The US Supreme court has put three executions in Oklahoma on hold while it considers a legal challenge to the state’s use of midazolam in its lethal injection protocol. This is likely to reignite the debate about the involvement of doctors in capital punishment, a practice that is prohibited by the American Medical Association, but […]
Category: US healthcare
Rahul K Parikh: Violence against doctors in the US
Late last month, Stephen Pasceri walked into a Boston hospital and asked someone to point him in the direction of his deceased mother’s surgeon, Dr Michael Davidson. When he found Dr Davidson, Pasceri drew his gun and shot him. Davidson, age 44, a husband and father of three kids, would later die from his wounds. […]
Vincent Iacopino: Health professionals have no role in Saudi blogger’s flogging case
The disturbing case of a Saudi blogger sentenced to flogging should serve as a reminder that health professionals should never participate in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Raif Badawi, 31, was sentenced last year to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam after he criticized Saudi clerics on his blog. […]
Stuart Buck: Sharing data from past clinical trials
There was a time when academic and government researchers performed experiments that were clearly unethical—such as letting syphilis go untreated, or asking people to administer severe electric shocks to each other. Ethics review boards sprang up in an important effort to make sure that research on human subjects remained within the bounds of legality and […]
Desmond O’Neill: Older drivers and medical fitness to drive
Does life really imitate art, or is it the other way round? Listening to an exhilarating live performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra of Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the droll tone poem about a famous trickster by Richard Strauss, I was struck by the notion that this might be the first description of ADHD through music. […]
Saurabh Jha: The overdiagnosed party/ the false positives rave
Consider this equation. Early Diagnosis = Early Diagnosis + Overdiagnosis (1.1) This sort of unequal algebra will fail GCSE mathematics. A new NHS initiative is arithmetic defying as well. Patients who think they have symptoms of cancer will be allowed to book medical imaging directly, without seeing their GP. This is to catch cancer early. The logic […]
Richard Smith: Would you like to die at 75 or 150?
“Sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind,” said W B Yeats, so, although more of a flippant than a serious mind, I return to death after my last pondering on the subject that spread literally across the globe. I’m asking whether it would be better to live to 75 […]
William Cayley: “Enjoy in struggling”
“Struggling is the meaning of life. Victory and defeat are in the hands of God, so one must enjoy in struggling.” The saying above the doorway caught my attention as I settled in at my friend’s home for a weekend visit. I was a medical student, rotating at a mission hospital in rural Africa, and […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: CARE-ing for wounded warriors
From 4-6 December 2014, I had the good fortune to attend the 5th Annual Comprehensive Advanced Restorative Effort (C.A.R.E.) Summit at the Naval Medical Center, San Diego (NMCSD). I travelled to California and attended with representatives from the Medical Officer of the Marine Corps and the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and healthcare representatives of the […]
William Cayley: Meeting our patients in the midst of their chaos
“Not again . . . ” The mom with the troubled teen is late for their appointment . . . “Not again . . . ” The elderly widow needs me to explain, one more time, why and how to take her medications . . . “Not again . . . ” The middle aged […]