Without a conscience, what is a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist except a technician willing to follow the whims of law? (Again, this is not sound-bite material!) I received an e-mail from the American Defense Fund concerning the lawsuit against the State of Arizona by Planned Parenthood over a law to protect those of us in … Continue reading
Originally titled, “Testing the Limits of Tipsy: Many factors Alter the Effects of Alcohol; A Party Experiment” “How much alcohol does it take to get intoxicated? “Many people figure a few beers at a ballgame or a couple of glasses of wine with dinner won’t put them over the legal limit for driving. But how … Continue reading
The Obama administration has released their new conscience regulations from the Health and Human Services dept. See this Adobe, pdf: http://www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2011-03993_PI.pdf There is now no protection for doctors who won’t council abortion, who refuse to prescribe contraception (including post-coital “contraception”) or those who don’t wish to perform fertility treatments for “certain groups of people.” Of … Continue reading
The recommendation *not* to teach exams throws the whole report into question for me. If we are changing the frequency of mammograms, should we also change the recommendation to do self exams? Won’t the first change the effectiveness of the second? In the news, the report by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. … Continue reading
>Just days after we hear about functioning induced Pluripotent stem cells from adult skin cells, cells that can produce dopamine, the proteins missing in Parkinson’s disease, we read that President Obama is going to overturn the limits on funding for embryonic stem cell research. Despite the fact that these cells match the patient because they … Continue reading
That last post definitely points out the mess of current bioethics: Autonomy as the first principle, before the more traditional “Heal when possible, but first do no harm.” Is the purpose of medicine to give the patient what he or she wants, or is it to save lives and restore or maintain health? As I’ve … Continue reading
From WebMD: “We don’t need any eggs or embryos at all,” says Shinya Yamanaka, MD, a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences in Kyoto, Japan. Yamanaka describes his lab’s early successes in mice creating stem cells from adult cells. His research involves isolating two dozen chemicals that give embryonic stem cells their ability … Continue reading
Maybe I should have called this column “I smell a rat.” All this fuss and bother that Sam Berger is making in today’s blog.bioethics.net “Guest Column” over the lack of federal funding of embryonic stem cells had me following links and searching Google half the night in an effort to decide whether or not Berger’s … Continue reading
I’m convinced that Plan B does not block implantation. Because I keep getting emails, hearing radio personalities and reading posts on various forums claiming that Plan B is an abortifacient, here’s a review of information on the medical effects of the pills and on the other effects and lack of effects. The overwhelming evidence – … Continue reading
Next will come the call for the purposeful creation of funding for disease-specific embryos. These embryonic humans are not dead. They were chosen and frozen because they looked promising for future attempts to fill the empty arms of their mothers and fathers. SB 810 authorizes the use of tax money to pay to thaw, nurture, … Continue reading