As NPR recently reported, scientists may be on the verge of succeeding at a procedure called In Vitro Gametogenesis (often shorthanded as IVG). IVG allows for the fertilization of eggs and sperm in a laboratory. These fertilized embryos could in theory carry any genes. Enthusiasm at the prospect of IVG for humans followed the procedure’s…
Tag: medical ethics
“It hath left behind it so foul and filthy broad scars, that touched the lives of four persons”: Stories of Medical Malpractice in Elizabethan England
In the preface to his 1588 treatise on surgery, Elizabethan surgeon William Clowes declared to his reader that “mine intent is not to hold my tongue at abuses” (A prooued practise sig. A1r). Thus began a section in which he discussed several stories of medical malpractice.1 In one, he described a “pernicious pill” that had…
Coronavirus at the Border: The Nation-State as Involuntary Quarantine
Bojan Srbinovski // On the evening of November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in the metropolitan area of Paris. Six different locations were targeted in a combination of mass shootings and a suicide bombing. In the deadliest attack on France since World War II, and the deadliest attack on the…
Beyond “Taking” a History: Narrative Implications of the Electronic Health Record for Patients
Kamna Balhara // Among the many upheavals that medicine has faced in the 21st century, few changes have inspired as much conversation and controversy as the widespread implementation of the electronic health record (EHR). While some physicians see its general adoption as a sign of progress, many view this spread as a metastatic process that…