Bioethics
MacLean Center Prize Winner Challenges Ethics Conference to Drive Global Social Innovation
Peter Singer, MD, MPH, was awarded the second annual $50,000 MacLean Center Prize in Clinical Ethics on Saturday, and challenged this weekend’s Dorothy J. MacLean Fellows Conference to think bigger about medical and clinical ethics. And to think globally. “Bioethics is actually, on reflection and especially clinical ethics the way it’s practiced here [at the […]
Presidential Commission on Bioethics Tackles Research on Children
National leaders in medicine, law, public health and disease control gathered Nov. 5, 6, at the University of Chicago Divinity School to participate in a two-day meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to examine the numerous and complex issues surrounding medical research involving children. A central issue before the commission […]
Whole Genome Sequencing: Society to Reap the Benefits But Individuals to Bear the Risks
Using a person’s own genetic code to figure out what treatments might work best against a particular disease will be one of the most powerful weapons available to 21st century doctors and researchers. But such potential carries a heavy burden to protect the privacy of individuals who agree to share their most intimate information. That’s […]
LabBook August 10, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on the blog, link to news stories about our faculty and studies, and briefly summarize a handful of recent publications by our researchers. This […]
Fairness and Efficiency: Designing a Better Kidney Allocation System
Each year approximately 11,000 people receive kidney transplants from deceased donors, but nearly 100,000 people are on the waiting list for a deceased donor kidney. This means that people with end-stage renal disease who desperately need a new kidney can spend years on dialysis, waiting for a transplant. For the past seven years, the United […]
Uncertain Attitudes About Biobank Dividends
Say scientific research could determine if you had a gene that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease. Would you want to know about it? But say that same research couldn’t tell you how much this increases your risk for developing Alzheimer’s, nor could it tell you what to do about it. Would you still want […]
A Nasal Path to Migraine Relief
Roughly 30 million Americans suffer from migraines, and as you might expect, there’s a large pharmaceutical market to prevent or stop these debilitating headaches. Drugs such as Imitrex and Verapamil employ different pharmacological modes of action, reducing migraines by adjusting neurotransmitter levels, blocking ion channels, or simulating the body’s natural painkillers. There’s also a less […]
Professionalism and Ethics, Day Two: Prize and Prejudice
Even in the court of ethics and medical professionalism, there’s nothing wrong with the occasional honor or award. On day two of the conference, the Maclean Center awarded its first Prize in Clinical Ethics and Health Outcomes – at $50,000, the largest such prize in the ethics field – to John Wennberg, the Peggy Y. […]
The Many Faces of Medical Professionalism
Every patient wants their doctor to be a professional. But the broader concept of “medical professionalism” is not a cut-and-dry matter, as it opens the door to debates over how physicians interact with politics and society, the regulation of doctors’ ethical and legal behavior, and the role of the physician in the new world of […]
Finding the Muslim View on Medicine
Muslims are the fastest-growing religious minority in the United States, with over 7 million Americans declaring themselves as followers of Islam and more than 2,000 mosques nationwide. But in spite of the numbers, little data has been collected about American Muslims’ beliefs about health and disease, or their experience in the U.S. health care system. […]
