Medical Ethics Advisor – August 1, 2013
August 1, 2013
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Guidelines promote better communication, "preventive ethics"
The 2013 Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life were written with the nation's changing health care landscape and "the real world of clinical practice" in mind, says Nancy Berlinger, PhD, a research scholar at The Hastings Center in Garrison, NY. Berlinger is lead author of the new edition of the Guidelines and the director of the research project supporting the new edition. -
Guidelines: Cost is an ethical concern
The 2013 Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life acknowledge cost as an ethical concern in health care. -
Patients taking pre-emptive action due to genetic results
Angelina Jolie's widely publicized bilateral mastectomy brought a great deal of public attention to the issue of what to do in response to genetic testing results, but also raised some important ethical concerns, according to bioethicists interviewed by Medical Ethics Advisor. -
Hype is ethical concern with cognitive enhancers
Recent trends demonstrate a widening use of drugs that can facilitate cognitive capability, both in patient and general-use populations, says James Giordano, PhD, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC. -
Some surrogates overriding organ donors' wishes
Some countries, such as Australia, Spain, Norway, Italy, and Canada, allow next of kin to override the consent of registered organ donor candidates if they personally do not concur with the donation desire of their relative, but this form of surrogate decision-making represents a double standard in terms of the principle of substituted judgment. -
Living donor near-misses underreported
Aborted hepatectomies and potentially life-threatening near-miss events during which a donor's life may be in danger but after which there are no long-term sequelae are rarely reported, according to a survey of 71 transplant programs that performed donor hepatectomy 11,553 times. -
Mind-body training increases MDs' compassion
Teaching medical students about mind-body approaches could help boost their compassion, according to a study from Boston (MA) University School of Medicine. -
Obesity isn't often considered with transplants
Obesity presents many ethical challenges for transplant practice, according to a review article that describes an approach for applying available data on the importance of body composition to the kidney transplant population.