Residential aged-care facilities (RACFs), which promote a balance between providing care and retaining autonomy, are often thought to be the best option for the elderly who can no longer live alone. However, a 2012 study led by Dr. Laura Tarzia and published in the Journal of Medical Ethics has revealed that these services frequently come Read more
Bioethics
The presidential and senatorial elections won’t be the only hotly contested issues on Election Day in Massachusetts this year. On Tuesday, November 6, Massachusetts residents will vote on a Death with Dignity Law. If the ballot measure passes, Massachusetts will join Oregon and Washington in legalizing physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide was made legal in Montana in 2009 by a Read more
Hospital confirmation that the late Steve Jobs, the legendary founder of Apple, received a liver transplant faster by getting placed on a transplant list in Tennessee—instead of enduring a longer wait in his home state of California—underscores the geographic inequities regarding liver-donation allocation in the United States. Distributive justice regarding organ-transplant allocation has been a highly contested Read more
A recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be identified decades before clinical symptoms are recognized—through changes in clinical and biological markers. Approximately one in seven adults in the United States over the age of 70 has dementia, and one in 10 is affected by Alzheimer’s Read more
According to the CDC’s most recent National Vital Statistics Report, in 2009, Cesarean section rates reached an all-time high of 32.3 percent of all births in the U.S. A Cesarean section is a major surgical procedure involving anesthetics, incision-making, and stitching of a woman’s abdomen, and like any surgical procedure, or any medical treatment in general, requires informed Read more
