Ethical Issues in Healthcare

On April 21, we discussed genetic testing and efforts to personalize medicine by knowing DNA and personal details about your health over time.   In addition to these topics, what other ethical quandries are there to consider?  I provide some links below, but you are welcome to post about events in the news and on documentaries.  These are just ways to get you started.   When it comes to healthcare, nothing is simple.  Consider the moral and ethical issues related to it.

There are many good resources on our blogroll and here:

• Propublica.org
• Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/health/) 
• NYTimes/Health (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html) 
• NPR/Health (http://www.npr.org/sections/health/) 
• Center for Investigative Reporting (now called Reveal @ http://www.revealnews.org/topic/healthcare/) 
• Recent Frontline special on "Supplements and Safety":
• The booming 30-billion-dollar-plus vitamins and supplements industry says these products can make consumers healthier — but a new FRONTLINE investigation with The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation raises troubling questions.  Supplements and Safety investigates the hidden dangers of vitamins and supplements — exploring how they’re marketed and regulated, and how it’s often hard to know what’s really in the bottles you buy.

In the blog, provide a link to the article/video and summarize the main points.  Offer any recommendations mentioned  in the article, or your own personal opinion about what should be done to address the topic.

How Doctors Helped Drive the Addiction Crisis

We covered this topic in "Escape Fire" and we read about alternatives to treating pain with acupuncture.  Last semester I read this opinion from the Sunday NYT paper on 11/8 and decided to blog about it (than post it on FB).   It is also related to the topic we just covered. The article begins by asking, why is there an "alarming and steady increase in the mortality rate of middle-aged white Americans" since 1999? According to a study published last week (short pdf; read it), much of the excess death is attributable to suicide and drug and alcohol poisonings. Opioid painkillers like OxyContin prescribed by physicians contribute significantly to these drug overdoses. Here are two figures from the study that speak to the issue (click for a larger image):

 "Driving this opioid epidemic, in large part, is a disturbing change in the attitude within the medical profession about the use of these drugs to treat pain." The article states that the rate of death from prescription opioids in the United States dwarfed the combined mortality from heroin and cocaine, and an increasing use of . At the time this was shocking news.  Now the link to opioids to heroin What surprised you? Any remedies? Read the links and comments by others for some further thoughts. Read it here...