Despite dire predictions, “vulnerable” populations including the elderly, the poor, disabled and minorities do not make up a disproportionate number of the deaths in areas where physician-assisted death is legal, according to international research led by a bioethics expert from the University of Utah.Margaret Battin, distinguished professor of philosophy and adjunct professor of internal medicine, [...]

The revelation was shocking: A good friend said he supported legalized abortion because it reduced the number of children who would face bleak futures in the nation’s cities.
That moment 25 years ago helped crystallize my perspective on medical ethics: Every human life is of immense value and dignity. I could not then, and cannot now, [...]

Breakthroughs in prenatal screening face a backlash from those who say kids with Down syndrome enrich life and should be valued, not weeded out.
At his kitchen table, John Ginther flips through photos of his son, Bobby. Here is Bobby at a wedding, he says. Here’s Bobby at a walk-a-thon, Bobby in a water park, Bobby [...]

Gene Chip Data Improved Therapy in Some Patients with Incurable Cancer
Like many oncologists, Eric P. Lester, M.D., was faced with a dilemma: seven patients with advanced, incurable cancer, an arsenal of drugs that may or may not help them, and not enough solid proof about treatment efficacy to guide him. So Dr. Lester devised what [...]

Expert: Fleeing nursing sites no safe bet
Calling their first witness Thursday in the St. Rita’s nursing home trial, defense attorneys challenged a basic assumption underlying the case: that evacuating nursing homes in advance of hurricanes saves lives.
Medical studies on nursing home evacuations show that the number of elderly residents in an evacuated region who die [...]

Hospitals working to improve emergency policies
The Rio Grande Valley’s hospitals faced some obstacles in coordinating an evacuation plan with state and federal governments when Hurricane Dean threatened the region, a disaster-preparedness group said Friday.
At a meeting of the Hospital Preparedness Program Committee, a community group composed of hospital representatives and first responders, members acknowledged a [...]

Gary Pearson was 19, snoozing in the back of a van on the way to Coast Guard duty in Seattle, when his life became immensely more complicated. The van hit a guardrail, then a tree. Pearson’s neck broke as he was slammed against the driver’s seat. In the hospital, he was strapped into a huge [...]

By some measures, the medical publishing world has met the advent of the Internet with a shrug, sticking to its time-honored revenue model of charging high subscription fees for specialized journals that often attract few, if any, advertisements. Over the weekend, www.oncologySTAT.com went live.
But now Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 400 medical and scientific [...]

In Northern England women who ‘donate’ their eggs for therapeutic cloning purposes qualify for half off their in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. The £1500 credit incentive blurs the linguistic and bioethical line between ’donation’ and ‘commodity’.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Befuddled by new ethics rules, lobbyists have come up with an idea they hope the state Ethics Commission will find palatable.Lobbyist Pat Hall last week proposed a rule to assure that, for example, the Oklahoma State Medical Association would spend, at most, $300 a year on an individual lawmaker for meals or [...]