Life as an Extreme Sport

Category: Bioethics

It’s about time I added a category for my field of study, eh?

WoBioBlog: Controversial Infant Heart Transplant Redefines Death

Bioethics, WoBioBlog

Surgeons in Denver are happily announcing a major break-through in infant cardiac transplants: using hearts from infants that have died of cardiac-related deaths. According to the Wall Street Journal,

Until now, it was thought that hearts from those donors were too badly damaged to be transplanted successfully. Only hearts from donors who were brain-dead — and whose hearts were still functioning after they were declared dead — have been considered suitable for transplant.

To make the donors’ hearts more viable, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Denver altered the standards for declaring the patients dead… The Denver researchers narrowed to as little as 75 seconds the time between when the donor was pronounced dead and when the heart was harvested. Current guidelines call for waiting up to five minutes as a way of making certain that the heart does not start beating again on its own. But removing the heart earlier increases the odds of a successful transplant since it limits the damage caused by a lack of oxygen to the organ.

Most professional medical types I know, be they bioethicists, doctors, nurses, etc, agree that there are significant and severe problems with how transplants are handled in this country, and that we need to do something to increase the number of available organs…(continue reading)

These People and The Mountains

Bioethics, JHU/CTY 2008

I’m in Santa Cruz, California. I haven’t been into the city proper yet – we came straight to the UCSC campus from the airport – but just driving through Mountain View, Los Gatos, etc, en route to the site brought back floods of memories. It’s hard to believe I haven’t been here in something like 12 years. (I know I visited the area with Kellie and Eric before moving to Oregon, so that gives me a pretty narrow range of times of when I could have been here.)

I’m here to teach bioethics to a group of academically bright 12-16 year olds. I’ve spent my time since arriving Thursday setting up my dorm room – the first one I’ve ever lived in, or even been in for more than an evening (itself a thing new to the last few months) – and getting to know people. Oh, and eating in a cafeteria, another new experience. It’s like I get to round out all the things I missed by being a non-traditional student!

I’ve been so impressed by the people here, from the staff to instructors and RAs. Everyone is incredibly warm and friendly and welcoming. Plus, it’s California – my fast pace but casual relaxedness? Yeah, this is where I get it, so in so many ways I really am coming home. I’ve held myself so tensely, for the most part, while on the East Coast; it’s like exhaling after a long dive.

My dorm is a top floor corner room; I look out over the Santa Cruz mountains as well as a small volleyball area. That the mountains are right there is really an amazing bit of nature; deer wander the property like it’s a giant buffet, the fog rolls in every morning and night, the air is tinged with the tang of salt. It’s a beautiful place, full of all the small and subtle things my body thinks of as “home” in so innate a manner.

Which is not to say that… well, actually, yeah. I don’t miss Albany. I don’t, to be honest, even miss anyone in Albany – not yet. It hasn’t been long enough to yet notice I haven’t seen friends, and/or I’m still talking to people in the evening. I suspect come Monday, when I’m in class until 9pm and my ability to talk to people decreases dramatically, the missing of people will begin to happen.

And now, if I don’t want to miss breakfast – and I really don’t want to miss breakfast – I need to shower and make ready my day.

Male Pregnancy, Alien Nation Style

...and everything else, Academics, Bioethics, Pop Culture

Does anyone else remember the science fiction show Alien Nation? I didn’t, until Michael reminded me of it tonight while we talked about the recent media attention on male pregnancy, and he sent me this clip of a male alien giving birth:

I think it’s almost a sad commentary that one of my first reactions was “aaw, what a touching scene – I’m surprised they showed that, given people’s inclination to insist that stereotypically “feminine” nurturing behaviour in men equals being gay.” The question, of course, is whether that’s a commentary on me, or on media/society.