Subject(s)
Cooperative Behavior , International Cooperation , Organ Transplantation/ethics , Tissue and Organ Harvesting/ethics , Tissue and Organ Procurement/ethics , Tissue and Organ Procurement/organization & administration , China , Humans , Organ Transplantation/education , Organ Transplantation/legislation & jurisprudence , Tissue and Organ Harvesting/education , Tissue and Organ Harvesting/legislation & jurisprudence , Tissue and Organ Procurement/legislation & jurisprudence , United StatesABSTRACT
A 35-year-old man attempted suicide by a shotgun discharge to his abdomen. Although the patient had been awake, oriented, and conversing about baseball during the emergency medical services ride to the hospital, he made no mention of his religious beliefs. He is bleeding profusely when he arrives at the emergency room (ER). He is taken to the operating room (OR) for abdominal surgery to stop the bleeding and repair his damaged liver. He has lost a critical amount of blood and is under anesthesia when a call to the OR comes from an ER nurse who has been approached by the patient's family and given a Jehovah's Witness card signed by the patient. The card states: "NO BLOOD TRANSFUSION! As a God-fearing Christian and a believer in Jehovah's word, the Bible, I hereby demand that blood, in any way, shape or form, is NOT to be fed into my body; however, blood substitutes may be used in case of extreme loss of blood."
Subject(s)
Blood Transfusion/ethics , Hemorrhage/therapy , Jehovah's Witnesses , Patient Care/ethics , Patient Rights/ethics , Abdominal Injuries/etiology , Abdominal Injuries/therapy , Adult , Hemorrhage/etiology , Humans , Male , Wounds, Gunshot/complicationsABSTRACT
Somatic cell gene therapy has yielded promising results. If germ cell gene therapy can be developed, the promise is even greater: hundreds of genetic diseases might be virtually eliminated. But some claim the procedure is morally unacceptable. We thoroughly and sympathetically examine several possible reasons for this claim but find them inadequate. There is no moral reason, then, not to develop and employ germ-line gene therapy. Taking the offensive, we argue next that medicine has a prima facie moral obligation to do so.
Subject(s)
Ethics , Genetic Therapy , Germ Cells , Risk Assessment , Risk , Embryo, Mammalian , Eugenics , Genetic Diseases, Inborn , Human Characteristics , Human Rights , Humans , Informed Consent , Methods , Moral Obligations , Patient Care , Social Justice , Social Responsibility , Wedge ArgumentABSTRACT
The nutrient cycling model, NuCM, which incorporates state-of-the-art understanding of the biogeochemical and transport processes controlling nutrient cycles, simulates vegetation growth, litterfall and decay, soil biogeochemical processes, and movement of water. Output of the model includes the available nutrients in soil strata and vegetation pools and the fluxes between pools on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. Solution and adsorbed concentrations in the various soil layers can be plotted versus time. The model has been used to simulate effects of acidic deposition on nutrient status at two sites: Huntington Forest, New York and Smokies Tower, Tennessee. Model results show only minor changes in nutrient status at the sites over the next 65 years at current rates of acidic deposition. The results also show only small differences in soil nutrient status between two alternative scenarios for reduction of SO(x) emissions. Neither "threshold effects" nor abrupt changes in nutrient pool sizes occurred in either of the simulations.
