572 patients participated in a medical trial without knowing it. In the 21st century.
Yes, the medical community is still violating bioethics
Category: health
Don’t think Martin Shkreli is alone
The practice of acquiring new drugs and promptly ratcheting up their price is ubiquitous in the pharmaceutical industry. Companies claim it’s necessary while the government says it’s going to do something about it — are either of these things actually true?
Catholic hospitals are taking over the health care system
With a growing number of American hospitals controlled by Catholic entities, access to comprehensive health care in the United States is seriously at risk. It’s critical to intervene before it becomes impossible to obtain emergency services that Catholics refuse to provide.
Don’t talk about the ‘prescription drug epidemic’ without pain patients
Chronic pain is an incredibly persistent, frustrating condition to treat — and it’s also one of the most stigmatised. Several things are bound up in why chronic pain has become such a subject of derision, including the obvious and the more subtle. The obvious has to do with stereotypes about people who struggle with substance […]
We need better treatment for post-surgical depression
The first time I had surgery, I was startled by something that happened afterward: I was tired all the time for a while, which made sense given that I was still processing the anesthetic, but also, I was deeply depressed. I didn’t understand why I was experiencing such intense suicidal ideation when circumstantially, things were […]
When better surveillance confounds public health statistics
In public health and epidemiology settings, ‘surveillance’ refers not to sinister and intrusive monitoring of the population, but keeping records on trends in health. Some infectious diseases, for example, are subject to mandatory reporting, so public health agencies can follow their rise and fall over the course of time to determine if education, treatment, and […]
Don’t exaggerate the flaws of the US health system for political points
The system of health care in the United States is a mess. It’s profit-driven, costly, damaging for patients, and sloppy. It’s why the president made a good faith effort at reforming access, even though the watered down form of access that eventually reached the public didn’t really address the quality of health care from the other side. […]
Why isn’t Obamacare fully covering transition services?
Transition looks different for every trans person, but for those who do choose to pursue medical transition (or want to), there’s one thing that it definitely looks like across the board: Expensive. Depending on what kind of transition services people want, they may be looking at hormones (a life-long commitment in many cases), gender confirmation […]
How do we make HIV a big deal without stigmatising it?
My father lived in the Castro in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, and he was friends with many of the men who were among the first to die in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As family friends fell ill for no explainable reason, wasted away despite the best efforts of […]
The epigenetics of the foster system
I’ve been thinking about epigenetics a great deal lately. I know that at least some of you probably share my tendency of getting fixated on a subject and doing it to death, and right now, mine is epigenetics, because I find it completely fascinating. Perhaps not surprising, given that genetics has always been a subject of […]