In the US, the default assumption is that a person does not consent to organ donation upon their death unless they specifically “opt-in.” Spain has implemented an “opt-out” policy, arguing that many people would in theory be willing to donate, but for some reason or another, don’t get around to opting-in. This gets around this problem. Given the US hyper focus on individual liberty, it doesn’t seem that it would fly on these shores.
“In the majority opinion of Roe vs. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that if the notion of fetal personhood were established, the arguments for women’s choice would collapse, “for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.”
An analysis by Profs. Glenn Cohen and Eli Adashi on how this argument is being carried out at the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
It uses the woman’s own ovarian cells, but strips out “the ovarian tissues’ cells of DNA and other features which could contain the faulty instructions for cancer cells’ unconstrained growth.” The novelty is that they have created a scaffolding for these cells to develop so that they can be reimplanted later and function like ‘normal’ ovaries (releasing an egg each month in response to hormones, etc.).
With major advances in genomic enhancement possibilities, this technique could help make many of these enhancements seem more ‘natural’ and therefore ‘normal,’ by having them take place inside a woman’s own body.
That one-quarter of Medicare spending in the United States occurs in the last year of life is commonly interpreted as waste. But this interpretation presumes knowledge of who will die and when.
Death is highly unpredictable. Less than 5% of spending is accounted for by individuals with predicted mortality above 50%. The simple fact that we spend more on the sick—is both anticipated and understood. But it in no way means that we are spending money on “hopeless” cases.
It’s particularly relevant this week in light of recent evidence that “CRISPR gene editing produces unwanted DNA deletions” – far more than previously thought. So we might still be a little farther away than we thought last week.