Bioethics News.
09/06/2017
United States to give Ethiopia $91 million in drought aid for food and medicine
Washington Post
According to USAID spokesman Clayton McCleskey, Green told Desalegn he was concerned that conditions were deteriorating for people affected by the drought and encouraged the government to “show greater leadership and invest more resources to combat a worsening humanitarian crisis.”
09/05/2017
F.D.A. Approves First Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment, Costing $475,000
The New York Times
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the first-ever treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, a milestone that is expected to transform treatment in the coming years.
09/04/2017
Young immigrant scientists anxiously await Trump’s DACA decision
Science
Biomedical researcher Yuriana Aguilar, a postdoctoral fellow at Rush University in Chicago, Illinois, is feverishly working to compete in the cut-throat race for a tenure-track faculty position. To catch the eye of prospective employers, she’s been trying to do the best science she can. But Aguilar might soon have to prove she has another qualification: a legal right to work in the United States. That’s because the 27-year-old is one of an untold number of scientists and engineers who are undocumented immigrants, and have been able to get jobs and degrees thanks to a federal initiative that President Donald Trump has threatened to end.
09/01/2017
Tanzania Gears Up To Become A Nation Of Medical Drones
NPR
In early 2018, the nation will start using Zipline drones for on-demand delivery of blood, vaccines, medications and other supplies such as sutures and IV tubes.
08/31/2017
Nepal outlaws menstruation huts, but what will take their place?
CNN
On August 9, Nepal’s Parliament passed a bill that would criminalize the banishment of women during menstruation. Once the bill goes into effect, set for August 2018, anyone who forces a woman into a menstrual hut will be sentenced to three months in prison or fined US $30.
08/30/2017
Basic studies of how our brains work are now clinical trials, NIH says
Science
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, has confirmed that the agency’s definition of clinical trials now includes imaging studies of normal brain function that do not test new treatments. The change will impose new requirements that many researchers say don’t make sense and could stifle cognitive neuroscience.
08/29/2017
Hunting a Killer: Sex, Drugs and the Return of Syphilis
The New York Times
OKLAHOMA CITY — For months, health officials in this socially conservative state capital have been staggered by a fast-spreading outbreak of a disease that, for nearly two decades, was considered all but extinguished.
Syphilis, the deadly sexually transmitted infection that can lead to blindness, paralysis and dementia, is returning here and around the country, another consequence of the heroin and methamphetamine epidemics, as users trade sex for drugs.
08/28/2017
Fewer antibiotic prescriptions are being filled, a new analysis finds
Washington Post
The use of antibiotics among Americans with commercial health insurance has decreased during the past several years, according to a new analysis that nevertheless shows lingering variations for different ages and in different parts of the country.
08/25/2017
Teen drug overdose death rate climbed 19% in one year
CNN
The rate of teen drug overdose deaths in the United States climbed 19% from 2014 to 2015, from 3.1 deaths per 100,000 teens to 3.7 per 100,000, according to data released this week. The new numbers involve teens ages 15 to 19 and were released by the National Center for Health Statistics.
08/24/2017
Zebrafish implanted with a cancer patient’s tumor could guide cancer treatment
Science
To create mouse avatars, researchers implant some of a patient’s cancer cells into rodents lacking a normal immune system and measure whether various drugs destroy the tumors that sprout in the animals. But the mice are expensive to create and typically require between 2 and 6 months to deliver a verdict.
08/23/2017
Elderly couple got ‘deepest wish’ — to die together — in rare euthanasia case
Washington Post
Nic and Trees Elderhorst knew exactly how they wanted to die. They were both 91 years old and in declining health. Nic Elderhorst suffered a stroke in 2012 and more recently, his wife, Trees Elderhorst, was diagnosed with dementia, according to the Dutch newspaper, De Gelderlander. Neither wanted to live without the other, or leave this world alone. So the two, who lived in Didam, a town in the eastern part of the Netherlands, and had been together 65 years, shared a last word, and a kiss, then died last month hand-in-hand — in a double euthanasia allowed under Dutch law, according to De Gelderlander.
08/22/2017
China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions
Nature
Early experiments are beginning to show how genome-editing technologies such as CRISPR might one day fix disease-causing mutations before embryos are implanted. But refining the techniques and getting regulatory approval will take years. PGD has already helped thousands of couples. And whereas the expansion of PGD around the world has generally been slow, in China, it is starting to explode.
08/21/2017
Zika has all but disappeared in the Americas. Why?
Science
One. That is the total number of locally transmitted Zika cases confirmed in the continental United States this year, as of mid-August. That single case, recorded on 26 July in Hidalgo County in Texas, which borders Mexico, contrasts with hundreds of cases of local transmission last year.
08/18/2017
Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Declaration For Opioids Could Be A Double-Edged Sword
Huffington Post
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Clearly, the massive increase in drug deaths warrant a serious government response. But what does a national emergency actually mean?
08/17/2017
Artificial intelligence identifies plant species for science
Nature
Computer algorithms trained on the images of thousands of preserved plants have learned to automatically identify species that have been pressed, dried and mounted on herbarium sheets, researchers report.
08/16/2017
Commit to talks on patient data and public health
Nature
Of course it was going to happen — and now it has. Last week, an international team reported the use of CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing techniques to correct a heart-wrenching mutation in human embryos. These attempts worked several times more efficiently than previous ones had, and avoided introducing new genetic errors. Although the embryos were never destined to be used for pregnancies (and have now been destroyed), the work — carried out mainly in the United States — makes it easy to foresee practical applications to genetically alter human embryos.
