By: Ashwini Nagappan Neil Gorsuch was announced as President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court on 31st January 2017, leading many to examine his stance on prevailing controversial issues, such as end-of-life care and abortion. Answers may be found in his 2006 book, ‘The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia’, which showcases his opinion against [...]
In this series of global leaders, we will highlight an international non-profit healthcare organization that provides a bridge between patient care and the complexities of medicine. This area of healthcare is often referred to as Bioethics and in 2011, Dr. Ana Lita and Dr. Charles Debrovner co-founded Global Bioethics Initiative (GBI). This organization offers an [...]
By: Robyn Perry-Thomas On January 28th, the day after President Trump’s executive immigration order was announced, airports brimmed with voices of discontent, disbelief and dismay of its consequences. Since then, a diverse array of stakeholders including teachers, lawyers, policy makers and medics have spoken out both in opposition and favour of what has been coined [...]
By: Ashwini Nagappan If given the opportunity to talk to a deceased loved one, would you take it? Technology has advanced from Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri to personalized “chatbots,” a digital reflection of one’s self. Hossein Rahnama, a visiting scholar at MIT’s Media Lab, remarked that an individual needs about 1 trillion gigabytes of [...]
By: Ashwini Nagappan Many living-donor organ transplants involve kidneys because humans can survive with just one. Currently, many people around the world eagerly wait for a viable kidney. Unfortunately for some, the passive wait ends in death rather than a new organ. For those whose names are too far down on the organ transplant list, [...]
One of the great advances in modern medicine has been the success of organ transplantation. Whilst complications still arise from its use, the refinement of drugs designed to reduce organ rejection alongside other improvements, mean that the procedure is often lifesaving. As is frequently the case however, there is a caveat to this “wonder-cure”, namely, [...]
By: Ashwini Nagappan In conversation with the New York Times, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, the director of Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and researcher at the Gladstone Institutes, illuminates the complexities and future of stem-cell research. Yamanaka was jointly awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for reconfiguring adult cells [...]
Legislation has recently come into effect in France that now presumes consent to organ donation. France’s previous policy required doctors to consult relatives in cases where deceased individuals had no clear directives regarding organ donation, and relatives refused in almost one third of the cases. The new policy means that all citizens will be organ [...]
By Ada Roberts This week the Canadian Society of Transplantation released a report officially sanctioning the practice of publicly campaigning for organ donors, a practice that made headlines last year when two Canadian parents were desperately searching for functional kidneys for their recently adopted twins. The practice, says the report, is “ethically and legally acceptable” [...]
