A Blog on Bioethics

Bioethics Poetry, Katy Giebenhain edition

2012-02-03T12:39:00.000-05:00

Glucose Self-Monitoring

A stabbing in miniature, it is,
a tiny crime,
my own blood parceled
drop by drop and set
on the flickering tongue
of this machine.

It is the spout-punching of trees
for syrup new and smooth
and sweeter
than nature ever intended.
It is Sleeping Beauty's curse
and fascination.
It is the dipstick measuring of oil
from the Buick's throat,
the necessary maintenance.

It is every vampire movie ever made.

Hand, my martyr without lips,
my quiet cow.
I'll milk your fingertips
for all they're worth.
For what they're worth.

Something like a harvest, it is,
a tiny crime.

Katy Giebenhain

(This poem first appeared in Prairie Schooner; used by permission of the author)

Komen Re-funds Planned Parenthood, Sorta

2012-02-03T12:29:00.002-05:00

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure folks have reversed themselves on the question of funding Planned Parenthood's breast-cancer screening and mammography referral services. A statement released today said the foundation was revising its no-funding-for-people-under-investigation policy so as not to include political, as opposed to criminal, investigations. (As I blogged earlier, there's an ongoing congressional investigation into the question whether Planned Parenthood uses any federal funds for abortions, and Komen originally pointed to the existence of that investigation as a reason for discontinuing funding.) The statement said nothing about another reason Komen has given for the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, namely, that they don't provide mammography services directly, but only make referrals for them. The statement says funding for Planned Parenthood will continue to flow under existing agreements, and that Planned Parenthood will remain eligible to apply for more funding in the future. It remains to be seen whether Planned Parenthood's angered constituency will revise its views on Komen as quickly as Komen has revised its grantmaking policy.

UPDATE: This piece has persuaded me that there's less of a reversal here than meets the eye. Komen never intended to renege on existing commitments to Planned Parenthood, so saying they're going to continue funding them isn't any change. Saying Planned Parenthood is eligible to apply for further funding is, in fact, a reversal of their "no money to folks being investigated" policy, but isn't a guarantee that funding will flow. We'll see how many grants are actually made to Planned Parenthood in the future....

ANOTHER UPDATE: Further evidence that there's less to this "reversal" than meets the eye is here. And here, too.

Friday Frivolity, Dental Competence Edition

2012-02-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

Romney on Stem Cells

2012-02-02T18:03:00.000-05:00

I blogged recently about Newt Gingrich's recent attacks on human embryonic stem cell research, and his intention to investigate and regulate the practices of IVF clinics which create excess human embryos. The news item led me to wonder what Mitt Romney's stem-cell position is. Not surprisingly, it's bounced around a bit.

In his gubernatorial race of 2002, Romney was a supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, and even promised to lobby President Bush for increased research funding in the area. But after a conversation with some Harvard researchers who, Romney often claims, had no moral qualms about destroying two-week-old embryos, he changed his position. Indeed, he credits the stem-cell debate with pushing him toward his current pro-life abortion position. In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Romney formulated his current position, namely, that it isn't unethical to use "excess" embryos from IVF clinics for embryonic stem-cell research, but that he opposes government funding for such research, and opposes any laboratory creation of embryos (by cloning or otherwise) for research purposes. This page gathers a number of quotations from Romney on the issue over the years.

He has spoken in favor of shifting research from human embryonic stem cells to induced pluripotent stem cells, since the latter research involves no embryonic destruction. He has also made mention several times of "altered nuclear transfer," the purported "scientific solution" to the ethical problem of embryonic stem-cell research promoted by William Hurlbut, a Stanford professor and member of President Bush's bioethics committee. Altered nuclear transfer essentially produces a severely disabled embryo which cannot develop into a human baby; Hurlbut argued that using ANT embryos thus avoided the problem of killing a viable embryo. Pro-life organizations briefly endorsed, and then pulled away from, the Hurlbut proposal. (There's a website touting ANT here; and brief discussion halfway down this page of the political reception by pro-life groups of Hurlbut's proposal.)

