"The Dutch government announced plans this week to allow doctors to end the lives of terminally ill children who are under 13 years old, a decision that is bound toinflame the debate over physician-assisted death.
"The Netherlands already allows doctors to facilitate the deaths of people who are over 12 or less than a year old as long as parents have given their consent.
"In a letter to parliament on Tuesday, the Dutch health minister, Hugo de Jonge, proposed expanding the law to include children between the ages of 1 and 12 who are dying and suffering.
“In a small number of cases, palliative care isn’t sufficient,” Mr. de Jonge wrote. “Because of that, some children suffer unnecessarily without any hope of improvement.”
"Canada, parts of Australia and Colombia have also legalized physician-assisted death for adults in certain cases.
...
"Eight states and Washington, D.C., have laws that allow mentally competent adults with a terminal illness and six months or less to live to obtain prescription medication that will hasten their deaths, according to Death With Dignity, an Oregon-based nonprofit that supports such laws."
********
The first link above is to this Gallup Poll report:
Here's an announcement from Harvey Mysel, the founder of the Living Kidney Donors Network, about information available for people in need of a kidney transplant.
Overcome
the myth that you need to ASK someone to donate
Explain
that it’s all about sharing YOUR STORY and the importance
of having advocates share it too.
Having
Your Donor Find YOU! consists of 9 videos, each under 3 minutes with Supporting
Resources that helps you develop the campaign that’s outlined in the videos.
The program will soon be available in Spanish.
The NBER market design conference is on Zoom this year, today through Saturday, starting each day at noon Eastern time (9am Pacific time). I'll be speaking today at 2:45 EST (11:45 PST), about a new proposal for global kidney exchange using chains that begin overseas and end in the U.S., and about the background and history to this proposal, which initially met with considerable opposition.
2:45 pm
Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University Afshin Nikzad, University of Southern California Michael A. Rees, University of Toledo Medical Center Alvin E. Roth, Stanford University and NBER Global Kidney Chains
Here's an announcement I received from Ned Brooks, the founder of NKDO, National Kidney Donation Organization (formerly Donor to Donor). If I understand correctly, the different talks and interviews will be available at the link after first streaming in conference style, starting at 9am Pacific time. It includes a video of Ned interviewing me.
I'll update this post as necessary.
"This Wednesday, October 21st, NKDO,
National Kidney Donation Organization (formerly Donor to Donor) will release
the virtual National Kidney Donor Advocate Conference. This event is designed
to give volunteer living donor advocates the information they need to be more
effective advocates for living donation. Transplant industry experts across the
country will be presenting to you and delivering invaluable advice about their
area of expertise.
The conference will stream on our YouTube channel beginning at 12:00 noon
Eastern this Wednesday. The conference will be in segments and accessed through
the “playlist”, either streaming as one event or accessed at different points
in the conference. The link is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsoS-yavRQCVl7bwcjT2iCA ,
which will go live at noon Eastern on Wednesday.
- Have you ever wondered about the transplant surgeons who do the surgery? What
they are thinking and what they would like you to know? Dr. Joshua Mezrich,
transplant surgeon at UWMadison and author of “When Death Becomes Life: Notes
from a Transplant Surgeon” talks about his experience with organ donors and
recipients.
- Are you a living donor or a transplant recipient, or expecting to be one? Do
you remember the experience of being evaluated at the transplant center and
listening to all the information, and maybe feeling a little overwhelmed?
Living Donor Coordinator Marian Charlton and Patient Coordinator Janet Hiller
are two of the most respected voices in transplant, and they will tell you what
they want you to know to better understand the process. Anyone who goes through
this experience or has a loved one in transplant will want to see these
segments.
- Living kidney donors deserve all protections available, from reimbursement
for out-of-pocket costs and lost wages to medical coverage for medical issues
that may arise months or years after donation. Garet Hil, founder and CEO of
the National Kidney Registry, talks about the suite of protections available to
living donors through Donor Shield.
- Are you a kidney patient in need of a donor? Harvey Mysel, a two-time
kidney recipient and founder and CEO of the Living Kidney Donor Network, talks
about how to have your kidney donor find you.
- All kidney patients will benefit by watching nephrologist Dr. David Serur
talk about kidney disease and what every kidney patient and advocate needs to
know to be properly informed about how to deal with renal disease.
