Faculty Bibliography

The use of fetal tissue in transplants for treating illnesses such as Parkinson's disease and juvenile diabetes has raised the hopes of patients, their families, and the biomedical community. But, this practice has created considerable controversy. Concerns arise because tissue is usually obtained from electively aborted fetuses. Despite the controversy, there has been little systematic and sustained examination of the ethical and policy issues posed by the use of fetal tissue in biomedicine. The lack of information and analysis hampers serious discussion. In the Spring of 1988, the Center for Biomedical Ethics began an interdisciplinary research project on the scientific, ethical, and policy issues raised by the use of fetal tissue in biomedicine. Twenty-five scholars, drawn mainly, but not exclusively, from the faculty of the University of Minnesota, met to undertake the study. The members of this research group included experts in neonatology, pediatrics, neurology, neurosurgery, organ transplantation, tissue procurement, cell biology, immunology, epidemiology, law, philosophy, moral theology, and the behavioral sciences. The group met every three weeks over a period of ten months to collect and review information about the use of fetal tissue -- with special attention to transplantation -- the potential sources of fetal tissue, and the relevant laws and guidelines in the U.S. and other nations. Six members of the research group had primary responsibility for writing this report.

If [Janet Adkins] committed suicide using [Jack Kevorkian]'s machine, then how could the doctor be guilty of murder? After all, there is a videotape made the night before her death in which Janet Adkins indicates that she wanted to die

Let's remember who found [David H. Souter]: Bush's factotum, John H. Sununu, the chief of staff. Sununu told Bush that when he was governor of New Hampshire, he chanced to meet a strange, monkish little man who professed the wisdom of strict, original- intent judicial conservatism but who had never written an article on legal issues nor ventured a public opinion

The key events took place almost unnoticed in California. In March, the California Medical Association adopted a resolution supporting the legal availability of the abortion pill, RU 486. This followed hard on the heels of a resolution by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors calling for RU 486 to be made available to women

Rural America is facing a health-care crisis. All over the United States, few doctors are willing to establish and maintain practices in small towns and rural counties. Huge parts of Mississippi and West Virginia - totaling an area larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined - have only a single doctor to provide care. And numerous counties in Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska and many other states have no doctors at all

[Kevorkian] is disqualified from even trying to answer this question. He has spent the past few years promoting his ideas about the desirability of euthanasia, obitoriums, killing prisoners in a way that permits the salvage of their organs for transplantation and marketing his goofy, homemade death machine. To say that Kevorkian had a conflict of interest when it came time to decide if [Janet Adkins] should be allowed to use his machine is to speak in the faintest whisper of understatement

[Anna Johnson] says the Calverts quickly lost interest in the pregnancy. She claims they breached their contract with her by failing to make payments they owed her in a timely manner. She says she has gotten no emotional support from the Calverts. When she went into false labor, she says, they refused to drive her to the hospital

Now, a flurry of editorials and opinion pieces urge Americans to fill out living wills. This is sound advice. But the tragedy of the Supreme Court's decision in the [Nancy Cruzan] case is that relatively few people will heed it, and many more cannot

[Myrna] likes to read, to argue about politics, to receive visits from her many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and to watch her favorite soap operas on TV. But she has a hard time doing any of these things because her roommate in the nursing home is demented. Myrna's roommate has Alzheimer's disease

The Jarvik heart brought international fame to its inventor, Robert Jarvik; to William DeVries, the surgeon who first placed it into a human being; and to such patients as Barney Clark, Jack Burcham and Murray Haydon, who received it as a permanent replacement for their own failing hearts. The device also put the Humana Corp. on the map when its president lured DeVries to the hospital chain's flagship hospital in Louisville, Ky., with the promise that the for-profit corporation would pay for 100 implants