The New York Times and The Guardian have been on fire lately with the bioethics content. The following three articles will be handy for anyone teaching a medical ethics course next semester.
Rigged Triage in NYU Emergency Room
Here’s a notable excerpt:
Dr. Michelle Romeo, who was a resident in the emergency room from 2017 until 2021, recalled when a famous actor with a headache and low-grade fever jumped to the front of the line for a CT scan, cutting off a nursing home resident who had possible sepsis and had been waiting for three hours.
The actor requested a spinal tap, which Dr. Romeo believed was unnecessary. A supervisor instructed her to do it anyway, she said.
Both tests showed nothing wrong with the patient.
CRISPR for Dummies
This approach poses a difficult but essential question: Why should the average taxpayer contribute to building medicines for rare diseases? Would the money be better spent on finding treatments for common ailments?
If you are new to the gene editing debate, this is one you’ll want to read. The author does a fantastic job translating the complicated mechanism of gene editing into accessible language, and goes on further to explain the problem of funding for rare diseases. Yet, the ethics discussion here is limited to resource allocation - to get a fuller picture of the ethics behind gene editing, I highly recommend this CBC documentary.
When Parents Refuse Vaccinated Blood
Earlier this month we shared a story from New Zealand about Baby W who needed life saving surgery but his parents refused to consent if vaccinated blood transfusions were involved. The update is worth reading. Here is an excerpt:
On Wednesday this week, a New Zealand high court judge ruled in favour of health authorities who sought guardianship of the baby boy so his open-heart operation could proceed at Auckland’s Starship hospital. The six-month-old would not survive without urgent surgery for a congenital heart defect. His parents said they were unwilling to proceed unless they were given a guarantee he would receive blood only from unvaccinated donors.
The high court decision placed the boy in the guardianship of his paediatric heart surgeon and cardiologist so the surgery could proceed. The guardianship will last through his post-operative recovery – likely to be January 2023 at the latest. The parents retain guardianship in all other matters.
See how sometimes medical paternalism can be justified? Nothing in bioethics is totally black or white - it’s important to remember how stranger things have happened and will continue to happen.
If you’re a bioethicist, some of these articles may be Bioethics 101 material.
But, what about your friends who wonder and say, “I’ll never understand what you do!”
Café Bioethics is aimed to be accessible and interesting to those outside of academia too. Be sure to share this with a curious friend. :)
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-Nipa
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