The emergency department is always noisy, but sudden screams from a staffer still get attention. The triage nurse is yelling, “Not breathing, had vitals at triage and just croaked,” as she runs toward us pushing a wheelchair. In it, a pale, thin man is slumped over and looking gray. I’m the attending physician in charge. Amid the usual strokes, heart attacks and bleeding ulcers, my day just became interesting. (Washington Post)

Is it time for all community-based doctors to turn to e-prescribing to cut down on the number of medication errors? According to Rainu Kaushal and colleagues from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, electronic prescriptions can dramatically reduce prescribing errors - up to seven-fold. Their study of the benefits of e-prescribing in primary care practices appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. (PhysOrg)

The doctors’ union claims that England’s medical records database is being pushed through too fast, with details sometimes being uploaded without patients’ knowledge. But those behind the new system say many patients are astonished that hospital doctors still do not have access to basic information, and the process to opt out is very straightforward. What are the issues? (BBC News)

The State Duma has renewed a temporary ban on human cloning in Russia, Interfax reported Wednesday. The bill, approved in a third and final reading Wednesday, sets a ban on cloning until a federal law can be enacted to regulate the cloning of humans, the report said. (The Moscow Times)

A provincial network that has helped patients, health-care workers and health regions with difficult medical ethics questions could fold because of funding cuts. Supporters say Alberta Health should reinstate funding to the Provincial Health Ethics Network. They say the loss will lessen the province’s ability to thoughtfully deal with ethical dilemmas likely to increase with an aging population, new technologies, more experimental drugs and growing chronic health problems. (Edmonton Journal)

Healthy elderly people who are simply “tired of living” could be allowed to end their lives with a lethal injection under new euthanasia laws being debated by the Dutch parliament. (Telegraph)

Clinical trials focus on new drugs, which doesn’t help doctors compare the effectiveness of one treatment with another. (Los Angeles Times)

AMERICAN scientists have for the first time unlocked the genetic code of an entire family, and made a startling discovery - that parents pass on fewer mutations than previously thought. Scientists had long believed that each parent passed on some 75 genetic mutations to their children. (News.com.au)

Richard Doerflinger doesn’t look the part of a high-powered political strategist. Bearded and bespectacled, he works in a small, cluttered office out of one of Washington’s less fashionable neighborhoods, far from the lobbying bastions of K Street. (NPR)

Last week the US Ambassador visited the Medical School to meet with Maltese doctors to discuss the US health plan. He came across as a humble person, actually asking us about our system and how they, as Americans, can learn from Europeans, who have managed to create health care systems which are based on a social justice system different from that in the US. (The Malta Independent

It’s been one year since President Barack Obama lifted the Bush era’s eight-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Read excerpts from producer Susan Goldstein’s and correspondent Betty Rollin’s recent interview about ethical guidelines, current research, and the limitations of Obama’s policy with Dr. George Daley of Children’s Hospital Boston, where a new web site is now available on the state of stem cell research. (PBS)

Criticisms of the ethical justification of antidoping legislation are not uncommon in the literatures of medical ethics, sports ethics and sports medicine. Critics of antidoping point to inconsistencies of principle in the application of legislation and the unjustifiability of ethical postures enshrined in the World Anti-Doping Code, a new version of which came into effect in January 2009. This article explores the arguments concerning the apparent legal peculiarities of antidoping legislation and their ethically salient features in terms of: notions of culpability, liability and guilt; aspects of potential duplication of punishments and the limitations of athlete privacy in antidoping practice and policy. It is noted that tensions still exist between legal and ethical principles and norms that require further critical attention. [Premium (Journal of Medical Ethics)]

Many people are worried that the health-care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats will fail to bend the “cost curve.” A number of commentators are urging no votes because of this, and Republicans have asked the president to start health reform over, focusing squarely on the issue of cost reduction. [Premium (Wall Street Journal)]

I have proposed that a scenario of slower-than-disruptive tech development over the next 15-20 years combined with weak or reduced opposition to human enhancement could result in “increasing irrelevance” for transhumanists. But what exactly does that mean? (IEET)

Dr. Peter J. Pronovost, 45, is medical director of the Quality and Safety Research Group at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, which means he leads that institution’s quest for safer ways to care for its patients. He also travels the country, advising hospitals on innovative safety measures. The Hudson Street Press has just released his book, “Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor’s Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out,” written with Eric Vohr. An edited version of a two-hour conversation follows. (New York Times)

Disability groups are split over a Family Court decision to approve the sterilisation of an 11-year-old girl. Family Court judge Paul Cronin found that the performance of a hysterectomy on the child, identified only as Angela, was “in the child’s best interests”. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can infect bone marrow cells — including, possibly, hematopoietic stem cells, according to a study published online today (March 7) in Nature. The findings suggest the virus can hide in an inactive state for long periods of time, evading treatment, even in individuals without detectable viral loads. (The Scientist)

The UK Human Tissue Authority (HTA) has issued an official warning that unlawful collections of umbilical cord blood have been taking place in the UK, and that such instances ‘may compromise safety and quality standards’. (PHG Foundation)

THE JUDGE Rotenberg Center in Canton, which stands alone in its use of painful skin shocks to eradicate self-mutilation and sudden assault, is a storehouse of ethical and medical dilemmas. But it’s no shock - and no shame - that the parents of some autistic and mentally retarded children embrace this controversial school. (The Boston Globe)

Among patients with advanced heart failure, blacks and Hispanics are less likely to receive hospice care than whites, researchers found. After adjustment for sociodemographic, clinical, and geographic factors, blacks were 41% less likely to have hospice care than whites (OR 0.59, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.73) and Hispanics were 51% less likely (OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.66), according to Jane Givens, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues. (MedPage Today)