"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
It’s about time I added a category for my field of study, eh?
In addition to being a semi-frequent blogger at the Women’s Bioethics Blog, I am now guest blogging over at the fabulous Medical Humanities blog. And apparently am making a point, right off the bat, about sly and quirky jokes and titles – no one, at least, will ever accuse me of being boring or predictable.
Add another thing to the list of things I really shouldn’t do before going to sleep: reading the Wikipedia Talk discussion on bioethics. Apparently I should just have baby-eating satanist tattooed on my forehead and get it over with.
Dalhousie Medical School’s department of bioethics and the Novel Tech Ethics Research Team has a pretty novel idea: screen a movie that has some ethical component, then assemble a group of experts in bioethics, public health, and fields related to the ethical issues presented in the movie. They’re doing a four part film series on the ethics of mental health, starting with A Beautiful Mind.
Cool concept. People who can Do Things Like This should. (And perhaps that should be taken as a hint.)
As is getting play just about everywhere today, Spitzer has announced he wants New York to get in on the state-based stem cell research funding. What is particularly notable is the focus on upstate New York research universities and opportunity, including the state capital, and my current home, Albany.
Given Spitzer’s apparent focus to have a Stem Cell Commission regulating the research funding, and focus on ethics, makes this sounds like it might be (to borrow from both Caplan and McGee) the full employment act for New York bioethicists. If so, I can certainly see making the state my more permanent home.
One of the biggest complaints prominent bioethicists had about California’s Prop 71 and its governing board was the lack of bioethicists sitting on it (something that might have remedied by now – not sure). Will Spitzer take his emphasis on the research being ethical to the logical conclusion, and reach just up the street from the state capital to take advantage of the great resource at his fingertips? Only time will tell – but it should be interesting to see.
AJOB’s blog finally gives some space to the notion of uterine transplants, something that the Women’s Bioethics Blog blogged to death back in November, thanks to a very funny Stephen Colbert piece on the same.
Two months later, the story is just finally starting to pop up in other blogs, and I’m seeing a growing coverage of it in the media. Critical mass takes time, but I’m surprised that a story about uterine transplants has taken so long to gather that steam – honestly, just with the Colbert exposure I would have expected it to hit much larger, much faster. (Perhaps another nail in the coffin of the Colbert Bump myth.) There were huge controversies over face and hand transplants – why not uterine transplants, with all of the associated risks to not just the woman desiring the biological incubation, but also the fetus?