Category: News

UNM suspends physician’s research

Albuquerque Journal

Jessica Dyer

The University of New Mexico has suspended a physician’s research while investigating her transfer of human tissue to a private company and whether she had the proper approvals for any underlying study, internal documents show.

Officials suspended Dr. Robin Ohls’ research duties and barred her from her lab in October after learning she had acquired fetal tissue for months from the Southwestern Women’s Options abortion clinic and transferred it to a private company in Michigan, according to an internal memo obtained by the Journal. . . [Full Text]

Doctors, advocacy groups address proposed law protecting those who object to assisted dying

CBC News

Holly Caruk

Dr. Frank Ewert wants protection from having to help a patient die — but Dying with Dignity Canada doesn’t want that to happen at the cost of patients receiving full access to end-of-life options.

“When I started back a number of years ago and vowed to follow the Hippocratic oath, I meant it. It was very profound to me, it resonated with my core beliefs, that I would always respect life, that I would do nothing to harm a patient,” Ewert told a legislative committee on Monday evening. . . [Full text]

 

Tiny human brain organoids implanted into rodents, triggering ethical concerns

Stat

Sharon Begley

Minuscule blobs of human brain tissue have come a long way in the four years since scientists in Vienna discovered1how to create them from stem cells.

The most advanced of these human brain organoids — no bigger than a lentil and, until now, existing only in test tubes — pulse with the kind of electrical activity that animates actual brains. They give birth to new neurons2, much like full-blown brains. And they develop the six layers3 of the human cortex, the region responsible for thought, speech, judgment, and other advanced cognitive functions.

These micro quasi-brains are revolutionizing research on human brain development and diseases from Alzheimer’s to Zika4, but the headlong rush to grow the most realistic, most highly developed brain organoids has thrown researchers into uncharted ethical waters. Like virtually all experts in the field, neuroscientist Hongjun Song of the University of Pennsylvania doesn’t “believe an organoid in a dish can think,” he said, “but it’s an issue we need to discuss.” . . [Full text]

 

Critics call bill aimed to protect health workers unwilling to offer assisted death ‘one-sided’

CBC: The Current

Interviewer/host: Piya Chattopadhyay

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Bill 34 is being introduced by the Manitoba government to protect conscience rights for health care professionals, so that health care providers would not be required to participate in assisted suicide.

VOICE 2: While I cannot participate in assisted suicide for a couple of reasons. The first is I made a vow as a medical student 40 years ago that I wouldn’t kill patients, okay? And I’m not willing to cross that line.

PC: It has been less than 18 months now since medically assisted dying became legal in Canada. And health care workers are still adapting to that paradigm change. We just heard part of a video produced by the Coalition for Health Care and Conscience. It’s a national umbrella organization of religious groups, and as you heard it is lobbying for Bill 34 a proposed piece of legislation in Manitoba that was drafted to help health care workers with conscientious objections to helping end patients’ lives. Here’s Manitoba’s health minister Kelvin Goertzen. . . [Full episode transcript]

 

 

Policy on medically assisted dying in works

Brantford Expositor

Michael-Allan Marion

A policy on handling requests for medically assisted dying is being prepared for the John Noble Home.

The home’s committee of management this week got a staff report on the drafting of a formal policy on managing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, requests, which is now required in long-term care homes by federal law.

The draft could be presented to the committee for review as early as next month and will be referred to the city’s legal department for comment.

Jennifer Miller, administrator for the home for the aged on Mount Pleasant Street, said that, so far, there have been no MAID requests from residents. . . [Full text]