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Public trust in clinical trial research was damaged in the past year because of conflict-of-interest issues that arose with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by front-page media reports about drugs that had been studied and approved yet were found later to result in deaths among some people who used them.
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The possibility of using embryonic stem cells to treat disease, a strategy known as regenerative medicine, is not yet being explored in clinical trials, but current ethical practices need to be strengthened now in preparation for this possibility, according to an advisory committee at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF).
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A catastrophic disaster, either natural or manmade, that not only results in widespread casualties but also wipes out medical resources can force health care providers to abandon typical delivery of care and shift to a kind of battlefield medicine, where the sickest patients may not be treated so that care can be delivered to more.
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When Ron Cranford became a doctor in the 1960s, hospitals didnt have ethics committees. There were no ethics consultants, not even any case law addressing such issues as physician-assisted suicide. Persistent vegetative state hadnt been coined, and Terri Schiavo was just a toddler.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might have avoided one kind of controversy over the so-called morning-after contraceptive, but it created another by indefinitely delaying approval for the pill known as Plan B to be sold over the counter (OTC).
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Many anesthesiologists say its what they fear second only to a patient dying during surgery: A patient wakes up during an operation and, though feeling and hearing what is happening to him or her, is incapable of letting the surgical team know.
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Is it ethical to enroll an elderly person with Alzheimers disease in a new research study, even if he or she doesnt really understand what it entails? What if the research has real risks, is unlikely to benefit the patient, but could lead to advances that will help future patients with Alzheimers?
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With patients being required to pay more of their medical costs, a study getting under way at Wake Forest (NC) University School of Medicine looks at how this added responsibility affects the care that patients receive and what the implications are for health care law and medical ethics.
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Ethics committees have, in the past three decades, become ubiquitous in American hospitals. But while most hospitals have ethics committees, the makeup of those committees can vary depending on the institution they serve.
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An apparent violation of federal organ transplantation procedures at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles and the subsequent voluntary suspension of transplants at the hospital have directed new scrutiny on the process by which donor organs are distributed in the United States.
