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Bioethics

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This category contains 9 posts

Please don’t assault my patient!

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ September 20, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Medical Ethics: You can’t force a patient to stay alive.
The patient is in his 50s and is suffering from a neurological disorder that has impaired his ability to breathe and swallow. He is dependent upon a feeding tube inserted into his stomach for nutrition and a ventilator inserted through a tracheostomy to breathe. He […]

Is it moral to cut up a morula for research?

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ August 27, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

The moral morass of the morula
After the human egg is fertilized it divides multiple times and forms a small sphere of identical cells called a zygote. Each of these cells is called a blastomere and when there are about 30 of these the zygote is called a morula. These divisions occur in the fallopian tube […]

What if sex had no health consequences?

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ June 17, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Recently the FDA approved a vaccine (Gardasil made by Merck) against human papiloma virus (HPV) to prevent cervical cancer. This cancer kills about 3,700 women per year in the US. The vaccine prevents 70% of cancer causing HPV types and 90% of the HPV that cause genital warts. The problem is that in order to […]

What is a DNR order? Do you need one?

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ May 21, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

As a follow up on my last post on DNR tattoos a reader left the following comment.
“I’m very confused about a DNR. I understand what a DNR means. My Mom had one. But, she was very ill and quite old. What does a DNR mean for say someone in their 50s who has a heart […]

Why can’t a tattoo be a legal advanced directive?

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ May 17, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

It’s a common joke among health care workers. After seeing the living hell that patients endure following cardiopulmonary resuscitation (before ultimately dieing) many in the health care field like to claim that not only are they “DNR” (Do Not Resuscitate) but they’ll get it tattooed on their chest just to make sure that it doesn’t […]

Americans unclear on what is a “right” and what in an entitlement.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ March 4, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

According to a recent phone survey only one American in 1,000 was able to name all five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. If you extrapolate this finding to the whole of the country then you find that only 300,000 Americans out of a population of about 3 million know all of their First Amendment […]

Thoughts on Assisted Suicide.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ December 30, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Q&A on assisted suicide - In life there are two absolutes; Death and taxes. Actually there is a third; suffering. Many things cause suffering in life but often none more so than terminal illness (usually cancer). When death is certain within a short amount of time and suffering is expected to continue unabated (only incompletely […]

Embryos and Their “Right to Life”.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ February 6, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Discarded embryo = wrongful death?
The state of Illinois has declared in law that “human beings” exist from the point of conception and as such they have a “right to life”. A couple is using this law as the basis to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the Center for Human Reproduction in Chicago that accidentally […]

A Slow Death in Florida.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ October 26, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Terri Schiavo was just 27 when she suffered “sudden cardiac death”. This was likely from a fatal cardiac arrhythmia and not enough blood was pumped to deliver oxygen to her brain. By the time her normal cardiac rhythm was restored in the ER her brain had suffered considerable and permanent damage.
The most metabolically active area […]