The use of genome-wide analysis, where the entirety of an individual's DNA is examined to look for the genomic mutations or variants which can cause health problems is a massively useful technology for diagnosing disease.
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People with chronic or life-threatening illnesses often experience problems with their care, including confusion and conflict over how to make good decisions, poor communication with care providers, inadequate pain and symptom relief, and treatments with little or no benefit. Poor care decreases patients' quality of life, increases family stress, and adds cost but not value to health care, often with heartbreaking financial consequences for families.
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The University of Chicago Medicine's Program on Medicine and Religion has selected its second round of faculty scholars whose focus will be on the relationship between a physician's spirituality and their ability to deal with the pressures of practicing medicine.
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Experts from across disciplines at Johns Hopkins will hold a symposium on Thursday, April 11, 2013 to discuss changes to medical ethics paradigms as proposed by their own bioethics colleagues in a recent, groundbreaking publication.
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Medications used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, are some of the most widely used medications in children less than one year old.
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Michael Hutz, a second year student at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has been invited to attend a prestigious Vatican conference on adult stem cell research.
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Cleveland Clinic researchers have found that colorectal cancer outcomes could be improved with regular genetic screening for Lynch syndrome, the most common hereditary, adult-onset cause of colorectal cancer, as published in the online version of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
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Opioids are frequently prescribed for pain management in noncancer patients, but recommended clinical guidelines for monitoring effectiveness and signs of drug abuse are often not implemented. Alongside well-documented racial disparities in prescribing opioid medications for pain, researchers report racial differences in the use of recommended opioid monitoring and follow-up treatment practices.
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Noting the many successes of PEPFAR, Stuart Rennie, co-principal investigator of NIH/Fogarty bioethics grants for the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa, writes in his "Global Bioethics Blog," "HIV requires lifelong treatment, and it is not healthy to have your existence depend on the decisions of a foreign government, especially an economically sputtering and lurching superpower."
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The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality, assert leaders in bioethics, medicine, and health policy in two companion articles in a Hastings Center Report special report, "Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Care Systems."
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Arguing that obesity "may be the most difficult and elusive public health problem the United States has ever encountered" and that anti-obesity efforts having made little discernible difference, Daniel Callahan, co-founder and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, proposes a bold and controversial approach to fighting the epidemic.
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A joint team of scientists from The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Laboratory and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has developed a technique that may prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases in children.
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Physicians should not prescribe cognitive enhancers to healthy individuals, states a report being published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
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University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have launched groundbreaking research into the spread of potentially deadly drug-resistant malaria in the developing Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
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Seattle Children's Research Institute, together with an international team of scientists and clinicians from 22 other institutions, have identified two genetic risk factors for the most common form of non-syndromic craniosynostosis, a birth defect in which the bony plates of an infant's skull prematurely fuse. The condition is known as sagittal craniosynostosis and often results in an abnormal head shape and facial features.
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The tremendous potential public health benefits of research with blood samples left over after routine newborn screening must not be lost amidst controversy and litigation, say medical and bioethics experts in a commentary published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics will focus its 24th Annual Dorothy J. MacLean Fellows Conference on ethical issues in organ transplantation and other broader ethical topics, including global health, pediatric immunization and end-of-life care.
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Healthcare ethics consultants are called upon in the most difficult of circumstances; where do they turn for advice? The American Society For Bioethics and Humanities' Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs Committee (CECA) is taking a community approach, creating an online forum for feedback and shared experiences to accompany a paper published in the Fall 2012 issue of the Journal of Clinical Ethics.
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UC Santa Barbara has reported an important discovery in the interdisciplinary study of split-brain research. The findings uncover dynamic changes in brain coordination patterns between left and right hemispheres.
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Writing in the Global Bioethics Blog, Stuart Rennie, a bioethics researcher and professor, notes another polio worker was killed in Pakistan last week and describes Taliban opposition to U.S.-supported polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan.
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