- Non-directed, or altruistic, donors are a rare breed, though we are trying to
change that. No one knows the brain of the non-directed donor better than
Professor Abigail Marsh, who has been studying non-directed donors for years.
If you want to better understand why someone will happily donate a kidney to a
stranger, this presentation will help answer that question. Prof. Marsh
is the author of “The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists,
Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between.”
- If you listen to podcasts, you are probably familiar with “Freakonomics”
and its creator, Stephen Dubner. It was the Freakonomics interview with Prof.
Roth that set Donor to Donor and NKDO into motion, and our interview with Mr.
Dubner will interest anyone who understands “the power of the pod”.
- Jim Gleason is a heart transplant recipient and the president of TRIO,
Transplant Recipients International Organization. Mr. Gleason is a motivational
speaker who asks the question, “Are you a cookie monster?”
Date: October 21, 2020 Time: 7:00am-8:00am Place: Webinar
Rishwain Visiting Speaker: Alvin E. Roth, PhD
Al Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. He shared the 2012 Nobel memorial prize in Economics. His research interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and market design. In the 1990’s he directed the redesign of the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) and currently is a member of the Board of Directors. He has been involved in the design and organization of kidney exchange, which helps incompatible patient-donor pairs find life-saving compatible kidneys for transplantation. He is on the Advisory Board of the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC). His work on kidney transplantation led him to become interested in repugnant transactions, and more generally how markets, and bans on markets, gain or fail to gain social support.
The University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. CME Course MGR21045
UCSF designates this live activity for a maximum of 43 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
*The above credit is inclusive of credit for all Fiscal Year 2020-2021 Department of Surgery Grand Rounds.
Disclosure declaration – No one in a position to control the content of this activity has a relationship with an ACCME-defined commercial interest. Planners Wen Shen, MD, Julie Ann Sosa, MD, MA, Lygia Stewart, MD, and Ryutaro Hirose, MD, have stated that they have no relationships to disclose. Speaker Roth has stated that he has no relevant relationships to disclose.
This activity is supported by the Department of Surgery’s Howard Naffziger Endowment Fund.
Some people like to say things that other people think they shouldn't say. In the age of the internet, politeness can be (somewhat) automated, by banning certain words. But of course, words have contexts. Here's a funny story from the Guardian:
"Participants in a virtual paleontology session found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place last week, when a profanity filter prevented them from using certain words – such as bone, pubic, stream and, er, beaver – during an online conference.
"The US-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) held its annual meeting virtually this year due to the pandemic, but soon found its audience stifled when they tried to use particular words.
"Convey Services, which was was handling the conference, used a “naughty-word filter,” for the conference, outlawing a pre-selected list of words.
"“Words like ‘bone’, ‘pubic’, and ‘stream’ are frankly ridiculous to ban in a field where we regularly find pubic bones in streams,” said Brigid Christison, a master’s student in biology attending the event
...
"Some discovered bias in the algorithm, too. Jack Tseng, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Berkley pointed out that the filter had banned the common surname Wang but not Johnson – even though both are frequently used as slang words to describe a man’s genitals."
"Wang" is banned but not "Johnson" (both used as slangs). This western-centric filter erasing the surname of 90+ million Chinese but not <2 million people of European descent is unexpectedly on brand for 2020, ! My PhD advisor is X. **** by the way. "
"It is of concern that the US$70 billion infant formula industry has been actively exploiting concerns about COVID-19 to increase sales, in violation of the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code)1 and national law in many countries.
"Globally, infants who are not exclusively breastfed are 14 times more likely to die than infants who are exclusively breastfed.2 Lockdown measures have diminished household income, and the UN World Food Programme estimates that by the end of 2020, 265 million people may be facing food insecurity,3, 4 making breastfeeding even more important. Public bodies that are independent of industry influence, including WHO5, 6 and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health,7 have unanimously asserted that no evidence exists to suggest breastfeeding increases the risk of infants contracting COVID-19, and that skin-to-skin contact remains essential for newborn health and maternal health.
"By contrast, large manufacturers of breastmilk substitutes have inappropriately positioned themselves as sources of public health expertise, and suggested various unnecessary hygiene measures, the use of expressed breastmilk, and the separation of mothers from their babies. Such recommendations undermine breastfeeding and thus increase the risk of infant death. Baby Milk Action and the International Baby Food Action Network8 have documented numerous infringements of both the Code and laws associated with COVID-19."
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