The drugs don't work : a modern medical scandal - "
The doctors prescribing the drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling."
posted by Gyan
on Sep 22, 2012 -
76 comments
Was it triage or murder? A disturbing NY Times story about the choices made by certain medical staff at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. Long and not easy reading.
posted by anigbrowl
on Aug 28, 2009 -
81 comments
Neurosecurity: security and privacy for neural devices. "An increasing number of neural implantable devices will become available in the near future due to advances in neural engineering. This discipline holds the potential to improve many patients' lives dramatically by offering improved—and in some cases entirely new—forms of rehabilitation for conditions ranging from missing limbs to degenerative cognitive diseases. The use of standard engineering practices, medical trials, and neuroethical evaluations during the design process can create systems that are safe and that follow ethical guidelines; unfortunately, none of these disciplines currently ensure that neural devices are robust against adversarial entities trying to exploit these devices to alter, block, or eavesdrop on neural signals. The authors define 'neurosecurity'—a version of computer science security principles and methods applied to neural engineering—and discuss why neurosecurity should be a critical consideration in the design of future neural devices."
[Via Mind Hacks]
posted by homunculus
on Jul 8, 2009 -
22 comments
The Checklist - "If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it"
[single page]
posted by Gyan
on Jan 2, 2008 -
65 comments
Do Not Resuscitate.
"For families facing the impending death of a loved one, few topics trigger more anguish than the Do Not Resuscitate order... There is little ambiguity in a DNR order: Emergency medical staff must withhold CPR and other life-reviving treatments if the patient's heart or breathing stops, allowing death." But, DNR orders aren't always cut-and-dried. There are many
situations that complicate the medical professional's decision to comply. Related: Some people have opted to get a
"D.N.R." tattoo, but others have wondered if it will hold up in court as a legal directive.
[First link Via].
posted by amyms
on Dec 11, 2007 -
53 comments
Paternity Discrepancy. "My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, 'Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!' And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical."
posted by Sticherbeast
on Apr 27, 2007 -
195 comments
Examining Bush's stem cell policy, two years later. Kinsley: Put it all together, and the stem cells that can squeeze through Bush's loopholes are far less promising than they seemed two years ago, while the general promise of embryonic stem cells burns brighter than ever. If you claim to have made an anguished moral decision, and the factual basis for that decision turns out to be faulty, you ought to reconsider or your claim to moral anguish looks phony. But Bush's moral anguish was suspect from the beginning, because the policy it produced makes no sense.
posted by skallas
on Oct 25, 2003 -
1 comment
Unmitigated gall. The illegal aliens who got two hearts and two lungs for their daughter REFUSED to have any of her organs donated when it was clear she was brain-dead...
posted by MattD
on Feb 22, 2003 -
240 comments
Convict Heart Transplant A 31 year old 2 time felon just got a heart transplant, costing tax payers close to $1 million dollars. With an annual additional cost of $15,000.
Right? Wrong? I'm not so sure.
posted by SuzySmith
on Jan 30, 2002 -
15 comments
Lots of posts lately about the election, about other strange things, (and especially about my favorite subject to not read: Nader) and we haven't had a knock-down drag-out argument about ethics for a while. So I thought I'd start one about
this. Using up humans to collect medical data is unquestionably immoral and those who do it should be hung, if not put to death by torture. The question is whether those of us who had nothing to do with the collection of that data and have not done anything immoral
become immoral by using data collected that way in order to save lives. I'm going to make three posts below, so be patient.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Oct 22, 2000 -
30 comments
