Bioethics.net » Public Health

Judge Refuses to Drop His Order Allowing Morning-After Pill for All Ages

James Muller — Sun, 12 May 2013 22:16:56 +0000

[New York Times] WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday stepped up his criticism of the Obama administration, accusing the Justice Department of making “frivolous” and “silly” arguments in its attempt to delay making the morning-after emergen...

Judge Refuses to Drop His Order Allowing Morning-After Pill for All Ages

James Muller — Sun, 12 May 2013 22:16:56 +0000

Magical NC Bill Builds Obstacles to Teen Health

Craig Klugman — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:40:13 +0000

Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

If you’re a teen in North Carolina, a new bill before the legislature may make it more difficult for you to get sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, mental health counseling, pregnancy care or even substance abuse treatment. To receive any of those, a teen would need written, notarized parental consent. A parent could not simply give permission on the phone, via a note, or even by signing a consent form. No, the parent has to use a notary to give permission.…

Harmful flame retardants found in 84 percent of Calif. couches

The American Journal of Bioethics — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:30:17 +0000

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Ban the Sunset? Nonpropositional Content and Regulation of Pharmaceutical Advertising

The American Journal of Bioethics — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:57:00 +0000

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Should Our Government Combat the Obesity Epidemic?

Peter Ubel — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:30:26 +0000

Here is video from a talk I recently gave at the University of Wisconsin, laying out a few of the reasons I think the government needs to play a role in combating the obesity epidemic. If you dig further into the conference website, you will see a vide...

Ten retailers urged to pull potentially toxic products

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:01:36 +0000

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Rare Pediatric Cancers Tied to Car Emissions

The American Journal of Bioethics — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:09:38 +0000

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Increased Rates of Hospitalization Linked to Elder Abuse

Lindsay Smith — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:25:38 +0000

[Science Daily] Older adults who are subject to elder abuse, neglect and exploitation face a greater risk of being hospitalized than other seniors, according to the results of a study published in the April 8 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. “E...

One Welfare

Jerry Risser — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:48:04 +0000

Among the hats I wear is my “participate in organized veterinary medicine” hat, which currently involves my role as Vice President of my state Veterinary Medical Association. In a recent board meeting, we identified and strategized goals for the y...

Orphan Drug Prices Under Siege in Austerity-Minded Europe

Jennifer Miller — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:54:07 +0000

“They’ve started looking at how much money…these companies are making… If you make more than a billion dollars out of a product…somebody’s going to wake up and say… you’ve recouped your R&D…you’ve made an...

Sugar industry’s secret documents echo tobacco tactics

Jennifer Miller — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:31:39 +0000

Sugar Association’s intent to use science to defeat critics uncovered by dentist [CBC News] When Cristin Couzens went on the hunt for evidence that Big Sugar had manipulated public opinion, she had no idea what she was doing. She was a dentist, ...

Artistic Inquiry: Action-research for Public Health on Film

Betsy Campbell — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:37:09 +0000

BEI Young Professionals member Betsy Campbell covers artful media around the world that touches upon topics in bioethics. The Revolutionary Optimists captures the lives of several adolescents in Kolkata India on film. Through their stories the film exp...

How Much Monitoring Is Too Much?

Donna Hanrahan — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:03:51 +0000

[Scientific American] It started in the ‘70s. A pregnant woman with diabetes faced a deeply entrenched medical routine: months in hospital having her blood glucose closely monitored. She managed to stay out by convincing her doctor, Clara Lowy, to le...

Data at a Distance: Thoughts on ‘Digital Public Health’

Donna Hanrahan — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:23:39 +0000

[Forbes] Today, our body temperature can be scanned from a distance quickly and simply. For a busy Mom with a sick child, this is a great idea. Just pointing a sensor at a spot of skin and obtaining an ‘instant’ reading is a real advance from...

California bill seesk pay for women who donate eggs for research

Becky Kowalsky — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:17:47 +0000

[The Sacramento Bee] Five years ago, Alice Crisci froze her eggs, knowing she could be left infertile after chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. Now, cancer-free and 10 weeks pregnant, Crisci is a passionate donor advocate and a vocal critic of a ...

