Medicine

According to a recent report by The Guardian,  John Hopkins University is being accused of carrying out lethal experiments on over 800 Guatemalan research participants in the 1940s and 1950s. Claimants are now suing the university for over a billion dollars in damages. Allegedly, the John Hopkins School of Medicine intentionally selected highly vulnerable research participants, … Continue reading "Fatal realities of medical experimentation: the case of Guatemala"

As cancer becomes increasingly prevalent in our society, cancer screening and treatment have developed into some of the most expensive and important facets of the medical world.  More and more women are faced with unfavorable results from routine mammograms.  Or so they are told. In his article on breast cancer overtreatment, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar discusses the … Continue reading "Moral Concerns About Breast Cancer Treatment"

Breast cancer and the push for finding “the cure” for cancer are not new. We race for the cure, walk for the cure, bike for the cure, and do just about anything you can think of to raise money to fund cancer research; the one way society as a whole works to combat this disease. … Continue reading "The Ethics of a “One-Cure” Solution"

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on a new challenge to Obamacare. Vox has one of the clearest summaries of the issue here. People say the issue hinges around the interpretation of four simple words “established by the state”, but really it’s about where the law mentions tax subsidies and where it does not. The Affordable Care … Continue reading "A New Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare: The Basic Argument"

An Australian man was arrested and stripped of his parental rights after treating his 2-year-old daughter with cannabis oil. Adam Koessler’s daughter has been diagnosed with stage-4 neuroblastoma, which develops from immature nerve cells. The cannabis oil was used in addition to diet changes, chemotherapy, and nautropathic medicine.  Although he says that his daughter’s quality of … Continue reading "Cannabis and Cancer"

Although the American news coverage has dropped off significantly, the death toll in the Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to rise. It is currently approaching 10,000 victims, and 6/10 of the people currently suffering from the disease will likely die. Over 8,000 people have died and over 20,000 have been infected. The news cycle … Continue reading "Ebola in the News"

Should anyone be forced to receive medical treatment they do not want? In September, a 17-year-old in Connecticut was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The girl, Cassandra C., told her mother that she did not want to receive chemotherapy treatment because she does not believe in putting “poison into her body,” even if she has cancer. … Continue reading "Minors and Unwanted Medical Treatment"

Death with dignity is increasingly becoming a prominent social issue. In November, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard decided to end her life after receiving a prognosis of six months to live after being diagnosed with aggressive terminal brain cancer. Maynard decided that instead of allowing her mind to detriorate while the rest of her body was reasonably … Continue reading "Dying with Dignity"

In the news since 2010, the ethical dilemma of Jesse Shipley’s brain has reached headlines once again.  The Shipley family discovered their son’s missing organ after a high school field trip to the morgue resulted in students informing the family that Jesse’s brain was in a jar, labeled with his name.  Nearly a decade after … Continue reading "Buried Without A Brain: Should Shipley’s Family Have Been Informed?"

The other day I picked up an article from The Wall Street Journal that caught my attention for many reasons. I have always personally struggled with the concept of genetic testing. On the one hand, I think it is an amazing feat. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would grant me the ability to check and make sure my … Continue reading "Genetic Testing: A Right Not to Know"

Dr. Sharon Crary, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at DePauw, has studied Ebola virus extensively and was part of the Center for Disease Control’s response team during the Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2000. In this video, Dr. Crary discusses the Ebola virus as well as key pieces of advice that we should all know concerning the … Continue reading "Dr. Sharon Crary on the Ebola Outbreak"

As the outbreak of Ebola enters its seventh month, the ethical dilemmas facing the world continue to increase. While the issue of experimental treatments remains unresolved (see my previous post on the topic), new problems have entered onto the stage. Treatment of Ebola in America, the media’s response, and the treatment of health care workers … Continue reading "The Ethics of an Epidemic"

As the Ebola outbreak has progressed, public discourse of the matter has reached a fever pitch. From announcements that airports will screen for the disease to coverage of the growing number of cases in Dallas, we are inundated with coverage of the outbreak. And as some call for the closure of borders and bans on … Continue reading "Misinformation in the Age of Ebola"

Over the past two weeks, reports of a Liberian man with Ebola being treated in Dallas have captivated our public discourse. Some worry that this may be a “Patient Zero” situation, and that the outbreak will soon transcend borders to become a global epidemic. While this fervor has taken place at home, however, even more … Continue reading "Ebola: No Longer a Microscopic Problem"

The FDA is currently debating whether skin shocking devices should be banned for use on patients with autism and developmental/intellectual disabilities that display self-harmful or violent behaviors. The only treatment center to use skin shocks, the Judge Rotenburg Center in Caton, Mass., treats 55 patients with skin shocks. The center and some families claim that … Continue reading "The FDA and Banning Shock Therapy"

Lithium is classically associated with extreme mental illness, and has a somewhat negative connotation in the public. In its concentrated form, it has been documented to alleviate several symptoms of mental illness. But it also can (and has had) severe negative health consequences for people taking it in high doses. But this op-ed raises the … Continue reading "Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium?"

The outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa has captivated the international community since it began in February 2014. Although Ebola has broken out before, this is the largest outbreak ever. It is suspected that over a thousand people have died, and many more continue to fall ill. Some of them have been American citizens. Two … Continue reading "ZMapp: The Solution to Ebola?"

There is no question that, in many cases, it is ethically wrong to kill. But is it possible for it to be ethically wrong to save a life? In an “ethically troubling” situation in November 2013, death-row inmate, Ronald Phillips, requested to donate his organs (his kidneys to his mother, and his heart to his sister), … Continue reading "Can Death Row Inmates Save Lives?"

The Prindle Institute is excited to welcome Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black, to campus in February as part of the Ubben Lecture series. Stay tuned for programming that we are putting together to lead up to her visit!

This article, by DePauw History professor David Gellman, originally appeared in Historians Against Slavery on August 15, 2014. If all the great abolitionists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were cryogenically frozen, who would you reanimate to help liberate the world from the scourge of slave labor and human trafficking today? Frederick Douglass? William Lloyd … Continue reading "Abolitionists Unfrozen"