Philosophy & Ethics
A new study reveals correlations between plentiful sunspots and periods of heavy rain in East Africa. Intense rainfall in the region often leads to flooding and disease outbreaks.
The analysis by a team of U.S. and British researchers shows that unusually heavy rainfalls in East Africa over the past century preceded peak sunspot activity by about one year. Because periods of peak sunspot activity, known as solar maxima, are predictable, so too are the associated heavy rains that precede them, the researchers propose.
“With the help of these findings, we can now say when especially rainy…
On July 3, a NASA aircraft equipped with a state-of-the-art sensor provided emergency response officials with critical soil moisture data for several regions across Texas that were threatened by flooding. NASA responded to the heavy rains and flooding in Texas by redirecting a NASA research aircraft, the P-3B, to Texas after it completed an interagency project in Oklahoma.
The aircraft had been flying a sensor developed by the University of Colorado at Boulder, NOAA and U.S. Department of Agriculture that could provide detailed maps of ground surface water. At the request of researchers at…
Only a quarter of the $1.5 billion donated by G8 leaders to eradicate disease among poor children will be spent on the costs of vaccines, while three-quarters will go to profits. G8 should instead negotiate the lowest, sustainable, non-profit price in order to maximize the number of lives saved and children who can benefit.
Professor Donald Light, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, USA, says that the kind of contract which the G8 is using was designed to match the revenues and profits which multinational pharmaceutical firms…
The development of a living being is based on general laws written into the genetic code of each cell and which enable them to develop a specialist function, modifying the way they divide, their form and their behavior.
These changes are coordinated through a series of instructions that must be correctly interpreted within the cell, and this means that the information must pass along a pathway of signalling molecules. These pathways have been conserved across evolution, and therefore studies using models such as the fruit fly provide information about these same processes in humans and other…
We all share our genetic make up with relatives, but should we also share ownership of the results of DNA analysis or should this knowledge be considered private?
Dr Anneke Lucassen, a clinical geneticist at the University of Southampton, believes that if anyone is to own genetic information, it has to be all those who have inherited it and, more importantly, it must be available to all those who might be at risk.
The question, she says, is how to balance a right to privacy with disclosing risks to others.
Patient confidentiality is of course one of the most important cornerstones of medical…
Instead of preserving life, Germany’s embryo protection law has had the unintended consequence of increasing the number of foetuses killed after fertility treatment according to new figures presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday). A representative of the German IVF registry has called for the law to be changed urgently to ensure that this situation does not continue.
The German embryo protection law, passed in 1991, stipulates that no more than three embryos can be created per cycle of IVF and all three, regardless of their quality, must be…
A new article in The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics calls for a change in the regulations surrounding xenotransplantation, the transplanting of animal cells, tissues or organs into humans.
Although few xenotransplantation procedures have been done to this time, there appears to be a lack of awareness among potential xenotransplant patients about the risk of the procedures, and the required lifetime of infectious disease monitoring that come with it.
“When animal cells are transplanted into a human, there is always a risk of new diseases emerging, which is why the federal government…
University of Nottingham researchers want to eliminate animals in laboratory research and they're rebuilding their lab to do it.
By improving the use of cell and tissue cultures, computer modelling, cell and molecular biology, epidemiology and other methods, they intend to show they can completely remove animals from medical research — while still working to defeat diseases that affect millions of people.
The laboratory is called FRAME – Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments - and they've been quietly advocating reduced animal testing for 25 years.
They do this by what…
Hank |
Human embryonic stem cells (hESC), new cells that are basically a biological blank slate, become more specialized as they develop and contribute to a number of organs and tissues. As such, they have the potential to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s but their progress has been slowed because of the ongoing ethical debate over how human embryonic stem cells are derived.
Some European countries - Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland - forbid the creation of new hESC lines surplus embryos, even ones that remain from infertility procedures. In June, 2006…
Paying hospitals extra money does not appear to significantly improve the way they treat heart attack patients or how well those patients do. But giving hospitals the information that they need to improve heart attack care does help.
A team of researchers led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute looked at whether financial incentives to hospitals for adhering to specific treatment guidelines would improve patient outcomes. They found no evidence that financial incentives were associated with improved outcomes, nor that hospitals had shifted their focus from other areas in order to…