Bioethics.net

December 6, 2018 9:00 am

If you’re single with cancer, you may get less aggressive treatment than a married person (The Washington Post)

If you are divorced, widowed or never married and develop cancer, watch out. You may get less aggressive treatment than your married friends.

We’ve often heard about studies showing that married adults are more likely to survive cancer than singles. But buried in those same studies is another finding that hasn’t made the headlines. When surgery or radiotherapy is the treatment of choice, patients with spouses are more likely to get it.

November 21, 2018 9:51 am

How Do Wishes Granted To Very Sick Kids Affect Their Health? (National Public Radio)

The children granted wishes were substantially less likely to visit the emergency department or to have an unplanned hospital admission within two years as compared with children who hadn’t received wishes. (Researchers matched the children’s personal and disease characteristics in the study.)

“My hypothesis is that these kids, when they come back, are more engaged with their families and medical providers, and perhaps they’re more adherent to their treatment plan,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Anup D. Patel, section chief of neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus.

November 8, 2018 9:00 am

F.D.A. Approves Powerful New Opioid Despite Warnings of Likely Abuse (The New York Times)

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new form of an extremely potent opioid to manage acute pain in adults, weeks after the chairman of the advisory committee that reviewed it asked the agency to reject it on grounds that it would likely be abused.

November 7, 2018 9:00 am

In Congo’s Ebola Outbreak, Experimental Treatments Are Proving Effective (The New York Times)

Effective treatments, combined with a new vaccine, may revolutionize efforts to turn back Ebola, one of the world’s deadliest plagues. The vaccine itself protects health care workers tending to patients, as well as family members and others who have been in contact with them and may be infected.

November 2, 2018 9:00 am

Aging can be hard for those in the trans community (The Washington Post)

“We were both aware that in the LGBTQ world, there’s a fair amount of ageism and lack of awareness about aging, and in the aging world there’s a fair amount of homophobia and transphobia and lack of awareness of LGBTQ issues, especially trans identities.”

October 3, 2018 6:00 pm

Race, Ancestry, and Medical Research (JAMA)

The discussion of race and medicine in the United States is challenging and emotionally charged. Substantial disparities in health outcomes, based on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, continue to exist; additional reports of racial bias and profound insensitivity in research continue to emerge in the popular media. A renewed discussion of race as a biological vs social construct has begun and is complicated by emerging data on genetics, race, and ancestry.

October 2, 2018 3:47 pm

AAMC Statement on Proposed Changes to Public Charge Rule (AAMC)

September 11, 2018 9:00 am

23andMe may offer costly premium DNA spit-test service (Mercury News)

Mountain View spit-kit DNA testing firm 23andMe wants to know how deep you want to go into your genome, and how much you’re willing to pay. The company currently sells $100 ancestry tests and $200 tests that cover ancestry and health. But according to a new report, 23andMe has been market-testing a deeper dive into personal genetics.

August 8, 2018 9:00 am

These tiny, stretchy speakers and microphones let your skin play music (Science)

If you’re prone to forgetting your headphones, new wearable technology that could turn your skin into a speaker should be music to your ears. Created in part to help the hearing and speech impaired, the new “smart skin” could be embedded into the ears—or into a patch on the throat. A similar device, described in the same study, acts as a microphone, which can be connected to smartphones and computers to unlock voice-activated security systems.

July 2, 2018 7:41 am

Federal Judge Blocks Medicaid Work Requirements In Kentucky (NPR)

A federal judge has blocked work requirements for Medicaid patients in Kentucky, just days before new rules mandated by Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration were set to go into effect.