by Michael S Dauber, GBI Visiting Scholar According to a recent story by John Rasko and Carl Power in The Guardian, surgeon Paolo Macchiarini’s research in artificial windpipes, previously hailed as pioneering medicine with the promise to save many lives, has been exposed as a fraud. Miacchiarini had previously received public praise for creating artificial [...]
Book Reviewed by Michael S. Dauber, MA Cells Are The New Cure, written by Robin Smith, MD, and Max Gomez, PhD, is a book about the history of medical research on cells, both human and non-human, and recent developments in these techniques that have made cellular medicine one of the most promising fields for therapeutic [...]
The Canadian not-for-profit Dying with Dignity is considering challenging provincial Ontario legislation that permits religiously affiliated hospitals to refrain from offering medically assisted death. Under current Ontario law, hospitals, hospices and long-term care centers that wish not to facilitate assisted death may refrain from doing so, and are instead obligated to transfer the patient to an alternative willing [...]
Using an artificial womb, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of Western Australia have effectively incubated premature lambs for seven days, signaling potential future advancements for human preemie care options. The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published a paper this past week detailing the ex-vivo uterine environment (EVE) therapy technique devised by the researchers, which involves [...]
Researchers at Kent State University have found that aged chimpanzees develop brain characteristics that resemble those found in brains of humans with early Alzheimer's disease. Nature has suggested that the "findings from humanity's closest relatives could help researchers to understand why people develop dementia, as well as suggest that caretakers of aging, captive chimpanzees watch them closely for behavioural [...]
Michael S. Dauber, M.A., GBI Visiting Scholar Luhan Yang and members of her research team at eGenesis have taken a crucial step in growing organs in animals that may be used to provide organs for therapeutic transplants in humans, according to a study published in Science Magazine on Thursday, August 10th. Researchers involved in the study used CRISPR, a genetic editing technique, [...]
Michael S. Dauber, MA, GBI Visiting Scholar Many moral dilemmas faced by clinicians, patients, and their families arise when individuals have not made plans for the end of their lives or discussed their wishes with their loved ones. To prevent and mitigate these issues, ethicists have suggested for decades that individuals should complete documents such [...]
By Michael S. Dauber, MA, GBI Visiting Scholar According to a report in The MIT Technology Review, researchers in a lab based in Portland, Oregon have successfully created genetically modified human embryos for the first time in U.S. history, using a technique called CRISPR. The project, directed by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a researcher at Oregon Health [...]
A study of 202 deceased football players' brains has found that 87% of participants demonstrated features of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head trauma. 99% of the National Football League (NFL) players in the study demonstrated the same CTE features. The brains studied were donated for research following the football players' development [...]
A company in Wisconsin is offering employees the option of being implanted with microchips that will allow them to simply swipe their hands to carry out tasks such as opening company doors, making break room purchases, and logging onto computers. Though such technology is already employed in Europe, its debut at Three Square Market (32M) marks the technology's debut [...]
