Debate over spending on swine flu vaccine becomes increasingly bitter; study shows that few actually take advantage of Oregon’s decade-old assisted suicide law; embryo donations are raising moral questions, including whether being impregnated with a donated embryo is a medical procedure or an adoption

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics dilemmas were confronted last week in several major press reports. Among them:

• What is becoming a recurring ethical theme in the news surfaced again last week as the Agence France-Presse reported on a bitter debate escalating over the gap between the spending by rich and poor nations on swine flu vaccine. Critics ratcheted up the volume last week, charging that spending is so unbalanced that it amounts to “health apartheid,” while others contend that mammoth sums are being wasted — spent on a vaccine for a flu strain that is in fact no more lethal than seasonal flu, one of many common diseases that takes thousands of lives daily in poor countries.
• When Oregon passed the United States’ first measure legalizing assisted suicide in 1997, the ethics controversy predictably was fierce — with many arguing that the law would open the floodgates to reckless and needless suicides. But a new study by two Oregon doctors has concluded that the vast majority of dying Oregonians are either not interested in the doctor-assisted suicide option or are medically ineligible to participate, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Katrina Hedbuerg, said the results were not surprising as it takes a “pretty assertive individual” to plan a suicide. Certain categories of patients were particularly unlikely to avail themselves of the assisted-suicide law, according to the report: people 85 and older; those dying from causes other than cancer, AIDS, or ALS; those without a high school education; and those who are not white or Asian. The analysis appears in the Journal of Clinical Ethics.
• Canadian fertility experts tell the Calgary Herald that there is a looming and largely overlooked ethics problem stemming from in-vitro fertilization: what to do with unused embryos left over after the process is complete. Some couples are uncomfortable destroying the embryos and pay to have them frozen. Sometimes couples choose to donate their embryos to recipients who cannot produce them by any means — a situation that can become uncomfortable to doctor, donor, and patient. “There is a big tendency to treat this as a medical procedure instead of the adoption it really is,” Diane Allen, the director of a fertility network, told the Herald. “To give your embryos to somebody else, that is really complex because what it means is somebody else could well end up raising your genetic children — children who are full siblings to the children you are raising.” Laura Shanner, professor of health ethics at the University of Alberta, added this: “We just kind of assume that we can take the genetic material from one person and give it to another and everybody’s happy…. Whether it works for the child is a completely different question that nobody bothers to ask.”

Sources: AFP, Aug.6 — Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 6 — Calgary Herald, Aug. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 27 — Related Newsline story, July 20 — Related Newsline story, July 20 — Related Newsline story, July 13 — Related Newsline story, July 6.