http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress provides the latest news from The Hastings Center People with chronic or life-threatening illnesses often experience problems with their care, including confusion and conflict over how to make good decisions, poor communication with care providers, inadequate pain and symptom relief, and treatments with little or no benefit. Poor care decreases patients' quality of life, increases family stress, and adds cost but not value to health care, often with heartbreaking financial consequences for families. A new set of consensus guidelines produced by The Hastings Center can help health care professionals improve care near the end of life. The guidelines clarify what is ethically and legally permissible in the United States regarding the use life-sustaining technologies, provide in-depth guidance on talking with patients and surrogates, and offer recommendations about how to improve the delivery of care. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-hastings-center-health-professionals-standards.html Health Tue, 07 May 2013 12:35:22 EST news287148911 With comprehensive immigration reform a priority for President Obama and gaining bipartisan and public support, there is a need and an opportunity to consider how the millions of undocumented immigrants should be integrated into our health care system, concludes a new report from The Hastings Center. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-immigration-reform-access-health.html Health Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:25:01 EST news282918293 The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality, assert leaders in bioethics, medicine, and health policy in two companion articles in a Hastings Center Report special report, "Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Care Systems." One of the authors calling for a new approach is the main architect of the current ethical framework. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-experts-overhaul-ethics-oversight.html Health Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:16:19 EST news278183772 Arguing that obesity "may be the most difficult and elusive public health problem the United States has ever encountered" and that anti-obesity efforts having made little discernible difference, Daniel Callahan, co-founder and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, proposes a bold and controversial approach to fighting the epidemic. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bioethics-leader-bold-approach-obesity.html Overweight and Obesity Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:52:42 EST news278081553 Despite widespread condemnation of female genital surgeries as a form of mutilation and a violation of human rights, an international advisory group argues that the practice is poorly understood and unfairly characterized. In a public policy statement in the Hastings Center Report, the Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa, a group that includes doctors, anthropologists, legal scholars, and feminists, argues that media coverage of the practice is hyperbolic and one sided, "painting the now familiar portrait of African female genital surgeries as savage, horrifying, harmful, misogynist, abusive, and socially unjust." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-western-media-coverage-female-genital.html Health Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:50:33 EST news272036505 As the presidential candidates clash over the fate of the Affordable Care Act, a set of seven essays by leading legal experts, economists, and scholars examines the implications of the Supreme Court's decision on the ACA and makes it clear that there is no consensus about what is economically or morally just when it comes to health care coverage in this country. The essays appear in the Hastings Center Report. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-survival-commentaries.html Health Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:40:01 EST news270304201 Personalized genomic medicine is hailed as a revolution that will empower patients to take control of their own health care, but it could end up taking control away from patients and limiting their treatment choices, concludes an article in the Hastings Center Report. A commentary responding to the article, by the editorial director of Health and Family at Consumer Reports, also appears in the journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-personalized-genomic-medicine-empower-patients.html Genetics Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:52:02 EST news269538701 When Facebook introduced a feature that enables people to register to become organ and tissue donors, thousands did so, dwarfing any previous donation initiative, write Blair L. Sadler and Alfred M. Sadler, Jr., in a commentary in Bioethics Forum, the blog of the Hastings Center Report, which analyzes the "Facebook effect" on donation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-facebook-effect-tissue-donation.html Other Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:18:21 EST news266584685 With whole genome sequencing quickly becoming more affordable and accessible, we need to pay more attention to the massive amount of information it will deliver to parents – and the fact that we don't yet understand what most of it means, concludes an article in the Hastings Center Report. The authors are current or former scholars at the National Institutes of Health's Department of Bioethics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-prenatal-genome-sequencing.html Genetics Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:37:48 EST news263835431 (Garrison, NY) A potentially powerful strategy for studying the significance of human genetic variants is to recruit people identified by previous genetic research as having particular variants. But that strategy poses ethical challenges to informed consent, as well as potential risks to the people recruited, and it is unlikely that there is a "one-size-fits-all" solution, concludes an article in IRB: Ethics & Human Research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-genotype-genetic-poses-ethical.html Other Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:20:45 EST news260111985 The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from prescribing treatments that they consider to be placebos unless the patients know this and agree to take them anyway. But this policy is not clearly the best way to protect or benefit patients, concludes an The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from prescribing treatments that they consider to be placebos unless the patients know this and agree to take them anyway. But this policy is not clearly the best way to protect or benefit patients, concludes an article in the Hastings Center Report. A commentary by two AMA bioethicists responding to the article also appears in the journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-ethical-placebos.html Medications Wed, 30 May 2012 15:00:10 EST news257608731 Although federal regulations provide protections for people who participate in research, protections are also needed for some people who decline to participate and may face harmful repercussions as a result, concludes an article in IRB: Ethics & Human Research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-people.html Other Tue, 01 May 2012 15:36:30 EST news255105329