#medical-ethics

#medical-ethics

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Lacks' cervical cells in 1951 without her knowledge, and the tissue taken from her tumor before she died became the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells became a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines, but the Lacks family wasn't compensated along the way despite that incalculable impact on science and medicine.

"As a father to three young children and as a physician who took an oath to do no harm, I failed to speak up, and I just want to thank President Trump for having more clarity on this," Dr. Ira Savetsky said Thursday on "Fox & Friends." His expression of regret comes just days after the Manhattan hospital pulled the plug on its youth transgender treatment program after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding over the controversial medical care.

This APA Blog series has broadly explored philosophy and technology with a throughline on the influence of technology and AI on well-being. This month's post brings those themes into focus recounting a vital Washington Post Opinion piece by friend of the APA Blog, Samuel Kimbriel. Samuel is the founding director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative and Editor at Large for Wisdom of Crowds. We collaborated on a Substack Newsletter about intellectual ambition, building on his essay, Thinking is Risky.

You should do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Seeing as your childhood best friend's husband couldn't be bothered to hide his meds from his relatively new roommate - that would be you - we can safely assume he isn't hiding them from his husband. So, you can rest assured your childhood best friend knows what's up and you don't have a duty to warn him.

Right now, about 7,000 people are awaiting a kidney transplant in the UK. According to NHS figures, in 2024/25 only 3,302 adult kidney transplants were performed. The charity Kidney Research UK states that just 32% of patients receive a transplant within a year of joining the waiting list and six people die every week while waiting. People who experience kidney failure need either lifelong dialysis or a transplant to survive.

One afternoon during her senior year in 2017, my 18-year-old high schooler, Baylie Grogan, spoke to me in a serious tone. "The only thing worse than dying is living in a body that doesn't work," she said. "Promise me you won't ever let me live that way." It was shortly before she left home to start college as a pre-med student. "I promise," I replied, agreeing that such a predicament would be horrifying, and I wouldn't want it either.

Much attention has recently been given to discussing the effects, potential and actual, of artificial intelligence on clinical medicine. Many, like Sparrow & Hatherley, have begun anticipating and addressing the challenges arising from integrating AI into medicine, including concerns about privacy, bias, power, responsibility, trust, and empathy. Sometimes a dilemma is presented between, as Hatherley puts it, substitutionism and extensionism: either AI will surpass physicians in performing clinical tasks,

The neurologist Oliver Sacks's early books, including "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," established his reputation as unique literary voice and the avatar of a new medical outlook that considered a patient's life story and sense of self as being crucial to the treatment of a range of ailments. Yet, as Rachel Aviv reports in a rich and nuanced piece for this week's issue, Sacks privately expressed guilt about some of what he had written.

It took the last traces of Homo sapiens 10,000 desperate years to reach the semi-oxygenated rock orbiting Proxima Centauri. Widely known as a cosy bothy among the stars, it was a place where stellar ramblers in all their multitudes could pause and rest as they meandered the lightyears. They came in so many forms it took the humans a couple of decades to realize they weren't alone.

I had two sisters in their mid-90s who availed themselves of Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program. Both were incapacitated; they had lost their dignity and were facing amputations or prolonged stays in the hospital with no hope of survival. They were subjected to multiple interviews making sure that they were lucid. Both died surrounded by their family and a multitude of friends. We celebrated their courage to leave their horrible situation with grace. Everyone in attendance stated that they hoped they would have the courage to do the same. I found the system to be run with sensitivity and efficiency. Reports about abuses are few and far between. Canada should be proud that people in unbearable pain can decide to die when life is intolerable.

German dentists have offered a belated acknowledgment of their profession's brutal practices under the Nazis, admitting broad systemic involvement in crimes at concentration camps, including sadistic tooth extractions, human experiments, forced sterilisations and murder. Their central professional organisation, the German Society for Dental, Oral and Orthodontic Medicine (DGZMK), held its first memorial ceremony exposing the atrocities committed by dentists during the Nazi era and paying tribute to the victims, at Berlin's Humboldt University on Wednesday.

For more than a decade, researchers have wondered whether artificial intelligence could help predict what incapacitated patients might want when doctors must make life-or-death decisions on their behalf. It remains one of the most high-stakes questions in health care AI today. But as AI improves, some experts increasingly see it as inevitable that digital "clones" of patients could one day aid family members, doctors, and ethics boards in making end-of-life decisions that are aligned with a patient's values and goals.

A New Jersey nurse told Fox News she was mind-blown when she witnessed a doctor she said was openly celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk last week leading her to call the doc out on her Instagram account, which was a move that resulted in her being suspended without pay, she claims. Lexi Kuenzle shared the wild story during an appearance on Fox & Friends on Monday morning.

In the Netherlands in 1943, more than 6,200 Dutch doctors -97 percent of the profession-refused orders to register with the Nazi-controlled Chamber of Physicians. This registry was intended to force doctors to cooperate with racial and ableist screening, deportations, sterilization, and euthanasia policies.

Under a new law in Tennessee, doctors can refuse treatment based on their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, leading to a woman being denied prenatal care for being unmarried.

Dr. Salvador Plasencia pleaded guilty to giving Matthew Perry ketamine prior to his overdose death, facing up to 40 years in prison. He was the fourth to plead guilty.

In 2022, NIST began the Cancer Genome in a Bottle program, aiming to sequence cancer genomes for improved detection and treatment accuracy, with expectations of results in a decade.

"The impact on me was extremely upsetting and damaging. I now suffer from anxiety and am seeing a therapist due to the abhorrent things Dr Cartland said about me. My reputation is everything. This has been a horrific experience."

The trial in Berlin centers on a doctor accused of murdering 15 patients under palliative care, facing serious charges that could lead to life imprisonment.

Prosecutors have charged the 40-year-old defendant with 15 counts of murder with premeditated malice and other base motives, seeking a life sentence for the crimes.

The suspect is accused of murdering terminally ill patients while working for a nursing service in Berlin, administering a lethal mixture of medications without their consent.

Stephen Doohan, a paramedic, secretly inserted an abortion drug into a woman's vagina during sex, resulting in a 10-year prison sentence for sexual assault and abortion-related crimes.

When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio on such claims during oral arguments, Strangio made a startling admission. He conceded that there is no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent suicide rates.

Doctors at the Tabarre Hospital risk their safety to save lives amid a violent gang war, where chaos transforms Port-au-Prince into a combat zone.

"My Iranian name is Shadi, which means 'happiness' in Persian. When I immigrated to North America, I felt the need to adopt an English name as well."

"I'm her mother...I shouldn't be burying my daughter." - April Newkirk expressing the emotional impact of losing her daughter who was brain-dead while pregnant.

The letter warns health care providers to avoid relying on established professional guidelines and instead adhere to a controversial HHS review of gender dysphoria treatment.