This recent item from Fox News takes Romney to task for continuing to invest in Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical firm which uses some stem cells in its research, up until 2010--in spite of having taken a position against embryonic stem-cell research in 2007. But I think that's just a mistake. Romney, as far as I've been able to find, has never taken a comprehensive position opposing all human embryonic stem-cell research. He isn't opposed to privately-funded research on leftover IVF embryos. He opposes laboratory embryo creation, and he opposes the public funding of any embryonic stem-cell research.

Komen Defunds Planned Parenthood

2012-02-01T17:33:00.001-05:00

By now anyone who spends any time on the net is aware that the leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has decided to pull all funding for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is saying that the move is a cave-in by Komen to pro-life political pressure. Komen has responded that the move isn't political; it's just that they have a new policy of not funding organizations that are under investigation, and Planned Parenthood is under a (highly political) investigation by Congress about whether they're violating the Hyde Amendment by using federal funds for abortions.

A few of the more interesting tidbits from the web:

A number of pieces, including this one, and this rather less mild one, about how the decision was influenced by Komen's new senior VP, Karen Handel--a pro-life former Republican candidate for the Georgia governorship, endorsed by Sarah Palin; pieces like this one, claiming that the immediate outcry from Planned Parenthood supporters has already resulted in PP recouping much of the money it won't get from Komen, and may deliver a real long-term blow to Komen; pieces like this one, showing enthusiasm for Komen's move among some religious and pro-life groups; articles like this one, and this, detailing past Komen-related controversies, like suing other charities for using "cure" and pink ribbons at their events, and lending their support to unhealthy products like KFC ("because nothing says that you care about women's health like a big vat of fried chicken"); this meta-coverage of the Internet/Social Media response to the news; and this story about a dissenting Komen affiliate group in Connecticut.

I'm guessing, along with many others, that Komen will emerge a loser here, and that Planned Parenthood will benefit significantly from the anger stirred up in its pro-choice base--and from the sense in the broader women's health community that Komen's political move threatens access of the poorest women to preventative breast-cancer screening.

Top 5 Regrets of the Dying

2012-02-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

This piece from the Guardian lists the top 5 regrets of dying patients, as recorded over the years by an Australian palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware. The five most-frequently heard regrets were these:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Look at the article for a bit more detail, or read Bronnie Ware's book. More importantly: be true to yourself, don't work so hard, say what you're feeling, look up those old friends, and smile.

Emanuel on Accountable Care Organizations

2012-01-31T20:27:00.000-05:00

Zeke Emanuel and Jeffrey Liebman are predicting that health insurance companies will vanish by 2020, to be replaced by the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) being called into being by President Obama's Affordable Care Act. ACOs, they predict, will practice more efficient medicine than the current fee-for-service system can generate, and will also replace insurance companies' risk-spreading function by pooling the risks of their higher- and lower-cost patients.

I can't share their optimism. Data from the five-year Medicare Physician Group Practice demonstration project casts doubt on the ability of ACOs to extract major savings from care-coordination. This Health Affairs Health Policy Brief on ACOs raises that question, and others as well: will ACOs form only in wealthier regions of the country, thus worsening already-existing health disparities? Could alliances among healthcare providers result in higher prices? Will ACOs run afoul of antitrust laws?

Of course we should do a better job of coordinating care; of course we should incentivize our doctors and hospitals to work on keeping people well rather than on intervening with expensive procedures after they're sick; of course we should use our better information technology to cut costs without cutting quality. Can ACOs do all of that? I sincerely hope so. But I'm not willing to bet that they'll be so successful as to make private health insurance obsolete in the next eight years.

Friday Frivolity, Vegetative Teens Edition

2012-01-31T19:51:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know, it's only Tuesday. But this is just too good to wait for.

Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized

Affordable Malaria Medicine in Nigeria

2012-01-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

Here's a heartening article about a coalition that has just completed negotiations which will permit antimalarial medication to be sold in five Nigerian states (together containing about one-fifth of the population) for as little as N60.00 per dose (that's about 27 cents). Previously, Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies had sold for anywhere between N800.00 and N2000.00. The Partnership for Transforming Health Systems, PATHS2, is a program of the United Kingdom Department for International Development. The initiative is a collaboration of PATHS2 with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Health, and some pharmaceutical manufacturing firms, working through the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) initiative. More details on the funding mechanism are here. Malaria accounts for 70% of all disease incidence in Nigeria; in 2008 there were 57,506,430 reported cases, of which 225,424 were fatal.

Council of Europe on Euthanasia

2012-01-30T12:05:00.001-05:00

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe ("PACE") has issued a non-binding declaration (mainly aimed at getting member states to beef up their laws governing living wills and advance directives) in which it opines that "[e]uthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited."

A number of different publications are mistakenly alleging that PACE has called for a permanent ban on assisted suicide. The resolution explicitly says that it "is not intended to deal with the issues of euthanasia or assisted suicide," and while it goes on to condemn euthanasia, it says nothing additional about assisted suicide.

The PACE declaration may indeed have some political effect on movements within Europe toward legalization of euthanasia. But it's a mistake to report it as a condemnation of assisted suicide, or to anticipate that it will have strong effect on pending cases involving assisted suicide. The European Court of Human Rights, for example, has repeatedly recognized the distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia, and has held that Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms protects the individual's choice to avoid a painful and undignified death.

No Fetuses in Food!

2012-01-30T11:34:00.000-05:00

Oklahoma Senate Bill 1418, introduced by State Sen. Ralph Shortey, would prevent anyone from manufacturing or selling food "which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients." The concern behind the bill, apparently, is with food companies which are in fact using tissue derived from aborted fetuses in research on the development of new product flavorings. (This is of course different from saying that such cells are being used as ingredients in food!)

The Onion, America's finest news source, has gathered some informed opinions on the issue.

Gingrich Would Ban Stem Cell Research, Regulate IVF

2012-01-30T11:17:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich is telling conservative audiences in Florida that, if elected, he will ban all human embryonic stem-cell research, including research done on excess embryos from fertility clinics. He regards embryonic stem-cell research as "the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies." This is a reversal of positions he took in two different interviews in 2001, in which he expressed support for federally funding research on leftover fertility-clinic embryos which would otherwise be discarded. Over this weekend Gingrich also indicated that he would create a commission to look into the ethics of IVF: “I believe life begins at conception, and the question I was raising was what happens to embryos in fertility clinics, and I would favor a commission to look seriously at the ethics of how we manage fertility clinics....If you have in vitro fertilization, you are creating life; therefore, we should look seriously at what the rules should be for clinics that are doing that, because they are creating life.”

The roughly $125 million saved by cutting all of NIH's human embryonic stem-cell research funding could presumably be used to help offset some of the billions and billions of dollars required to create the new moon-base Gingrich says he wants by the end of his second term.

Bioethics Poetry, Sylvia Plath Edition

2012-01-13T17:02:00.001-05:00

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Sylvia Plath

Research Misconduct and Red Wine

2012-01-13T16:58:00.000-05:00

Dipak Das of the University of Connecticut has been found by a special review board to have committed 145 separate counts of data falsification and fabrication in his studies of the effects on the heart of red-wine consumption (and specifically of the compound resveratrol, found in red wine). A summary the board's findings is here. The research misconduct is said to affect 26 articles in as many as 11 journals. Retraction Watch is following the case, and has printed some responses from Das, who is alleging ethnic bias, conspiracy and mistreatment by UConn.

Harvard's David Sinclair (a booster of resveratrol) was quoted in the New York Times as saying that there will be little fallout for the general field of resveratrol study around the world. "Today I had to look up who he is. His papers are mostly in specialty journals,” he said. Ouch! But Science 2.0 (which is skeptical about resveratrol) notes an earlier connection between Sinclair and Das, and a sort-of retraction by Sinclair of his NYT comment. Curioser and curioser!

