Tag Archives: ethics

Are older lives less worthy in a pandemic?

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Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick

You may have heard the comments from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick earlier this week, when he said that the elderly should be willing to die to help the economy.  Fox personality Glenn Beck made similar statements, urging older people — basically anyone over 50 — to return to work even if it meant they might get sick and die. He included himself in this group too.

Outrageous? Of course. But it’s also a sign of the ageism that’s still pervasive in the U.S.

“Let’s be clear: prioritizing the economy over the ill, the old, and the disabled is a form of #eugenics,” tweeted journalist and author Ashton Applewhite. Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.

Reporter discusses search for ‘vent farm’ patient’s identity

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Joanne Faryon

Joanne Faryon

It’s not a good idea to try to do anything else while listening to Joanne Faryon’s podcast about “Sixty-Six Garage,” a man who went unidentified in a San Diego “vent farm,” aka skilled nursing facility, for 15 years. Her gripping oral recount of how she quit her job in 2015 and spent her own money and resources to find out who he was and how he ended up this way, attached to ventilators and unable to speak or move, is chilling.

The story of “Garage” represents also another angle on the story of immigration, and how the vehicle accident just north of the California/Mexico border resulted, possibly, because he was being chased by a border agent’s helicopter. Continue reading →

Cheryl Clark (@CherClarHealth) is a MedPage Today contributor and inewsource.org investigative journalist. For most of 27 years, she covered medicine and science for the San Diego Union-Tribune. After taking a buyout in 2008, she became senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media.

HIDI highlights inherent challenges when reporting on vulnerable adults 

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Photo: Ken Lund via Flickr

People do what they must to survive, says the subject of a story by Lisa Gillespie, health reporter at NPR affiliate WFPL in Louisville, Kentucky. Even if it means traveling three hours back and forth to a food pantry, then lifting heavy bags that likely will exacerbate chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.

Beyond addiction: Medical consequences for opioid misuse

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Photo: Sharyn Morrow via Flickr

What are people leaving out in the conversation about the opioid crisis?

Joshua Barocas, who teaches Boston University’s School of Medicine, said the answer is embedded in the question. “Opioids themselves aren’t the crisis,” he said. “Overdoses are the crisis.” Continue reading →

Catherine Wendlandt is a graduate research assistant at AHCJ, pursuing a master's degree in journalism-magazine editing at the University of Missouri. She has a degree in journalism-magazine publishing in 2018 from MU and minored in Spanish and religious studies. As an undergrad, she worked at Vox Magazine and the Columbia Missourian.

Conflicts of interest can be harder to detect when reporting on psychosocial research

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Photo: Joe Houghton via Flickr

Journals require authors to disclose any possible financial conflicts of interest (COIs) because research has shown links between industry funding and study outcomes. Funding from pharmaceutical or medical device companies is relatively straightforward to track, but financial COIs in psychosocial research can be more complex and underreported. Nonetheless, they are no less important to disclose, argue Ioana-Alina Cristea, Ph.D., and John P. A. Ioannidis, M.D., DSc, in a JAMA Psychiatry commentary earlier this year. Continue reading →

Tara Haelle (@TaraHaelle) is AHCJ's medical studies core topic leader, guiding journalists through the jargon-filled shorthand of science and research and enabling them to translate the evidence into accurate information.