Refusing to Treat: A Collision of Medicine and Conscience

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Do doctors need protection from having to provide treatments they don’t believe in?

genetic photoDuring Human Rights Week at the Carver College of Medicine, we heard some hard truths from national news commentator, human rights activist, and podcaster Angela Rye. In her speech to the College of Medicine, she clued white people in on what black Americans face every day in 2017.  She also pointed out that Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech was just the beginning of his activism.  Meanwhile,  Mackenzie Walhof, Joyce Wahb, Claire Casteneda, and Gabe Conley discuss the department of Health and Human Services announcement that it would be forming a department to protect doctors from having their religious rights infringed. Do doctors need protection so they can refuse to treat as a matter of conscience?  Or do they self-select what they do and don’t do by where they practice and what they specialize in?

And with the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in the history books, Dave delivers a pop quiz to see if his co-hosts can identify real or fake health-adjacent gadgets.

This Week in Medical News

The march of genetic medicine continues, as the NIH has given the green light to using CRISPR to modify cancer patients’ T-cells ex vivo, hoping to turn them into killers of myeloma, sarcoma, and melanoma.  And Walmart is going to do its part in the fight against opioid addiction by including in prescriptions a substance that destroys leftover opioids when patients are done with them, for free.

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Are you ready to patent Dave’s inventions?  Do you think docs need to be protected by the government from their patients’ needs? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

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The opinions expressed in this feed and podcast are not those of the University of Iowa or the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine; nor do they reflect the views of anyone other than the people who expressed them.  If you have feedback on anything you hear on the show, positive or not, let us know.