[Prehospital and Disaster Medicine]  There have been great efforts on the federal and local levels to prepare for the specter of a severe influenza pandemic, however knowledge gaps and operational challenges remain. It is critical to assess if current top-down efforts actually are improving and/or likely to improve the ability of on-the-ground clinicians to respond [...]

[reliefweb] A new position paper by three human rights organizations, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL), Al-Mezan and Adalah, reviews Israel’s exit policy at the Erez Crossing regarding Gaza patients seeking medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. The paper argues that there is a consistent Israeli policy of distinguishing between life-threatening cases and cases that affect quality [...]

[Reason.com] In November, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing a new Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. He appointed political scientist and University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann as the chair of the new Bioethics Commission. Such commissions are charged with working through tough questions about intellectual property rights, the protection [...]

[Economist] MORE than a week after the earth convulsed beneath it, Haiti has still to plumb the depths of suffering and want. The numbers are still only more-or-less informed guesses, but their magnitude is grim: perhaps 200,000 killed, 250,000 more injured and some 3m in desperate need of help. The generosity of the world’s response [...]

[medscape] As healthcare reform legislation grinds its way through Congress, 2 articles published online January 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) advocate for one of its touchiest provisions — comparative-effectiveness research (CER).
In theory, CER sounds like a calm, academic subject: evaluate different treatment options for a given illness — drug A vs [...]

[healthfreedomalliance] Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.
The plan, which would guide Florida hospitals on how to ration scarce medical care during a severe flu outbreak, also calls for [...]

 
“If they had just paid for the pills, I’d still have my kidney,” Melissa J. Whitaker said of Medicare, which covers just three years’ worth of anti-rejection drugs for transplant patients under 65. Ms. Whitaker and her boyfriend, Joe Jamieson, in their San Diego condo.
[nytimes]  Melissa J. Whitaker has one very compelling reason to keep [...]

In countries without comprehensive national health care systems and in resource-limited set-tings, clinical trial participants may lack access to medications and medical care after trials conclude. [1] Since approximately 2000, investigators, research participants, and ethicists have engaged in a vigorous debate regarding whether participants in clinical trials are entitled to receive post-trial medications and medical [...]

[Baltimore Sun] It’s a name only a policy wonk could love: comparative effectiveness research. But get ready to hear a lot about it; it could save your rights as a patient – and maybe even your life. If opponents have their way, it could be the bogeyman that brings down health care reform.
Using false and [...]

The state Board of Medicine has suspended a Hurricane doctor for six months after he gave a dying patient a muscle-paralyzing drug as part of “end of life” care.
Dr. Sean DiCristofaro will start serving his suspension Friday. DiCristofaro told the medical board he administered the drug after the patient was gasping for breath and his [...]