Federal law currently says no, or appears to say no, and it provides for criminal penalties for a violation of the law. So well-meaning states like Pennsylvania that want to pay burial expenses for organ donors have a hard time convincing state employees and funeral homes to pay or receive the benefit. Sen. Arlen Specter […]
Category: Medical ethics
According to an article posted to the the N.Y. Times‘ website today, drug maker Wyeth has turned over to the Senate Finance Committee a mountain of material on its practice of paying ghostwriters to prepare favorable articles for publication in medical journals. Physicians were then recruited to put their names on the articles. In some […]
Today’s Times has an interesting piece on the Cleveland Clinic‘s new policy of publicly reporting the business relationships that any of its 1,800 staff doctors and scientists have with drug and device makers. The clinic, one of the nation???s most prominent medical research centers, is making a complete disclosure of doctors??? and researchers??? financial ties […]
Should a 13-year-old have the right to decide whether to acept a potentially life-saving heart transplant? That’s the question posed by the British case of Hannah Jones. Her story is told well in this article in The Guardian and in the news video below:
Categories
Physicians and placebos
As reported in The New York Times last week, a recent study published on-line by the medical journal BMJ, says that half of American internists and rheumatologists prescribe placebos on a regular basis. Although the BMJ article did not get into the ethical issues, the Times article did: One of the authors, Franklin G. Miller, […]
Today The Washington Post has an article — Infant Transplant Procedure Ignites Debate — that builds on yesterday’s AP article about three cases in which infant hearts were harvested under a “donation after cardiac death” (“DCD”) protocol, which all transplant centers are required by UNOS and HHS. The details of each center’s protocol may vary. […]