Month: March 2018

Expulsions of Russians are pushback again Putin’s hybrid warfare

Stormy Daniels describes her alleged affair with Donald Trump

Orlando nightclub shooter’s father, an FBI informant, brushed off son’s terror comments, agent says

Anguished students take aim at gun laws, next election

Facebook stock plunges on FTC probe and news it records users’ call logs

Craig Federighi argues against renewed push for law enforcement backdoor to iPhone

Engineers declare support for STEM diversity research

Fitbit Versa review: one week with the first female-friendly smartwatch

New innovations in cell-free biotechnology

Connected medical device vulnerabilities continue to impact manufacturers, health care

Medical equipment maintenance market to cross $27.5 billion by 2023: P&S Market Research

‘Mr. Santorum, CPR doesn’t work if all the blood is on the ground.’

Russian shopping mall fire kills 64, many of them children

No deathbed conversion for atheist Stephen Hawking

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education: actions needed to better assess the Federal investment

University of Michigan to vote on removing names on 2 buildings.  [Come to our related Bioethical Discussion on Eugenics]

The Department of Defense has recommended adopting the following policies:

• Transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria are disqualified from military service, except under the following limited circumstances: (1) if they have been stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession; (2) Service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria after entering into service may be retained if they do not require a change of gender and remain deployable within applicable retention standards; and (3) currently serving Service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since the previous administration’s policy took effect and prior to the effective date of this new policy, may continue to serve in their preferred gender and receive medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria.
• Transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service.
• Transgender persons without a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria, who are otherwise qualified for service, may serve, like all other Service members, in their biological sex.

What are we to make of this? Are we living in a safer world? Is it a juster one? Should not the two be one?

I am often asked, Who goes to the Bioethics Discussion Group‘s discussions? Currently, there are 98 members. MCommunity gives me information on 79 of them. Of those, the titles that follow apply to at least three members (so as not to make personally identifiable any member or small subset of members). This should give some sense of who attends these things currently:

• Graduate Student Instructor;
• Graduate Student Research Assistant (>10 from the Department of Biomedical Engineering);
• Research Fellow (five, all in medical fields);
• Student, Rackham;
• Student, Undergraduate Engineering; and
• Student, Undergraduate L S & A.

1. Cod, lemon, capers, and garlic
2. Jalapeño, thai chili pepper, cream cheese, and buffalo sauce, topped with shallots and smoked paprika, crust stuffed with pepper jack  and buffalo sauce
3. Sweet potato, corn, peppers with barbecue sauce

203. Bathrooms
207. Universities

220. Metaphors
221. Metaphysics
222. It’s about “the meta”

241. A retelling of the same story
255. Ending. In fragments.

259. America
261. Feasts and Famines
263. Reconstruction

151. α
152. β
153. γ
154. Δ / δ
155. ε
156. μ
157. Ω
158. ABCs
159. Drug Experiment Funding
160. Genomic Health Initiatives
161. Just kidding, lol
162. Multinational Organization
163. pqrst
164. Ultraviolet Waves
165. xyz

166. The Beginning
167. The Abstract
168. The Biomedical
169. The Profane
170. The War
171. The Nation
172. The Noble Life of the Good Citizen in the Great Society
173. The Domain
174. The Decision
175. The Family
176. The Pain
177. The Inevitable
178. The Worthwhile
179. The Regretted
180. The End

QUESTIONS TO PONDER – VACCINATION

Do we have a right to tell others how to live? If so, under what circumstances do we have such a right?

To what extent can/should a special organization (e.g., a trade union, a corporation, a school, a government) have a say in the health of its members? When can an organization force a member to subscribe to its health “mandates”? Are there certain medical decisions in which third parties have a legitimate stake in?

What is the “public good”? Is it distinct from the “common good”? Should the public and/or common good influence medical treatments, healthcare, and/or public policy? How so?

Are there times when the public and/or common good outweigh individual liberties? If so, under what circumstances? What does this greater public/common good look like and why is its presence more desirable than that of individual liberty?

Do we have a right to tell others how to raise their children? If so, under what circumstances do we have such a right?

Under what circumstances can a third party overrule parents’ (medical) decisions?

If vaccines caused autism, should we still give them to children?

To what extent should we tolerate pseudoscience? To what extent should we tolerate quackery? Alternative medicine? Complementary medicine? Holistic medicine? How should we police the boundaries of our biomedical landscape?

How should a government handle the medical concerns of its governed?

Should all people be vaccinated?

To what extent should we respect the religious beliefs of others in the course of their medical treatment?

How much should vaccines cost?