Ethics Questions in Medicine and Life Sciences Pose Dilemmas
Jun 22nd, 2009 • Posted in: NewsAre medical schools hygienic in separating marketing and education? Should prisoners have the right to DNA testing? Are “brain boosting” drugs immoral or just part of humanity’s continuing quest for improvement? Should wife be allowed to make decisions about life support for the man who allegedly killed her children?
VARIOUS DATELINES
Issues in medicine and the life sciences raised a number of ethics questions in last week’s press coverage. Among them:
- A survey of medical schools says many are improving their conflict-of-interest policies to monitor ties with drug and medical-device manufacturers, reports the Wall Street Journal. But more than half of the schools still have inadequate policies or none at all, according to the joint study by the American Medical Student Association and the Pew Prescription Project. Scrutiny of medical-school relationships was ratcheted up after pressure from Congress and a series of press articles examining how marketing drove prescribing habits and information imparted to medical trainees.
- A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing that could potentially prove them innocent, reports TIME magazine. The court ruled that whether to provide DNA tests was an issue for legislatures, not courts. Chief justice John Roberts, siding with the 5-4 majority, said that having the court impose such rules would short-circuit the legislative process.
- The London-based Independent reports that a noted professor of bioethics says it is time to embrace the possibilities of drugs that enhance mental abilities. John Harris, director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, says arguments against the use of the drugs, such as Ritalin, have been unpersuasive. “It is not rational to be against human enhancement,” he argues. “Humans are creatures that result from an enhancement process called evolution and moreover are inveterate self-improvers in every conceivable way.” Ritalin, part of a class of drugs used to treat attention deficit disorder, has been shown in some studies to increase cognitive abilities in people without impairments.
- A Houston hospital is the setting for a bizarre medical-ethics case centered on a man who police say shot his two children, killing them, then turned the gun on himself in a failed suicide attempt. The man’s self-inflicted injuries are so serious that he is now on life support, and the decision on whether to pull the plug apparently is now in the hands of his wife — the mother of their two murdered children. A medical ethicist and law professor interviewed by the Houston Chronicle said that the wife, usually the person given priority in end-of-life decisions involving a married man, has a conflict of interest in the case. As this issue of Newsline went to press, no word on final decisions on the matter had been published.
Sources: Independent, June 19 — Houston Chronicle, June 18 — TIME, June 19 — Wall Street Journal, June 16.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 1 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 16 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 16 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 9.
Print This Story
Email This Story
[...] more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 22 — Related Newsline story, June 1 — Related Newsline story, May 25 [...]