Friday Frivolity, Machine That Goes "Ping!" Edition

2012-01-13T16:13:00.000-05:00

Pharma and Phraud

2012-01-13T15:58:00.001-05:00

Here's a report from Public Citizen summarizing the recent trend in payments by the pharmaceutical industry of civil and criminal monetary penalties. It seems that pharma has now eclipsed the defense industry as the leading defrauder of the US government under the False Claims Act. Some of the report's findings:

In the last twenty years, pharma firms have made 165 settlements for $19.8 billion in penalties. Three-quarters of these (both in terms of numbers of settlements and in terms of fines paid) have occurred in the last five years. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough accounted, together, for more than half of the twenty years' penalties. Illegal off-label promotion of drugs has triggered the largest number of federal fines. Overcharging state Medicaid programs triggered the largest state-level fines. Actions initiated by industry whistleblowers gave rise to 67 percent of payouts over the last decade.

The report concludes that fines are probably not sufficient motivation to get high-profit-margin firms to behave. It recommends the application of the "Park Doctrine" to pharma executives--a doctrine under which individual executives can be convicted of criminal misdemeanors based on corporate misbehavior, even if they weren't personally aware of the problem. The doctrine is designed to motivate executives to become pro-active in preventing their firms from engaging in criminal misconduct.

The report's call for the FDA to revive the long-neglected Park Doctrine in fact follows recent signals from the FDA that it intends to do just that. The law firm of Hyman, Phelps and McNamara has an informative powerpoint presentation on the FDA's past and future use of the Park doctrine, here. The clear message from the FDA has been, "Expect some prosecutions of pharma executives soon!"

Lesbian Couple's Parental Rights

2012-01-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

A lesbian couple in Florida had a child. One of the couple was the child's birth-mother and the other its genetic (egg-providing) mother. (The genetic father was a sperm donor, not involved in the case.) After years of jointly rearing the child, the two mothers split up. Genetic mom sought parental rights to the child, and birth-mom resisted, claiming that 1) Florida common law recognizes only birth-mothers as mothers; 2) since Florida doesn't permit adoption by gay couples, it has prohibited lesbian couples from sharing custody of children; 3) the genetic mother was an "egg donor," required under Florida gamete-donation law to relinquish parental rights; and 4) the biological mother had relinquished her parental rights contractually, in the text of her agreement with the fertility clinic which helped the couple create the child. In this opinion, the Fifth District of Florida finds 1) that Florida in fact has no common law recognizing exclusive parental rights in birth mothers--particularly in a case like this, where the birth mother is not the genetic mother; 2) that if Florida law prevents gay couples from sharing parental responsibility for a jointly-conceived child for whom they cared as mothers for years, then that law is unconstitutional under both the US and the Florida constitutions; 3) that a biological mother who provided her lesbian partner with an egg for purposes of fertilizing and implanting it in her partner and then raising the resultant child together, is not an "egg donor" under Florida law; and 4) that the provisions of the standard pre-printed form used by the fertility clinic did not apply to the facts in the case and could not operate to vitiate the genetic mother's parental rights. This is big news, because it appears to establish a fundamental, constitutionally-protected right to procreate--even for gay couples who, under current Florida law, can neither marry nor adopt.

ABC reports that birth-mom intends to appeal the case to the Florida Supreme Court.

Addiction, Philosophy--and Science

2012-01-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

A number of bioethics twitterers were calling attention to this piece on addiction and philosophy from the New York Times's online Opinionator page. I enjoyed it, but thought that at its core it was more the application of a metaphor drawn from philosophy to the problem of addiction, rather than a philosophical treatment of the problem of addiction. So I googled around for a philosophical treatment of addiction and found this piece by Piers Benn. It is a genuinely philosophical treatment of the issue, but one which fails for lack of familiarity with contemporary addiction science.

