Medical Ethics
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‘Little Quality Evidence’ for Marketing MRT as Fertility Treatment
The doctor who delivered the first “three-parent” baby is seeking to commercialize mitochondrial replacement therapy by marketing a treatment to older women who want to produce viable embryos — at a cost of $80,000 to $120,000.
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‘Decision-makers of Last Resort’ Pose Unique Ethical Challenges
Surrogates sometimes vehemently disagree, despite all attempts to resolve the conflict. In other cases, there’s simply no one to speak on the patient’s behalf. Either way, the clinical team is forced to turn to the courts or government if an important medical decision must be made.
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‘Feel-Good Approach’ Is Not Enough: Assess Quality of Ethics Consults
Quality of clinical care routinely is assessed using myriad established approaches, with patient safety issues addressed with such proven methods as root cause analyses. On the other hand, quality of ethics consultations often is not addressed at all.
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Disclosure of Errors Not Documented — Even if Patient Seriously Harmed
Very few disclosures of medical errors or apologies to the patient or relatives were documented in medical records, found a recent analysis of malpractice claims.
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Lawsuits Allege Patients’ End-of-Life Wishes Ignored
Several recent lawsuits alleged that patients were harmed by unwanted care because their end-of-life wishes were disregarded by the clinical team, with one case resulting in a $1 million settlement against the hospital.
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Are Organ Transplant Recipients in a Trial Protocol Considered Research Subjects?
Research protocols to extend the viability period of transplant organs are of great interest, but does that mean organ recipients must give informed consent as research subjects? Here we enter an ethical impasse, that if adequately resolved could increase the supply of organs for transplant.
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PRIM&R Finds Itself Caught in State Travel Ban Controversy
The 2017 PRIM&R conference was scheduled for November in San Antonio, TX. All was well until the Texas legislature passed legislation in May 2017 that allows adoption providers to turn away potential parents, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families and others, based on the adoption providers’ religious beliefs.
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Informed Consent Conundrum: Making the Complex Concise
New language regarding informed consent in the revised Common Rule seems benign enough at first reading, but actually accomplishing the directives in a scientifically valid manner is a formidable undertaking.
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Finding a Path to Informed Consent for the Addicted
As an opioid epidemic ravages the country, a cutting-edge question on the frontier of neuroscience is: Can addiction be blocked in the brain? Even if it could, the question for IRBs will immediately be: Can an addict give informed consent?
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IRBs Must Prepare for Studies Involving Transgender Populations
The transgender population has situational vulnerability that should be taken into account when IRBs review studies enrolling these individuals.