Can Our Dysfunctional Health Care System Contain Ebola?
Not to bury the lede, I think it can, but it will be a lot harder than the talking heads on television predict.I have been writing about health care dysfunction since 2003. Lots of US politicians would have us believe we have the best health care system in the world (e.g., House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), here), Much of the commentary on Ebola also seems based on this "best health care system in the world" notion. For example, in an interview today (5 October, 2014) on Meet the Press, Dan Pfieffer, "senior White House adviser," saidThere is no country in the world better prepa...
Source: Health Care Renewal - October 6, 2014 Category: Health Management Tags: Ebola virus financialization generic managers ill-informed management perverse incentives public health organizations Source Type: blogs
On a recent secular defense of human dignity
Over at his “Human Exceptionalism” blog, and in an essay in First Things, Wesley Smith recently gave a shout out to the work of Charles Foster of Oxford University, for his reassertion of the notion of human dignity. The specific context is a discussion by Foster of “Dignity and the Ownership and Use of Body Parts” in the October 2014 issue of the Cambridge Quarterly... // Read More » (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 3, 2014 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Jon Holmlund Tags: Health Care bioethics Ethical Method / Grounding syndicated Source Type: blogs
Mirror neurons do not resonate with actions: two pieces of single-unit evidence
Gergley Csibra (2007) noticed a fundamental flaw in the logic of the mirror neuron theory of action understanding:[there is] a tension between two conflicting claims about action mirroring implied by the direct-matching hypothesis: the claim that action mirroring reflects low-level resonance mechanisms, and the claim that it reflects high-level action understanding. The tension arises from the fact that the more it seems that mirroring is nothing else but faithful duplication of observed actions, the less evidence it provides for action understanding; and the more mirroring represents high-level interpretation of the obser...
Source: Talking Brains - September 24, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Hospice Ethics Policy and Practice in Palliative Care
Oxford University Press has just published Hospice Ethics: Policy and Practice in Palliative Care.
Hospice is one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. healthcare system, a trend that is expected to accelerate as the median age of the pop... (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - September 23, 2014 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
Shared Genetic Differences In Reading And Numeric Abilities
There is a big overlap in the genes that cause differences in reading ability and the genes that cause differences in mathematical ability. Around half of the genes that influence how well a child can read also play a role in their mathematics ability, say scientists from UCL, the University of Oxford and King's College London who led a study into the genetic basis of cognitive traits. While mathematics and reading ability are known to run in families, the complex system of genes affecting these traits is largely unknown. The finding deepens scientists' understanding of how nature and nurture interact, highlighting the imp...
Source: FuturePundit - July 14, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