In the piece, Benn asks whether addiction is properly termed a disease. (He speaks mostly about alcohol addiction, and so shall I.) Benn entertains and rejects four reasons why we might consider it a disease. The first is people sometimes argue that it would be more humane for us to talk about it that way, and thus to relieve addicts from blame and stigma. But Benn rejects that argument, favoring a "tough love" approach. (In another portion of the essay, he rejects the idea that addicts can't control themselves, essentially by pointing to the fact that some addicts can and do.) The second reason he considers for the disease model is that "the disease model seemingly gains support from genetics;" on this point, he cites a study from 1973 that showed that children of alcoholics, raised by non-alcoholic parents, are more likely to become alcoholic. Benn rejects this on grounds that genetic predispositions to drink don't actually force anyone to drink, and don't keep everyone from quitting. The third justification for the disease model is that addicts often talk about their own experience of powerlessness--inability to quit their habit even though they want to; Benn rejects this as self-deception. Addicts, he implies, aren't powerless, they just think they are. The fourth reason is that ordinary language often describes addiction in terms of irresistible forces and compulsions; Benn recommends that we simply think about addiction differently, as involving powerful forces, but not irresistible ones.

The underlying theme seems to be that addiction can only be a disease if it implies complete lack of control and therefore supplies addicts with a moral excuse for their conduct. If some addicts can control their behavior, then addiction doesn't imply complete lack of control, and therefore isn't a disease, and therefore supplies no moral excuse.

This won't do. First, it implicitly regards "addiction" as uniform, such that the ability of one person to kick an addiction is proof that all others could have done so as well, but for their weakness of will. Second, as Benn comes close to admitting at the close of the essay, the whole essay maps the idea of disease onto an idea of powerlessness which doesn't make sense. Some Type II diabetics can bring their insulin and blood-glucose under control with diet and exercise. Does this imply that the others aren't really sick?

Most unfortunate, though, is the fact that the whole article proceeds without any investigation into the current science of addiction. Scores of studies since 1973 have confirmed genetic predispositions to addiction, not only in humans but also in rats and monkeys. And contemporary brain-scan science has firmly established that the brain's reward-triggers are physically altered by substance use among addicts, in a way that they are not among mere "social users" of the same substances. (These results, too, have been duplicated in other species.) Recent brain-imaging studies have show that addicted alcoholics, unlike social drinkers, drink less for pleasure than for stress-relief; and that alcohol abuse among those with the correct genetic predisposition sensitizes the brains to stressors. This sensitization lasts well after detoxification, both in humans and in other species, and may help explain high rates of relapse. And finally, it's been shown that judgment centers of the brain (in the prefrontal cortex) are physically inhibited by alcohol intake, so that when (as Benn puts it) the tenth drink seems "highly alluring" to the alcoholic, that is not because (as Benn argues) the alcoholic is being akratic, and lacks the resolution to act on his better judgment, but because the portion of the brain which might normally supply better judgment has literally been shut down.

Someone, somewhere, might mount a philosophical argument against the disease model of addiction. But such an argument cannot be based only on armchair reflections about how we use language, about the Greek view of weakness of will, or about whether medicalization of addiction would or would not be kind. It must, also, deal with the science of the last four decades.

Chimeric Monkeys, Mice and Stem Cells

2012-01-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center has created chimeric rhesus monkeys, each of whose bodies combines tissues with up to six different genetic identities. The chimera creation was part of research which showed that--unlike in the case of mice--chimeras cannot be formed by injecting rhesus embryonic stem cells into blastocysts. Chimera formation was instead achieved by aggregating several four-cell embryos (a result never achieved in mice). The research hints at some important limitations of using mouse embryonic stem cell models to predict experience in primates, including humans.

The Onion has gathered some on-the-street comments on the research, including from Mr. Bobo.

Online Advance Directives

2012-01-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

Virginia has recently decided to create an advance directives registry which, when it goes live sometime this spring, will permit patients to upload their own living wills. The plan is eventually to integrate the advance directives information into the state's health information exchange, so that physicians will be able to access their patients' documents without needing to know their login information. The hope is that physicians will then be able to act on their patients' previously-expressed wishes without having to locate and contact surrogate decision makers.

