No Bioethics Committee meeting this week

The Bioethics Committee will not be meeting this week. Instead, we encourage you to attend the general AMSA event, "Brutally Honest" from 9-10PM on Tuesday 2/23. E-board members will be on hand to answer your pre-med related questions. Please check your email for details about the location. We'll see you there!

Follow-up to Rom Houben discussion

Last semester, we discussed the case of Rom Houben, a man who was thought to be in a complete vegetative state for 23 years prior to communicating with doctors via facilitated communication. This week, Houben's doctor released the results of facilitated communication tests which indicated that Houben was not actually communicating by this method. These results raise concerns about the use of facilitated communication, and on a braoder level, the use of new technologies in medical practice.



You can read about it here, " Belgian coma 'writer' Rom Houben can't communicate" from BBC online, February 20, 2010.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8526017.stm



Also, for more background information about facilitated communication, its usage by autistic children, and the surrounding controversy, please read the article, " 'Helping' Autistic People to Speak" from Time Magazine, May 10, 2006.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1192775,00.html

Brain Scan allows communication with vegetative patients?

This past week, the New England Journal of Medicine published the findings of a study which suggest that brain scan technology may allow communication with patients in vegetative states. The study monitored brain activity in vegetative patients using functional MRI imaging. When responding to a question, the subjects were told to imagine playing tennis, or walking in a familiar area, with each activity activating a different area of the brain and corresponding to either a "yes" or "no" response to the question.



You can read more about it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020302887_2.html?hpid=topnews



Here is the original article which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0905370

This past week, the medical journal, The Lancet, published a full retraction of a 1998 article which suggested a link between MMR vaccines and autism in children. This 1998 article played a large role in the recent anti-vaccination movement.



Read more about it here:



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041544115791952.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

This week's article

We will be discussing end of life issues at this week's meeting. Please read the following article, " Weighing Medical Costs of End of Life Care" which appeared in the New York Times on December 22, 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/health/23ucla.html?_r=2