http://www.bioethics.net/rss/bioethicsnews.xml bioethics news everyday from bioethics.net/American Journal of Bioethics Copyright 2005 bioethics.net Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:25:40 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/ http://www.bioethics.net/images/logo_frontpage_wht.gif 60 200 webmaster@bioethics.net newsupdate@bioethics.net en-us http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7381 Myriad Genetics' disputed patent on the BRCA1 breast cancer gene is "surprisingly broad" and could interfere with future research, three experts said on Tuesday. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:25:40 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7380 Patients with the same diagnoses are usually treated with similar medications. However, not all patients respond the same way to the same treatment. Some get better, others do not. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:07:56 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7379 For millennia, euthanasia has been considered morally and legally unjustifiable. People who oppose euthanasia still believe it's inherently wrong – it can't be morally justified and even compassionate motives don't make it ethically acceptable. But what are the attitudes of pro-euthanasia advocates regarding whether its use needs to be justified, were it to be legalized? And, if justifications are required, what are they? Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:57:04 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7378 A new study seems to knock down some of the ethical objections to paying people to donate an organ. The study authors are with the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:56:12 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7377 As she began a punishing regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, Mrs. Vliet found a measure of comfort in her monthly appointments with her primary care physician, Dr. Saed J. Sahouri, who had been monitoring her health for nearly two years. She was devastated, therefore, when Dr. Sahouri informed her a few months later that he could no longer see her because, like a growing number of doctors, he had stopped taking patients with Medicaid. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:45:00 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7376 In the hope of expanding a controversial form of organ donation into emergency rooms around the United States, a federally funded project has begun trying to obtain kidneys, livers and possibly other body parts from car-accident victims, heart-attack fatalities and other urgent-care patients. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:14:09 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7375 It wasn’t until Ileana Peralta was in junior high school that she summoned the courage to Google her own disease. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:13:36 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7374 At both birth and death, the phrase "Do everything possible" is increasingly incompatible with a good life. Here's a question that's not being asked in the healthcare debate: How much medical care do we want in our lives? It's something we should be discussing. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:22:12 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7373 A newer type of genetic test is better at detecting abnormalities that predispose a child to autism than standard genetic tests, new research has determined. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:21:24 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7372 An elderly woman taken last year to St. John Medical Center had suffered a massive stroke and could no longer speak, eat or drink. Although she had an advance directive specifying no artificial hydration or nutrition if she weren't going to recover, local health officials said, her nephew insisted the local bishop's directive on use of feeding tubes required the Catholic hospital to install one. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:19:47 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7371 Israel is launching a potentially trailblazing experiment in organ donation: Sign a donor card, and you and your family moves up in line for a transplant if one is needed. The new law is the first of its kind in the world, and international medical authorities are eager to see if it boosts organ supply. But it has also raised resistance from within Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:18:46 EDT http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7370 A brain-injured Alberta baby at the centre of a controversial end-of-life decision that landed in court has died. Baby Isaiah May was pronounced dead at 12:11 p.m. Thursday. He died in the arms of his parents Rebecka and Isaac May, and surrounded by his aunts, uncles and grandparents Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:46:05 EST http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7369 One afternoon during my training, I watched as one of my closest friends, another surgery resident, was led into the office of the department chief. A week earlier she had been on call when a patient developed a rapid and irregular heart rhythm. He became unconscious and would have soon died if my friend had not stepped in and resuscitated him. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:45:18 EST http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7368 Doctors, nurses and other health care workers are tapping into their inner Tolstoys to better connect with patients. With increasing regularity, they're meeting in monthly book clubs to discuss medical-themed literature. Humanities courses are now required in many medical schools. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:44:10 EST http://www.bioethics.net/News/?id=7367 People with occasional spikes in their blood pressure could be at higher risk of having a stroke than those with regularly high blood pressure, new studies said Friday. In four articles published in the medical journals Lancet and Lancet Neurology, European researchers suggest current guidelines for treating people with high blood pressure need to be revised. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:43:07 EST