Why James Bond Needs to Wear Condoms

Peter Ubel — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:05:19 +0000

Think of the last few times you watched a popular movie that involved any kind of sex scene? Not as in pornographic sex, but as in two characters ended up in bed together and had, ahem, conjugal relations. In how many of those scenes did either partic...

New Approaches for Controlling Pesticide Exposure in Children

Lindsay Smith — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:26:41 +0000

New research encourages increased use of non-poisonous pest control tactics in order to reduce the risk of adverse health complications. The effects of pest control methods are particularly impactful for low-income families with children who live in ...

The Belmont Report: The Blue Print for Ethical Behavior and Its Implications in Black History

Olivette Burton — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:17:42 +0000

Original Commentary by BEI Young Professionals member Olivette Burton, MBe, MSW. The National Research Act and Belmont Commission (1974) came about in direct response to unethical experimentation on Black Americans by medical science and researchers in...

UK ‘fares badly in European health league table’

Simone Penasa — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:57:43 +0000

[BBC News] Health data over 20 years was compared with figures from 18 other countries in the research published in the Lancet. Although average life expectancy has risen by four years since 1990, it says the UK needs to increase its strategies for ta...

Mutant Virus Sparks Bioethics Debate

Ayelet Evrony — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:58:09 +0000

[ The Star]In a storage facility in the Netherlands, a mutant virus has been locked in a freezer for more than a year, unaware of the global debate swirling around it. As far as scientists know, this virus cannot be found anywhere else on Earth; it was...

Cancer risk 70% higher for females in Fukushima area, says WHO

Olivette Burton — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 03:00:00 +0000

[The Guardian] People in the area worst affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident two years ago have a higher risk of developing certain cancers, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on M...

Walmart Health Screening Stations Touted As Part Of ‘Self-Service Revolution’

Lindsay Smith — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:05:09 +0000

[Kaiser Health News] STERLING, Va. – Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in ...

Medicaid Helps Hospitals Pay For Illegal Immigrants’ Care

Brittany Rush — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 20:37:20 +0000

[Kaiser Health News] Federal law generally bars illegal immigrants from being covered by Medicaid. But a little-known part of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor has long paid about $2 billion a year for emergency treatment for ...

Mutant virus sparks bioethics debate

Becky Kowalsky — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:03:42 +0000

[The Star] In a storage facility in the Netherlands, a mutant virus has been locked in a freezer for more than a year, unaware of the global debate swirling around it. As far as scientists know, this virus cannot be found anywhere else on Earth; it was...

Inequity in the U.S. – The Importance of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)

Charley Willison — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:49:01 +0000

Original commentary by BEI Young Professionals Charley Willison. In order to achieve and maintain good health, utilization and access to healthcare services is a key necessity (Sade, 1430.) Healthcare can prevent or ameliorate disease and disability,...

I Will Gladly Pay More Taxes to Expand High Schools Sports

Peter Ubel — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:46:22 +0000

My 14-year-old son Jordan did not make the JV basketball team in his high school. Not very surprising really. There is no freshmen basketball team at his school and only six freshmen made the JV, out of a class of more than 400 students. Six fre...

A Brief History of Panic

Donna Hanrahan — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 20:25:52 +0000

[New York Times] In September of 1873, United States Senator J.R. West of Louisiana received a telegram from his home state whose terse lines spoke of abject desperation: The people are panic-stricken. All that could have left. The poor are nearly all ...

Bill proposed in Oregon would make cigarettes prescription-only drugs

Jennifer Miller — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:31:02 +0000

[KPTV] If you’re a regular smoker, you may want to keep an eye on a new bill in the Oregon Legislature. Rep. Mitch Greenlick, from Portland, is sponsoring a bill that makes cigarettes a Schedule III controlled substance, meaning it would be i...