08/15/2017
Horse Clones Start Heading to the Races
Bloomberg News
So far, the big winner in the great clone race has been Alan Meeker, chief executive officer of Crestview Genetics. Since 2010 the 52-year-old Texas oil heir has created close to 100 horse clones valued at $500,000 to $800,000 each, depending on how long the company’s raised them.
08/14/2017
Americans are becoming more open to human genome editing, survey finds, but concerns remain
Science
CRISPR, the powerful genome-editing tool, does a molecular tango to cut and modify DNA that is highly nuanced. The same subtlety applies to the public’s views on how best to use genome editing in humans, a new survey of adults in the United States shows.
08/11/2017
CRISPR fixes disease gene in viable human embryos
Nature
An international team of researchers has used CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing — a technique that allows scientists to make precise changes to genomes with relative ease — to correct a disease-causing mutation in dozens of viable human embryos. The study represents a significant improvement in efficiency and accuracy over previous efforts.
08/10/2017
First genetically engineered salmon sold in Canada
Nature
Genetically engineered salmon has reached the dinner table. AquaBounty Technologies, the Maynard, Massachusetts, company that developed the fish, announced on 4 August that it has sold 10,000 pounds (4,535 kilograms) of its hotly debated product to customers in Canada.
08/09/2017
Memory-enhancing drug reverses effects of traumatic brain injury in mice
Science
Whether caused by a car accident that slams your head into the dashboard or repeated blows to your cranium from high-contact sports, traumatic brain injury can be permanent. There are no drugs to reverse the cognitive decline and memory loss, and any surgical interventions must be carried out within hours to be effective, according to the current medical wisdom. But a compound previously used to enhance memory in mice may offer hope: Rodents who took it up to a month after a concussion had memory capabilities similar to those that had never been injured.
08/08/2017
CRISPR patent battle in Europe takes a ‘wild’ twist with surprising player
Science
MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, has become a new major player in the complicated European patent battles over CRISPR, the revolutionary genome-editing tool.
08/07/2017
Senate passes ‘right to try’ bill to help terminally ill patients get experimental drugs
Washington Post
The Senate on Thursday passed by unanimous consent a measure designed to make it easier for terminally ill patients to get access to experimental treatments without oversight from the Food and Drug Administration. The “right-to-try” legislation has been championed by the libertarian Goldwater Institute, which has worked to pass similar legislation in 37 states. The federal version, now headed to the House, would bar the government from blocking patients from getting access to medications that have undergone only preliminary testing in humans. Patients first would have to try all other available treatments and be unable to participate in clinical trials.
08/04/2017
Chimpanzees are first animal shown to develop telltale markers of Alzheimer’s disease
Nature
Aged chimpanzees develop brain characteristics that are similar — but not identical — to those seen in early Alzheimer’s disease in humans, researchers report on 1 August in Neurobiology of Aging. The findings from humanity’s closest relatives could help researchers to understand why people develop dementia, as well as suggest that caretakers of aging, captive chimpanzees watch them closely for behavioural changes.
08/03/2017
How Should Physicians Help Gender-Transitioning Adolescents Consider Potential Iatrogenic Harms of Hormone Therapy?
Journal Of Medical Ethics
Counseling and treatment of transgender youth can be challenging for mental health practitioners, as increased availability of gender-affirming treatments in recent years raises ethical and clinical questions. Is a gender identity diagnosis helpful? What is the right time to treat, and should the adolescent’s age matter in decision making?
08/02/2017
After French drug trial tragedy, European Union issues new rules to protect study volunteers
Science
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued new, stricter rules for studies that test drugs in people for the first time. They aim to better protect participants in such first-in-human studies—often healthy volunteers who receive a financial reward. The guideline, which was issued on 25 July, will take effect in February 2018. It comes in the wake of a tragedy in a French drug study last yearthat led to the death of one man and serious neurological damage in four others. But some say the revision isn’t going for enough.
08/01/2017
Crop breeders sprout plan to boost public sector research
Science
Universities need to get better at sharing patented seeds and other products of publicly-funded agricultural science if the United States wants to keep producing bountiful harvests, argues a new report from a group of leading academic researchers.
07/31/2017
Don’t run biomedical science as a business
Nature
As the White House and the US Congress continue to lock horns over President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, scientists are once again anxious about funding levels. But more money is not enough to create better science. Indeed, the scientific enterprise has been betrayed by the mismanagement of its financial support.
07/28/2017
Ninety-nine percent of ailing NFL player brains sport hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, autopsy study finds
Science
The largest study of its kind has found damage in the vast majority of former football players’ brains donated for research after they developed mental symptoms during life. Of 202 former players of the U.S. version of the game whose brains were examined, 87% showed the diagnostic signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive head trauma.
07/28/2017
First U.S. team to gene-edit human embryos revealed
Science
Since Chinese researchers announced the first gene editing of a human embryo 2 years ago, many expected that similar work in the United States was inevitable. Last night, the MIT Technology Review broke the news that such experiments have happened. The research, led by embryologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, also reportedly sidestepped problems of incomplete and off-target editing that plagued previous attempts, though details could not be confirmed since the work is not yet published and Mitalipov has so far declined to comment.