The Hastings Center Report back issues from November 2008:
Puzzling about Peter Singer.(field notes)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Peter Singer has vastly expanded our moral imaginations with his argument for the moral worth of nonhuman animals. According to part of that argument, a being does not need a human genome to be a person. If beings like gorillas and orangutans have self-awareness--that is, a sense of ...
Best-laid editorial plans.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Last year, in this space, I wrote that I looked forward to compiling the index for the 2008 volume of the Hastings Center Report. Perhaps I overstated the matter, but all the same, it was interesting, once again, to get a birds' eye perspective of what ended up appearing in these pages. I ...
Putting death in context.(another voice)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Reports of the death of "brain death" have been greatly exaggerated (apologies to Mark Twain). Ever since Henry K. Beecher and the Harvard Ad-Hoc Brain Death Committee came up with brain death criteria in 1968, the nature, status, and definition of death have created problems. In their ...
Big bang theory: more reason to scrap Bush's stem cell policy.(letters)
Nov 01, 2008; ... To the Editor: Rob Streiffer's rifle has a narrow bore but makes a big bang ("Informed Consent and Federal Funding for Stem Cell Research," May-June 2008). He shows deficiencies in the consent forms for most of the human embryonic stem cell lines that qualify under the Bush funding ...
Bioethics forum: www.bioethicsforum.org.(REPORT: Online Services)(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2008 ... "The Vulnerable Researcher and the IRB" BY ALICE DREGER Without the supposed "protection" of my IRB, I am aware of how, if I hurt my interviewees, they might well want to hurt me back. At some level, I think it best for my subjects that I keep my kneecaps exposed. ...
Peace.(in practice)(comfortable pain-free and natural death)(Viewpoint essay)
Nov 01, 2008; ... The old woman grasped at the mask, struggling against the ties that bound her hands to the sides of the bed. Her droopy eyes were open, but I don't know if she registered my presence. I arrived just as she was extubated from the ventilator, which had been part of her life support for the ...
Neuroscience's uncertain threat to criminal law.(at law)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Bioethics has its trends, and the latest is "neuroethics." Advances in imaging technology are expanding researchers' ability to observe the brain at work. Popular media and scholarly reports offer sweeping pronouncements about the impact of functional neuroimaging and cognitive ...
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act: fear factor or fantasy island?(policy & politics)
Nov 01, 2008; ... The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, was signed into law on May 21, 2008.1 Its implications are hard to predict for a variety of reasons--for example, the scope of the law is limited to employment and health insurance; regulations for implementing it have yet to be ...
Trust, translation, and HAART.(case study)(highly active antiretroviral therapy)(Case study)
Nov 01, 2008 ... Alna is a young Sudanese refugee who only recently arrived in the United States. She suspects that her husband has HIV, and she worries that she and her children might be infected or at risk for being infected. She travels nearly an hour on city buses with her small children to seek help ...
What are we doing here? Chaplains in contemporary health care.(Essays)
Nov 01, 2008; ... It can be really hard--or really easy--to explain what I do for a living. Chaplains share academic training with clergy, but we complete clinical residencies and work in health care organizations. Our affinities are with the patient and family, but we may also chair the ethics committee or ...
Ethical grounding for a profession of hospital chaplaincy.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Hospital chaplains do not have a monopoly on the spiritual care of patients, just as teachers do not have a monopoly on teaching. Spiritual care of the ill and dying--compassionate and thoughtful attention to a patient's explanations of suffering, yearnings for transcendence, constructions ...
Lost in translation: the chaplain's role in health care.(Essays)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Chaplains often describe their work in health care as "translation" between the world of the patient and the world of hospital medicine. Translators usually work with texts, interpreters with words. However, when chaplains use this metaphor, it describes something other than a discrete ...
Chaplaincy and clinical ethics: a common set of questions.(Essays)
Nov 01, 2008; ... The ethical imperative for quality improvement in health care requires that all health care personnel engage in attentive observation, reflection, innovative thinking, and action. A core QI question for everyone working in a clinical setting is this: How can the delivery and service ...
The nature of chaplaincy and the goals of QI: patient-centered care as professional responsibility.(Essays)(quality improvement)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Seasoned clinical ethicists have a saying: You cannot bite a wall. The saying refers to that demoralizing moment of taking in the scale of a (really) big challenge in health care. We have two options when we find ourselves up against this wall. One is to ignore it. This means ignoring the ...
Industry support of continuing medical education: evidence and arguments.(Essays)
Nov 01, 2008; ... This past summer, Pfizer, Inc., announced plans to dramatically cut back its financial support for continuing medical education. It will support programs run by academic institutions, teaching hospitals, and medical societies, but eliminate direct financial support for courses offered by ...
Rethinking the ethics of vital organ donations: accepted medical practice already violates the dead donor rule. Explicitly jettisoning the rule--allowing vital organs to be extracted, under certain conditions, from living patients--is a radical change only at the conceptual level. But it would expand the pools of eligible organ donors.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Mr. Jones, aged thirty, is lying in a bed in an intensive care unit, breathing with the help of a respirator. His face looks ruddy, and he is warm to the touch. Indeed, he looks healthier than other patients in the unit. He has also just been diagnosed as "brain dead." Two ...
Pregnancy and clinical research: our ignorance harms mothers and babies.(perspective)(Clinical report)
Nov 01, 2008; ... In the 1990s, amidst reports that women were underrepresented in clinical research, a key issue in science policy was whether women's health interests were being adequately addressed. In response, the federal government established the Women's Health Initiative to prioritize attention to ...