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Scientists Find New Way to Kill Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes

July 18, 2019

Scientists say they nearly eliminated disease-carrying mosquitoes on two islands in China using a new technique. The downside: It may not be practical for larger areas and may cost a lot of money

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The WHO Finally Declared a Public Health Emergency Over Ebola

July 18, 2019

The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been ongoing since last August. An emergency declaration “is an unambiguous global statement that the situation is dire,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

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To Help Smokers Quit, Pay Them

July 17, 2019

Paying people to stop smoking is a very effective method of getting them to quit, a large review of studies has found

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A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systemic Health Care Problems

July 16, 2019

Daniel Z Buchman’s review in the journal Science of In Pain by our Travis Rieder

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A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systemic Health Care Problems

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019

Imagine having your foot pinned between a moving van and a motorcycle and subsequently undergoing five surgeries to restore function to your mangled limb over a 1-month period. In order to endure the debilitating pain, you are prescribed high doses of opioid analgesics, only to discover that your care team has no exit strategy. Feeling abandoned by the medical establishment, you decide to subject yourself to a process of aggressive self-tapering and subsequently experience a gruesome withdrawal. Travis Rieder tells such a story—his story—in his new book, In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids.

In Pain situates Rieder’s traumatic experience within the context of North America’s “triple wave” opioid overdose crisis (1). As he explains, high prescribing volumes and aggressive marketing of opioids such as OxyContin initiated the crisis in the 1990s and 2000s. When their opioid prescriptions stopped or were scaled back, some patients turned to illicit sources. Most of the tens of thousands of overdose deaths that occurred in the United States and Canada within the past several years were due to a toxic street supply of heroin and fentanyl analogs.

Although opioid prescribing rates have fallen in recent years, the ethics of how and when these drugs are administered is still relevant. As Rieder shows, patients on long-term opioid therapy may be harmed when subjected to forced opioid tapering. And not prescribing an opioid when one is needed can be harmful as well.

…continue reading ‘A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systemic Health Care Problems’

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Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

June 28, 2019

Carleigh Krubiner, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said, “Hopefully this will set a new precedent for ongoing and future Ebola vaccination efforts, avoiding costly delays in protocol approvals while women face the very real threats of Ebola infection.”

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The Ethics Of Population Aging

June 28, 2019

Precarity, justice, and choice. The field of bioethics has worked hard to promote patient choice, especially in the context of end-of-life care

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The Ethics Of Population Aging

Friday, June 28th, 2019

Nancy Berlinger, Mildred Z. Solomon

The field of bioethics has worked hard to promote patient choice, especially in the context of end-of-life care. In 1987 The Hastings Center published consensus guidelines affirming the right of patients to forgo the use of life-sustaining technologies when the patient (or family, in the case of incapacitated patients) deemed such care more burdensome than beneficial. These guidelines, which were revised and expanded in 2013, were informed by a 1983 US presidential commission’s report on patients’ decision-making rights. These norms, central to patient-centered care, are now in place throughout the United States and in many countries around the world.

Yet ethical challenges near life’s end are not limited to bedside decision making. As humans live longer than ever before, longevity introduces a decades-long process of chronic progressive illness, age-associated frailty, and cognitive decline. Bioethics has contributed greatly to enhancing the rights of patients to guide treatment decisions, but it has fallen short in addressing population-level concerns that aging societies now face. We wondered what bioethics research can do for an aging society beyond continued improvements to provider–patient communication and treatment decision making.

In 2015 The Hastings Center began to discuss this question with the trustees and advisers of the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, a New York City–based grantmaker funded by the estate of Robert Wilson, who died in 2013. While Wilson’s philanthropy during his lifetime was focused on issues outside of health care, he had personally reflected on the consequences of aging and illness.

…continue reading ‘The Ethics Of Population Aging’

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Bioethicists’ Letter on the “Ethically Abhorrent” Treatment of Children at the US Border

June 27, 2019

Over 800 bioethicists have signed a letter calling for the United States government to remedy its failures to assure the children it is detaining at its border are in safe and sanitary conditions

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The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

June 27, 2019

Nonprofit hospitals pay virtually no local, state or federal income tax. In return, they provide community benefits, including charity care to low-income patients. In Memphis, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare has brought 8,300 lawsuits for unpaid medical bills in just five years

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Scientists Find New Way to Kill Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes

Scientists Find New Way to Kill Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes

The WHO Finally Declared a Public Health Emergency Over Ebola

The WHO Finally Declared a Public Health Emergency Over Ebola

To Help Smokers Quit, Pay Them

To Help Smokers Quit, Pay Them

A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systemic Health Care Problems

A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systemic Health Care Problems

Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

The Ethics Of Population Aging

The Ethics Of Population Aging

Bioethicists’ Letter on the “Ethically Abhorrent” Treatment of Children at the US Border

Bioethicists’ Letter on the “Ethically Abhorrent” Treatment of Children at the US Border

The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

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