Medicine & Health

Advances in medicine allow doctors to keep patients alive longer, tackle fertility problems and extend the viability of premature babies. They also lead to a growing number of moral questions for both the medical provider and patient. “Across the country, so-called conscience legislation allows doctors and nurses to refuse to provide abortions, contraception, sterilizations, and end-of-life care,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “But legislators have totally overlooked the consciences of providers who have made the conscientious judgment to deliver care and of the patients who seek these treatments.” Sepper says that conscience in the medical setting needs to be protected more consistently. “The one-sided protection of refusal cannot stand,” she says. “Just as we wouldn’t say that giving students vouchers only for Christian schools furthers religious freedom, we can’t say that current conscience legislation successfully lives up to its goal of protecting conscience.

​Charles E. Canter, MD, has been named the first Lois B. Tuttle and Jeanne B. Hauck Chair in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

​Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, will host the annual Dean’s Update for all employees Nov. 7 and 9.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a key difference in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and those who are cognitively normal but still have the brain plaques that characterize this type of dementia.

They said it couldn’t be done. Suresh Vedantham, MD, professor of radiology and surgery, was planning a nationwide trial comparing treatments for deep vein thromboses — dangerous blood clots in the legs’ major veins. Prior attempts had failed to meet recruitment goals, but Vedantham was eager to test a new approach. Four years later, recruitment for ATTRACT (Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis), his NIH-sponsored trial, has crossed the halfway mark.

​More students are enrolling in University College’s post-baccalaureate pre-med program because of the economy and a newfound desire to help people.

A process developed to increase efficiency and productivity in Japanese car factories has helped improve stroke treatment at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, report researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

​​Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will host a half-day seminar on forms of dementia that strike suddenly and can kill an individual in a few weeks or months.​

A major study in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) shows that bathing patients daily with an antimicrobial soap and applying antibiotic ointment to the nose reduced by 44 percent the bloodstream infections caused by dangerous pathogens, including the drug-resistant bacteria MRSA.

New research by Herbert W. “Skip” Virgin, MD, PhD, and colleagues may explain why advanced AIDS patients often develop gastrointestinal disease.