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Physician groups' opposition to doctors participating in death penalty executions has put a moratorium on prisoner executions in North Carolina for nearly a year, and now a group of nurses are following the lead of their state's physician licensing board.
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A 19-month-old toddler with no hope for recovery became the center for the most recent debate over laws on futility, but now that little Emilio Gonzales has died (May 19, 2007), the state of Texas continues to wrestle with what to do with its advance directives act.
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Virginia has enacted a new law that will allow mature teenagers, their physicians, and parents to more freely consider alternative even risky and controversial therapies and reject traditional treatment without fear that doing so will trigger neglect and abuse charges.
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In the 10 years since Oregon passed its physician-assisted suicide (PAS) law, Americans have become more familiar with the idea of doctors assisting patients who wish to be allowed or helped to die. But though they're familiar with it, the population is divided over whether PAS should be legal.
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A recent study suggests that emergency medicine patients may not have a high level of acceptance of the practice of providing an exemption to informed consent for research involving emergency medical settings.
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The last medical school in the nation to use what was considered the most archaic version of the Hippocratic Oath has created a new version of a physician's oath that was pledged by graduates during commencement in May.
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The Seattle hospital that performed growth attenuation treatments and surgery on the severely disabled child known as "Ashley" took place in violation of Washington state law, but the hospital stands behind the ethics and best-interest issues that resulted in the treatment.
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Should a pandemic strike the United States, states and local communities are ready with protective equipment and plans for allocating vaccines. But some important ethical questions aren't addressed in state pandemic flu plans, one public health expert says, and those are the issues that might derail the best-laid disaster plans.
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A bill that would make California the second state in the country to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has worked its way through the state assembly's Judiciary Committee, but needs to clear the state House by June 8 to be eligible for consideration this year by the state Senate.
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If there is any state that is currently a lightning rod for issues relating to futility of care, it would be Texas. Medical professionals, right-to-life and disability rights organizations, churches, and civil liberties groups are doing battle over the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA); many of the same parties have taken sides over a terminally ill Austin toddler whose mother is fighting a hospital's efforts to invoke the act to end the boy's life-sustaining treatments.
