In res humanus

Thoughts on what it means to be human in today’s world

Archive for Ethics

Whose Snooping in Your Medical Files?

State health regulators in California have uncovered what appears to be a hotbed of snooping at one of the premier medical institutes in the state — UCLA Medical Center. What started as one employee illegally viewing the personal medical records of patients including Farah Fawcett and Britney Spears has turned into a pool of 68 different employees all accused of the same sort of snooping. Snoopers include nurses, physicians, volunteers and administrators at the facility. If this type of thing is going on at one facility, just think of what is going on everywhere else.

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MDR-TB: Why this bowl of letters is important.

A study just published in the British Medical Journal indicates that the number of cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has increased dramatically in recent years in the UK. While we here in the US might not care much, we should. It is only recently that the UK has become a center of immigration; we have accepted immigrants for years and so disease trends are likely now to be similar. Rises in MDR-TB in the UK moreover, mirror rises seen elsewhere even in more insulated countries. The take home lesson: we are bound to be hit, meaning that you should start being concerned now about your future health.

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Bad News for Science Education

The state of Florida has just fallen off the flat, 6,000 year old earth they think we all live on (which, by the way we don’t). Florida’s House and Senate just passed legislation pushing religion into the science curriculum. Despite the claim of “academic freedom”, all Florida has done is to show that A) their state government, at least, is run by idiots; and B) they have condemned their students to receiving substandard science education.

Got kids in Florida? You may want to move.

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