Yearly Archive for 2009
Barriers to Emergency Contraception
Emergency contraception (EC) has been available in the United States for almost a decade. It is a safe and effective contraceptive choice when other methods have failed or have not been used and a pregnancy is not desired. Still, many barriers exist to the prompt and reliable provision of EC to appropriate patients. While the ethical battle concerning EC will likely never cease, these concerns do not represent the greatest barriers to appropriate EC access.
Medical Controversy – When Does Life Begin?
One of the most contested questions in history is a seemingly simple one: When does life begin? Different cultures and societies have battled to answer this question, and to date no consensus has been reached. Of course, the answer to this question has profound ethical, legal, moral, and philosophical implications. As the United States debates the merits and pitfalls of topics like embryonic stem cell research and abortion, the arguments for the beginnings of life have found themselves renewed. Along the timeline from preconception through birth and beyond, there are several stops where one group or another has drawn a line in the sand and proclaimed that life has officially begun. In the interest of providing some clarity on this issue, let us examine the rationale behind why these groups picked their points. As a reference, a textbook on developmental biology will provide some framework.
Wash Your Hands, Save a Life
Health care-associated infections (HAI) occur in a variety of settings and are caused by a variety of pathogens. They occur in ambulatory, institutional, hospital, and home-based settings. Four primary categories of HAIs exist, most of which are seen in acute care settings: surgical site infections, central line-associated blood stream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and catheter-related urinary tract infections. (Together, these 4 categories of infections account for 75% of HAIs each year.) HAIs are among the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for more than 100,000 deaths annually. Overall, there are nearly 2 million HAIs reported each year.
Are Humans Hard-Wired to Torture?
With the reign of the Bush administration at an end, one issue that has plagued his legacy is the government-sanctioned acts of torture. The United States government was involved with several controversial actions ranging from the indefinite detention of so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, to the outright abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib. The almost universal response of the purveyors of torture was, "I was just following orders." Most citizens have difficulty accepting this argument as legitimate, and demand that the torturer be held accountable for their actions as criminal accomplices. We are quick to demonize these individuals as horrible outliers of our society, an unsavory fringe who are clearly well out-of-bounds with the norms of human behavior. However, research into the psychology of torture and obedience tells quite a different story.
Popular Posts
- The Love Drug
- Women After Sex
- Fatty Acids and Suicide Risk
- Mind Games - Science's Attempts at Thought Control
- Risks of Personalized Medicine
- Mental Health Disorders Prevalent Among Youth Worldwide
- Is Giftedness Nothing More than Good Genes?
- The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
- Behind the Masks - The Mysteries of Dissociative Identity Disorder
- The NeuroSocial Network
Future Posts
- The Brain’s Buying Power
Latest Posts
- Aging Intelligently
- A Nicotine Patch a Day Keeps the Cognitive Impairment Away
- The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
- Diabetes Impairs Cognition
- Media Violence Leads to Real Violence
- Intelligence – Are You Holding Back Your Brain?
- Childhood Aggression Predicts Health Care Use Later in Life
- The Brain’s Border Patrol – Blood Brain Barrier
- Risks of Personalized Medicine
- BED-head and Obesity – Food for Thought
Comments
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