeAngelo, was arrested after DNA found at one of the killer’s crime scenes was checked against genetic profiles from genealogical websites that collect DNA samples.
04/27/2018
Flu virus finally sequenced in its native form
Nature
The genome of the flu virus has been fully sequenced in its native RNA form for the first time. Previously, all influenza genomes — as well as those of other viruses that store their genetic material as RNA — had been determined by copying the molecule into DNA. The native flu genome was generated using ‘nanopore’ sequencing technology, which reads RNA strands as they stream through a tiny molecular channel.
04/26/2018
Man’s second face transplant is a world first
CNN
04/25/2018
British toddler Alfie Evans not allowed to leave country, UK court says
CNN
Alfie, admitted to Alder Hey Hospital in December 2016, was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease associated with severe epilepsy and has been in a semivegetative state for more than a year. During that time, he has been kept alive by artificial ventilation in the critical care unit.