By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Many of the organ trafficking stories swirling around the web focus on supply; not much has been paid to demand.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) recently admonished the wealthy Europeans who have traveled to countries such as China, India, and Egypt in search of illegal organs. These MEPs say that Europeans who engage in such acts facilitate the organ trade, an illegal practice that involves many human rights …

By Richard Balagtas
“If you’re holding the ‘infected’ print edition in your hands right now, you’ll get into contact with HIV like never before…It will make you reflect on HIV and you will think differently afterward. Because now the issue is in your hands.” – Vangardist publisher and CEO, Julian Wiehl
If you were asked what exactly HIV was, would you know the answer? If you were asked how relevant HIV research …

By Rose Bowen
The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson became the first in the drug industry to create a Bioethics panel of ethicists, doctors and patient advocates to respond to requests for access to experimental medicines, called “compassionate use.” This is only applicable to investigational drugs, or drugs that have not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Arthur Caplan, Director of the NYU Division of Medical Ethics, …

By Michael Lausberg
Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero claims to have found a procedure to realize a project in transplant surgery that may strike us as something more fitting for a science fiction movie than today’s reality. He announced that a full body transplant could be possible in the next two years. In a full body transplant, the head of a living person would be transplanted to a donor cadaver’s body; such …

By Caroline Song
A 44-year-old male double-lung transplant patient at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, passed away following complications 40 days after his procedure.
His death was brought on by hyperammonemia, a state of incredibly high levels of ammonia in the blood. High levels of ammonia lead to brain swelling, which causes the patient to slip into a coma and expire soon after.
A new study has found that a type of …

The Center for the Study of Bioethics and The Hastings Center are pleased to announce that they will be jointly hosting the international conference “Enhancing Understanding of Enhancement.” The conference will be held at the Center for the Study of Bioethics in Belgrade on October 27-28, 2015. It will explore various issues pertaining to enhancement, including our understanding of enhancement, genetically engineered enhancement, cognitive enhancement, moral enhancement, and bio-enhancement in …

By Rose Bowen and Michael Lausberg
In cases of sexual assault, the issue of consent is of central concern. Establishing that consent was freely and affirmatively given is not always easy. A sexual assault case in Iowa highlighted one such dimension of this complicated issue. Henry Rayhons was accused of sexually assaulting his wife, Donna Lou Rayhons. Henry insisted that the sexual contact was consensual, but the prosecuting attorneys claimed that …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Brittany Maynard, a twenty nine-year-old woman diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, opted to end her life last year; in doing so, she became the new face of the assisted suicide movement. Following her diagnosis, Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon so that she would be able to take advantage of Oregon’s Death with Dignity legislation. Prior to her death, Maynard recorded a video urging California …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Surgeons in South Africa announced this month that a 21-year-old penis transplant recipient had achieved full urinary and reproductive functionality. The surgery was performed in December 2014; doctors had anticipated that it would take two years for the patient to achieve this level of functionality. Professor Frank Graewe, a member of the surgical team and the head of plastic reconstructive surgery at Stellenbosch University, said that this procedure …

By Richard Balagtas
On Tuesday, March 10th, France’s parliament began debating a bill that would allow “doctors to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death comes.” This bill was introduced amidst a heated national debate concerning the legalization of euthanasia. The bill itself avoids the use of terms such as euthanasia, assisted suicide, and lethal injections, but only barely. The bill, if passed, would allow doctors to sedate patients who are …