The excellent Nursing Clio blog has an entry by Ashley Baggett called “The Battle of the Sexes in Health Care.” In the entry, Baggett critiques a NPR commentary on a recent scholarly article in The Lancet on gender and public … Continue reading
May 27, 2013
Ruby’s passing immediately preceded the announcement of the suit filed against South Carolina on behalf of the eight-year-old who was, like Ruby’s daughters, subjected to surgeries to “normalize” atypical sex anatomy, or what is known as an “intersex” body. I believe she would have celebrated the news of the lawsuit by Advocates for Informed Choice and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I thank her daughters for allowing me to share this essay.
May 9, 2013
The woman I called “Ruby” died this week. Her experiences and example have been central in my thinking about the ethical problems raised by the medical management of children and young adults with atypical sex anatomies over the last fifteen years.
Ruby was the mother of two children born in the 1960s, each of whom went into adrenal crisis shortly after she brought them home from the hospital. Both had been announced boys when they were born, and both were reassigned as girls after doctors came to understand they were genetic females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).
Continue readingThomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, declares that the DSM 5 lacks scientific basis. The world’s largest funding agency for research into mental health will no longer fund projects that depend exclusively on DSM … Continue reading
As someone who has worked in research ethics for many years, I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of how and where things go wrong in the research ethics review process. Such a process can never be perfect … Continue reading
Several weeks ago, I heard an interesting report on visualizing pain on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Here’s their published article on the story:
“Doctors Use Brain Scans To ‘See’ And Measure Pain”
The notion of objectively measuring the subjective is compelling. Evidence for ephemeral sensations like pain offers potentials for verifying experiences of particularly vulnerable patient populations. Accounts by patients whose experiences are often doubted or denied — patients like women, children, people with disabilities — can gain veracity through visible displays in brain scans. In this article, the AP notes special benefits for those who might literally lack a voice or the communication abilities to report pain: babies, people with dementia, people with paralysis that impedes speech. The AP also identifies potential benefits in understanding neurological differences between, say, physical and emotional pain, and in developing new treatments that act more directly on specific pain mechanisms and reduce dangers of addiction to medication.
Continue readingShould scientists pay women who provide eggs for stem cell research? This involves both a pragmatic and ethical question. Pragmatically – how are scientists going to convince women to undergo the onerous process of hyper-ovulation and egg extraction in the … Continue reading
Dear Fabsters,
I would like to let you know of a wonderful place to spend part of a sabbatical or to come for a couple of months to do research in peace. This is my second visit to the Brocher Foundation in Geneva and it is really a wonderful place to work. I encourage everybody to take a look at the site and think about submitting a project. The staff is very nice and helpful and the place is a little piece of paradise… a beautiful old villa, newly refurbished and located on the shores of Lake Geneva.
There are also offices wholly equipped to work. The foundation hosts about a dozen senior and junior researchers from one to four months. The only condition is on weekdays to have dinner together as a way to foster collegiality, and you are welcome to come with your partner. Besides the beautiful villa the place is surrounded not only by the lake but also by vineyards and the little village of Hermance, so you can walk or ride a bike for inspiration when the Swiss weather allows it!
More information after the jump…
Continue readingDo not get me wrong, research dollars are always welcome. When President Obama announced a decade long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain, it was greeted with enthusiasm. After all, it appears as if the Human … Continue reading