Bioethics Poetry, Emily Dickinson Edition

2012-01-07T17:26:00.000-05:00

Death is a Dialogue between

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death -- The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust" --

Death doubts it -- Argues from the Ground --
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Emily Dickinson

(Mary M. Scott Morton, RIP)

86% of Medical Error Goes Unreported

2012-01-07T17:04:00.000-05:00

Hospital incident reporting systems were informed of only 14% of errors that harmed Medicare patients, according to this report on a recent survey undertaken by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. Hospital staff didn't perceive 61% of adverse events as reportable. Another 25% were classified as of a type commonly reported, but somehow not reported this time.

Remember what the Institute of Medicine told us, back in 1999, about how we ought to be dealing with medical errors? We're supposed to report them all, in a blame-free atmosphere, in order to gather information that will help us change the systems which give rise to them. The idea was that we'd make more progress by reporting error in this blame-neutral way than by either a) covering the error up or b) blaming error on particular human beings. The basic assumption was that most medical error resulted from flawed systems (training systems, oversight systems, information systems, and so on) which put hospital staff at predictable and preventable risk of making mistakes.

Some progress has been made. But this latest report shows how very far we have to go. A 14% reporting rate is absolutely dreadful, particularly because this is the report-rate for events that actually harmed Medicare patients. The IOM's goal was that not only harmful errors, but also "near-misses"--events that could have harmed patients, but luckily didn't--should be reported.

The Inspector General recommends that the government establish a list of reportable events, so that there's clarity about what needs to be reported and what doesn't; and that CMS (the Medicare agency) cooperate with accrediting bodies like the Joint Commission to establish review of hospital reporting procedures. Accrediting bodies currently tend to concentrate on what's done with reported information, rather than on the accuracy and breadth of the reporting process itself. That clearly needs to change.

Regulation, War, and Face Transplants

2012-01-06T13:25:00.000-05:00

These proposed regulations from the US Department of Health and Human Services would subject vascularized composite allographs (VCA) to the rules currently governing solid organ procurement and transplantation. VCA involves transplanting multiple tissue-types as a single functional unit. The highest-profile VCA procedures are face and hand transplants, but VCA procedures around the world have included limb transplants, abdominal wall transplants, finger transplants, and transplants of penises and uteruses. What the procedures have in common is the need for re-vascularization via surgical connection of blood vessels to the transplanted tissue. Bringing these procedures under the existing organ procurement and transplantation rules will rationalize the supply and distribution of transplantable tissue, and permit medical teams to find better matches for their patients.

Recent successes in face-transplantation have captured a great deal of media attention. But another reason for this move is the medical aftermath of the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 1,000 military personnel have lost an arm or a leg in these conflicts; one fifth of those have lost two or more limbs. In the summer of 2010 there were an estimated 200 soldiers who might be eligible for partial or full face transplant, and an additional 50 who could use hand or forearm transplants. The US Departments of Defense and of Veterans Affairs have been leading funders of research on limb and face transplantation. The proposed regulation of VCA is in part aimed at permitting more veterans to get the procedures they need, with the best available material.

Friday Frivolity, Annoyingly Chipper Edition

2012-01-06T12:23:00.001-05:00

NB: some strong language

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Hepatitis C Vaccine Success and Chimpanzees

2012-01-05T17:19:00.001-05:00

This article from Science Translational Medicine shows excellent results in a phase-1 trial of a new hepatitis C vaccine. This is a huge deal: hepatitis C infects 170 million globally, and causes a great deal of the world's liver damage. It kills more people in the US annually than HIV/AIDS.

The new vaccine was developed using chimpanzees as research subjects. I submit that this is exactly the sort of research for which the IOM's recent report on use of chimps in research left room. But I submit, also, that there aren't many more examples of this sort.