Medicine

Virologists, the imaginative bunch that we are, often name new viruses after the places they were first found. Zika virus was initially described in Uganda’s Zika forest, while the Ebola river, flowing through what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, needs no explanation for the dread disease documented there. There are existing case reports of human outbreaks in South America stemming from gatherings and parties. That said, the documented efficiency of the transmission under these circumstances is extremely low Hantaviruses are chips off the same block.

"Global health” has emerged in the last decade or so as one of the growth areas in the medical and quasi-medical world. The CDC has a Center for Global Health which “works to protect Americans from dangerous and costly public health threats, including Covid-19, vaccine-preventable diseases, HIV, TB and malaria — responding when and where health threats arise.” Global Health “is a collaborative effort by technologists and researchers from leading international institutions to build a trusted, detailed and accurate resource of real-time infectious disease data.” The Global Health Corps is “a diverse community of health equity leaders.

I was legitimately worried when I saw a friend post that her daughter may lose access to an important drug used to treat her autoimmune disease. In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, my friend said drugs such as Methotrexate and Mifepristone were being banned in some states because of their dual purposes as medicative abortion drugs. As an ardent pro-lifer, I’ve been adamant to clarify how the overturning of Roe v. Wade affects women outside of the legality of abortion itself. When I first heard that ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage treatment could be criminalized in some way, I immediately consulted doctors and lawyers who could clarify the law’s intent.

'Families marching five by five Hurrah! Hurrah! Families marching five by five Hurrah! Hurrah! Some people choose their family And they love each other so proudly And they all go marching in The Big Parade!' In June, the Journal of Medical Ethics spelled out what it means in practice to teach children that family bonds are optional. If the world is to ‘take LGBT testimony seriously,’ argued Maura Priest, a bioethicist at the Arizona State University, then ‘parents should lose veto power over most transition-related pediatric care’. In many states, this is already well-established. In 2015, Oregon passed a law giving minors the right to receive transgender medical interventions at taxpayers’ expense, and without their parents’ consent.