Rights Consciousness and Social Welfare Beneficence

Olivette Burton — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:46:58 +0000

Original commentary by BEI Young Professionals member Olivette Burton. A special tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Bioethics and social work have much work to do. The timeliness of evaluating our society’s progress involving human rights, pover...

Yelp Adds Health Department Grades To Restaurant Listings

The American Journal of Bioethics — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:47:25 +0000

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The Moral Failure of HPV Vaccination

Arthur Caplan — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:34:22 +0000

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.

Among the greatest failures in American public health—and the list is a long one—is the rise in the incidence of cervical cancer. Incredibly, cancers caused by human papillomavirus rose in the past decade. From 2000 to 2009 rates of oral, vulva and anal cancers increased, according to a recent study by the National Cancer Institute. What makes this grim fact a notable public health failure is that we have not one but two vaccines that can greatly diminish these cancers. Both Merck and GSK market HPV vaccines–Gardasil and Cervarix.…

New York City Ties Doctors’ Income to Quality of Care

Lindsay Smith — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:10:11 +0000

[New York Times] In a bold experiment in performance pay, complaints from patients at New York City’s public hospitals and other measures of their care — like how long before they are discharged and how they fare afterward — will be reflected in ...

One in three U.S. workers has no paid sick days

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:08:09 +0000

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NOVARTIS CEO: Big Pharma Has To Move Beyond Just ‘Selling The Pill’

Jennifer Miller — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:52:50 +0000

[Business Insider, Max Nison] Swiss drugmaker Novartis recently lost patent protection on its best selling product, Diovan. They don’t have anything coming soon which looks like it could replace it. It’s a problem throughout the indus...

Binge Drinking Prevalent, Yet Underestimated in Females

The American Journal of Bioethics — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:34:42 +0000

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Delivering the promise of public health genomics

Becky Kowalsky — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:38:56 +0000

[The Guardian] Since the completion of the human genome project in 2003, scientific activities that were unheard-of a decade ago, such as sequencing the genes of a newly emerging virus in days, the ability to screen for inherited diseases and the poten...

Problem with generic meds: Changes in color, shape may lead to interruptions in use

Jennifer Miller — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:48:12 +0000

[HarvardScience By: Jessica Maki] Generic medications currently account for more than 70 percent of prescriptions dispensed. However, although generic drugs are clinically bioequivalent to the brand-name version, they often differ in their physi...

Nuffield on "Public Ethics"

Stephen R. Latham, JD, PhD Yale — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 03:15:00 +0000

I always enjoy and benefit from reading the reports of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Its latest on Emerging Biotechnologies is no exception. I hope to have more to say about the substance of this report in future posts, but for now I want to singl...

Bioethicist: We need to treat violence as public health issue

The American Journal of Bioethics — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:22:34 +0000

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FDA OKs J&J prostate cancer drug for pre-chemo use

The American Journal of Bioethics — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:43:14 +0000

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It’s genetic: Some smokers have biological resistance to anti-tobacco policies

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:48:59 +0000

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Women’s Health in Juvenile Detention: How a System Designed for Boys Is Failing Girls

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:07:20 +0000

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Technician Is Indicted on New Charges in Hepatitis C Infections

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:39:04 +0000

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Unemployment May Increase Chances of Heart Attacks

The American Journal of Bioethics — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:14:48 +0000

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AJOB’s November Issue is Here!

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:01:03 +0000

November's issue of the American Journal of Bioethics addresses an unexamined aspect of hospital ethics committees: their role in contributing to and writing policies. The authors call for ethicists to develop clearer roles, responsibilities, and procedural standards is made in light of limited publication about policy work.

Family Planning Must be Development Priority, Says UNFPA Report

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:39:54 +0000

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Big Rise in Americans With Diabetes, Especially in South

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:34:57 +0000

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President’s Bioethics Commission Posts Study Guide

The American Journal of Bioethics — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:29:42 +0000

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Scientific Progress Could Be Casualty in Public Health vs. Privacy Debate Over Newborn Blood Samples

The American Journal of Bioethics — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:54:14 +0000

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