Medical-Ethics Stories Featured in Week’s News
Dec 22nd, 2008 • Posted in: NewsEleventh-hour ruling by Bush administration allows health-care workers to refuse to provide treatment based on religious objections; first full-face transplant conducted in U.S. prompts moral debate; Wall Street Journal argues for liberalization of law that critics say unfairly limits supply of organs for transplant
VARIOUS DATELINES
Major issues involving the intersection of medicine and ethics made headlines last week. Among the stories:
- A last-minute rule issued by the Bush administration gives heath-care workers and medical institutions more leeway to refuse certain types of care based on the providers’ ethical objections. WebMD reports that the so-called right of conscience rules expand the ability of providers to refuse to perform abortions or sterilizations. Some critics, reports Congressional Quarterly, insist the new regulations could be interpreted to apply to all types of contraception. The measure, signed last week, comes into effect in about a month.
- Surgeons in Cleveland last week performed the first full-face transplant in the United States, touching off an ethics debate, reports Scientific American. In addition to moral questions about the propriety of transplanting a face from a dead person to a living one, the magazine notes that critics are asking whether a cosmetic procedure is worth the risk posed by such a massive operation. Doctors have defended the practice by saying that severely deformed or disfigured people endure great suffering because of their appearance.
- A well-intended law to prevent the buying and selling of organs has gone awry, leading to a shortage of organs that is causing needless patient deaths, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, a section of the 1984 law, threatens fines and jail time if “valuable consideration” is given a donor. The measure has backfired, says the Journal, because it prohibits such actions as paying for cremation and burial — a service legal if a body is donated to science but apparently illegal if parts of the body are used for a transplant. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is attempting to convince colleagues to pass a re-write, and in the words of the Journal piece, “has gone to some lengths to assure potential critics that after his bill passes, nobody will be allowed to offer lungs on eBay. His bill not only maintains the ban on buying and selling, but increases the criminal penalties, adding a seven-year sentence for organ trafficking. We’re not sure that an organ market wouldn’t save more lives, but that’s a debate for another day. The Specter bill would simply clarify that states may provide incentives such as tax deductions to encourage donations that could save thousands of lives each year.”
Sources: WebMD, Dec. 19 — Congressional Quarterly, Dec. 18 — Scientific American, Dec. 17 — Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 6 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 6 — Related Newsline story, June 23 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 7.
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