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Silicon dreams: digital drugs and regulation
A new worry has hit parents: digital drugs. The idea is that sounds can affect brain states, so by listening to the right kind of sounds desired brain states can be induced – relaxation, concentration, happiness, PMS relief or why not hallucinations? Apparently "idosers" walk around high on sound. Just the right thing for a…
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When the heart stops: harvesting organs from the newly (nearly) dead
In the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, doctors from Denver reported on three controversial cases of heart transplantation from newborn infants. These cases are striking for several reasons. They were examples of so-called ‘donation after cardiac death’ (DCD), an increasingly frequent source of organs for transplantation, but done very rarely in newborns. They are…
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Postcode lotteries
In its just-published report Taking Exception on the allocation of cancer drugs by UK Primary Care Trusts, the Rarer Cancers Forum (http://www.rarercancers.org.uk) provides further evidence of a ‘postcode lottery’ operating within the UK National Health Service. For example (p. 26), the Mid-Essex PCT has granted 96% of requests to its ‘exceptional cases panel’, while neighbouring…
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Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly? (Or: are you a sneaky superhero?)
If, like me, you were one of the kids whose preferred superpower was invisibility, you may soon be in luck. The BBC reports today that US scientists have created a material that could one day be used to make people and objects invisible. The material, which has so far been created only on a microscopic…
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Cold and Calculating NICE
Yesterday’s Daily Mail online contains an opinion piece bemoaning the decision by NICE – the UK body responsible for rationing healthcare resources – to decline funding for four new treatments for Kidney Cancer. The Mail complains: …what does NICE offer by way of explanation? A cold, calculating statement that, while the drugs work for many…
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One step closer to human cloning
Scientists in Korea have for the first time successfully cloned a dog commercially. Cloning of dogs is notoriously difficult. This brings us closer to human cloning. The film Boys from Brazil , made in the earlier 80s, portrayed accurately and vividly the process of cloning that produced Dolly. The later film The Sixth Day depicted…
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The point of death
The Guardian yesterday reported the death of the man who had been so tragically shot in Antigua, with his wife, three weeks after their wedding. It began like this: "Ben Mullany, the newlywed who was shot on honeymoon in Antigua in an attack that killed his wife, Catherine, died in hospital in Wales yesterday after…
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Slaves to consent?
Nature reports that in response to analysis done by bioethicist Robert Streiffer (and published in the Hastings Center Report), Stanford University may withdraw the use for research of several of its publicly funded stem cell lines because of concerns about consent. In 2001 President Bush decreed that only lines already in existence would be eligible…
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Are falling house prices good or bad?
House prices have been falling quickly in both the US and, more recently, the UK. Newspaper reports tend to use negative language to refer to this fall. For example, todays edition of The Independent says: Today’s gloomy data, which is worse than economists had forecast, … However, it is not at all obvious that low…
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Saving the planet by reducing birth rates
Climate change will impact the well-being of future generations, directly by, for example, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heavy storms. It will have also indirect impacts on human heath – via cardiovascular diseases or by a rise in epidemics as emerging disease leave the tropic and go North. The beginning…