Menopause: disease state or state of nature? Implications for molecular medicine.

Menopause is a universal transition for women who live along enough, yet even today surprisingly little is known about the range of normal experience or the factors that might affect it. The associated physical changes can result in temporary symptoms for some women and an increase in the risk factors for common diseases in most postmenopausal women. These deserve investigation by molecular medicine, but the use of therapies or screening derived from these data will also depend on cultural views of whether menopause is 'a disease to be treated in all women'.

Using fetus-derived tissues for molecular medicine: tension between research and ethics.

In April 1995, a research group reported that a patient with Parkinson's disease had apparently been successfully treated with injections of fetus-derived cells. An editorial that addressed the ethical and legal issues surrounding this research accompanied the report, illustrating the additional burden shouldered by investigators who use fetus-derived tissues for medical research and the corresponding implications for patients who might benefit from this research. No matter how impressive the results, or how great the burden of disease the research seeks to address, molecular medicine and medical ethics are inextricably intertwined in this field.

Hospital accidents and incidents: what a new reporting system has found.

This article examines the New York State reporting system for incidents and accidents, and discusses some of the statistics that were issued after its first year of operation.