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The Transplant Case in Real Life

The Transplant Case in Real Life

Philosophers have long debated about the moral permissibility of Transplant Cases such as the following one presented by Philippa Foot:

A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no-one would suspect the doctor.

Most people believe that it is not permissible for the doctor to murder this patient and harvest his organs, although a few consequentialists, e.g. Alastair Norcross, have argued that it might be acceptable under certain circumstances.

In a possible real-life version of the Transplant Case, the New York Times reported recently that Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh, a transplant surgeon from Stanford, is being charged with ordering the removal of a life-supporting ventilator and prescribing excessive and improper doses of drugs, apparently in an attempt to hasten the death of a disabled and brain damaged man named Ruben Navarro in order to retrieve his organs sooner. 

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Changing the Building Blocks of Life: Playing God and Being gods

All life on earth has the same simple basic structure. It is based on the genetic code contained in DNA. The differences in DNA between a toad and Albert Einstein are what determines their different properties.

The active ingredients in DNA are also simple. They are 4 bases: cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine, or A, T, C and G. The order of these 4 bases is what determines the characteristics of life, the differences between Einstein and a toad.

Scientists in California have created two new bases in addition to A, T, C and G: dSICS and DMMO2. These new bases function like natural ones, they pair appropriately with their partner and are faithfully copied by the natural enzyme, DNA polymerase, responsible for making the billions of copies of DNA necessary to programme each cell in the body of a living organism.

At present, these new bases or building blocks do not do anything. But scientists hope they could be used

"for hundreds of purposes: for example, to build complex shapes, to build complex nanostructures, silence disease genes or even perform calculations… [and even]expand the genetic code and ‘evolvability’ of an organism."

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Stairlifts, wheelchairs, and radium-powered toasters

The BBC has
reported plans by the government to
ensure that all new homes are built to accommodate the needs of an ageing
population. Under these plans, new homes
would need to include features such as stairs wide enough to fit a stairlift,
downstairs bathrooms, and room for wheelchairs to turn. The plans are, reportedly, part of a wider
initiative to make entire neighbourhoods more old-people-friendly, through—for
example—building better pavements and kerbs, improving street lighting,
thoughtfully positioning bus stops, and ensuring access to amenities such as
toilets.

The plans
have been welcomed by organisations such as Help the Aged and Age Concern, who
believe that such measures will enable old people to live independently for as
long as possible. A spokesman for Help
the Aged is quoted as saying, ‘We live in an ageing population and our housing
must meet the needs of older people, both now and in the future’.

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Come Mr Branson Mon, Tally me Biofuel

A Virgin Atlantic flight between Heathrow airport London and Schiphol airport in the Netherlands made history yesterday, becoming the first commercial flight to be partly powered by biofuel. While three of the 747s tanks contained conventional fuel the fourth contained 20% biofuel. The biofuel was a mix of babassu oil and coconut oil. The Guardian reports that the mixture contained oil from 150,000 coconuts. Sir Richard Branson, head of Virgin Atlantic, described the flight as a ‘historic occasion’ and ‘… a biofuel breakthrough for the whole airline industry’. However environmentalists do not seem to share Branson’s enthusiasm for coconut and babassu oil based flight. According to the BBC News the flight has been branded a publicity stunt, a gimmick, and ‘high-altitude greenwash’. Critics include Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Development Movement.

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Neuro-babble

A study
published in this week’s issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience finds
that including irrelevant neuroscientific information in an explanation can
make people more likely to believe that explanation.

Three
groups of subjects – neuroscience ‘novices’, neuroscience students, and neuroscience
experts – were given descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of
the following types of explanation:

I. A
good explanation excluding irrelevant neuroscientific information

II. A
good explanation including irrelevant information

III. A
bad explanation excluding irrelevant neuroscientific information

IV. A
bad explanation including irrelevant information.

Novices
rated bad explanations to be more satisfying when they contained neuroscientific
information (i.e. IV > III) while students rated both good and bad
explanations more satisfying when the contained irrelevant neuroscientific
information (i.e. IV > III and II > I). No similar effect was found for
experts, who in fact rated good explanations to be less satisfying when they
included irrelevant neuroscientific information (i.e. I > II).

That neuroscientific
novices may be persuaded by neuro-babble is, of course, troubling.

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The perils of cheap alcohol

Alcohol abuse in the UK has been escalating for decades, contributing to crime, unemployment, illness and death. Last month, the government reported that alcohol-related deaths in the UK have doubled over the last 15 years to almost 9,000. One prominent factor in these increases is the price of alcohol, which has remained relatively stable despite increases in income over the years, and has thus become much cheaper in real terms. The cheaper it is, the more of it people consume, and the more ill effects are felt. The British Medical Association has thus called on the government to prohibit the cheap sale of alcohol, and in a surprising turn of events, the dominant supermarket chain, Tesco, has echoed this call.

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Post-mortem punishment and public dissection.

A television report aired in the US last week claimed that bodies used
in public anatomical exhibitions might have included executed Chinese
prisoners. There have been subsequent denials from exhibitors that any
of the bodies currently being shown in Pittsburgh came from prisoners.
Apparently one exhibition includes bodies of individuals who died from
natural causes but were ‘unclaimed’, while another exhibition includes
only individuals who have consented to their bodies being used for
education or research. But it is interesting to try to ‘dissect’ the
outcry.

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Obesity and genes

An interesting new study on the heritability of childhood obesity has been widely publicised. The paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found only a modest effect of shared environment on body mass index. The study used the common technique of comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins; that is, twins who share all or… Read More »Obesity and genes

The Rogue Senator and the Protection of Genetic Information

The editors of Nature have today called for the US Senate to bypass Senator Tom Coburn’s (Republican, Oklahoma ) ‘hold’ the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Bill. The Bill, if enacted “would protect people from being discriminated against by health insurers or employers on the basis of their genetic information” but Senator Coburn has used a procedural manoeuvre called a “hold” to prevent it from coming to a vote in the Senate. In their editorial the editors suggest that by putting a hold on this Bill, the senator from Oklahoma is preventing the enormous research and clinical progress from continuing and further developing the era of personalised medicine.

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Dangerous ‘drugs’: the war on fake malaria pills

An international collaboration between public health researchers, forensic scientists and police has led to the identification and arrest of individuals responsible for distributing fake anti-malaria pills (artesunate). Analysis of the air around fake tablets in blister packs, trace amounts of pollen found inside the blisters, and the composition of the tablets themselves provided evidence that the drugs were being made in southern China. This information was provided by Interpol to the Chinese government, which subsequently made the arrests, though the producer is yet to be tracked down.

There is a huge international trade in fake pharmaceuticals, many of which, like fake DVDs, watches or clothing are made in south-east Asia. People sometimes express ambivalence about pirate software or DVDs. However pirate pharmaceuticals have significant implications for public health.

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