Recently contaminated pet food was shipped to the US, but this may be just the tip of the iceberg. In Panama, more than 100 people died last year after drinking cough syrup laced with a toxic chemical sometimes used to make antifreeze. In China itself, thousands of people fall ill or die because of widespread counterfeiting of drugs and substandard food. The government is now reviewing more than 170,000 production licenses issued by the food and drug agency over the past 10 years. "The death penalty wouldn't be excessive punishment for Zheng," Wang Yigao, a professor at the Hunan Academy of Sciences told the New York Times. ~ New York Times, May 29
A new generation of abortion specialists is springing up in the US, according to the Los Angeles Times, energised by the plight of women who have to travel miles and miles to find a doctor willing to do terminations. "It doesn't matter what you believe if you don't back it up with action," says Michelle Cleeves, a medical student at the University of Colorado. "The right to abortion doesn't mean anything if women don't have access."
The question is whether there will be enough enthusiasts to offset a sharp decline in numbers. Although abortion is said to be one f the most common surgical procedures in the US, the number of providers has fallen for decades. It dropped 37% between 1982 and 2000, with the number of abortions reportedly dropping by 17%.
The Guttmacher Institute, which is associated with Planned Parenthood, says that there were only 1,800 abortion providers in the US in 2000 -- compared with 6,200 plastic surgeons, 9,700 dermatologists and 10,600 gastroenterologists. One in four women must travel at least 50 miles to end their pregnancy. Nearly one- third of metropolitan areas and 97% of rural counties have no abortion providers.
Older doctors, however, are not upbeat about their specialty. Dr Warren Hern, of Boulder, Colorado, described by the Times as "a legend in the abortion rights movement", has some disheartening advice for medical students. "Do something else. Fix broken legs. No reasonable person would do this," he says. Abortion has become so stigmatised that other doctors shun him. Even his patients look at him with disgust. "They've absorbed so much anti-abortion rhetoric, they feel a sense of revulsion that they have to come into my office and seek treatment."
Dr Hern specialises in second and third trimester abortions and even he feels unnerved by what he does sometimes. He once wrote that "the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current". "We are hard-wired as a species to protect small, young helpless creatures," he says. "The foetus is not a baby, but it's close. Some are very close. It's difficult"
The upshot of this is that medical students who want to do abortions must be highly committed. Most medical schools barely cover the topic and only half of the obstetrics and gynaecology residencies integrate abortion into physician training. Keen students must study on their own. ~ Los Angeles Times, May 22
DISPUTE OVER HUGE EXPERIMENT WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT
The US government is undertaking an ambitious US$50 million project over five years to conduct emergency medical treatment without obtaining consent from patients. It will involve more than 20,000 people in 11 sites across the US and Canada.
Although consent is a basic principle of contemporary bioethics, it can be difficult to get it from people involved in accidents, shootings and heart attacks. For instance, in one experiment, medics will test which is the more effective treatment for cardiac arrests by randomly infused some patients with "hypertonic" solutions containing high levels of sodium, with or without the drug dextran. Other studies have suggested that hypertonic solutions could save more lives and minimise brain damage.
To allay fears of the public, researchers will conduct a "community consultation" process at each site. Anyone who objects will be provided with a special bracelet to alert medical workers.
Even bioethicists are divided on the issue. "This just seems like lazy investigators not wanting to try to get informed consent in situations where it is difficult to get it, so they say it is impossible," says George J. Annas, a prominent bioethicist at Boston University. "I don't think we should use people like this." However, Myron L. Weisfelt, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, says that some people will object to any experiment done without consent. "We will never know the best way to treat people unless we do this research," he says. "And the only way we can do this research, since the person is unconscious, is without consent." ~ Washington Post, May 27
KEVORKIAN TO BE PAROLED
America's icon of assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian, will be able to celebrate his 79th birthday in relative freedom next week. After eight years in a Michigan jail for helping a man with Lou Gehrig's disease to die, he will be paroled on June 1. His attorney says that Kevorkian is a very sick man who suffers from Hepatitis C and hardening of the arteries in the temples. His client has vowed not to break the law again. Instead he will focus on educating the public about his position on assisted suicide.
Kevorkian has become something of a hero for the voluntary euthanasia movement, especially after being jailed. "You'd be surprised at how many people have written to me and offered to have him stay at their homes when he gets out of prison," says his lawyer. "The man is an icon, but that's neither here nor there." ~ ABC News, May 25
BOTCHED EXECUTION
The notion that any form of the death penalty must be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" has received a boost from the execution of 37-year-old Christopher Newton in the American state of Ohio. The 265-pound man had been condemned to death for murdering a prison cell mate in 2001. He insisted that he wanted to die and made no attempt to appeal his sentence.
His execution took two hours -- so long that he was given a bathroom break during the process. The execution team stuck him at least 10 times with needles to insert the shunts for a lethal injection. He laughed and chatted with the prison staff throughout the process. ~ AP, May 25
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One of the best-kept secrets of IVF is selective reduction -- killing one or more foetuses in the womb of a woman who is carrying twins, triplets or quadruplets. In a new book, "Everything Conceivable", Washington Post writer Liza Mundy describes how it works. She conducted an in-depth interview with Manhattan obstetrician Mark Evans, one of the few American doctors who is willing not only to do reductions, but to discuss them and rationalise them.
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