Category: Bioethics Education

(KFF Health News) – Ambient AI scribes are being hailed by physicians as a game changer that helps free them to focus on their patients rather than their computer keyboard. By releasing doctors from the onerous and time-consuming task of documenting what happens during every patient encounter, early studies show, AI scribes may help reduce physician burnout and after-hours “pajama time” catching up on work in the evening.

The potential of AI to transform every aspect of the health care system — from patient care to clinical efficiency to medical innovation — is an area of intense focus, including by the Trump administration. (Read More)

(NBC News) – The nation’s leading group of pediatricians has issued its annual recommendations about which vaccines children should receive — marking the first significant break from the federal government’s proposed vaccine schedule in 30 years.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said Monday that it will continue to endorse vaccines protecting kids against 18 potentially life-threatening diseases, such as Covid, the flu, hepatitis A and B and measles.

While that guidance largely reflects what has previously been recommended, it no longer aligns with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance. On Jan. 5, the CDC reduced the number of diseases on the vaccine schedule from 18 to 11. (Read More)

(Reuters) – Britain and several other European countries have lost their measles elimination status, the World Health Organization said on Monday, after a jump in infections across the continent.

Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan also lost their status, and the WHO urged countries to boost vaccination rates, particularly among under-protected populations, to prevent the viral disease infecting more children. (Read More)

(Axios) – The escalation of ICE activity in Minnesota is disrupting care at hospitals and clinics that already were navigating shifting legal standards on immigration enforcement in their facilities.

Why it matters: Health workers say many patients aren’t coming in for necessary care out of fear they’ll be detained by federal agents. (Read More)

(The Independent) – A charity boss fears some hospice staff and volunteers may resign if the assisted dying bill becomes law, as the sector braces for profound changes.

In an already under-resourced workforce, Hospice UK’s chief executive Toby Porter fears the passing of the controversial legislation could see workers who disagree with the bill exit the sector.

He said there were many complicated, unanswered questions around the future of end-of-life and palliative care, but he is certain all aspects of hospices would be significantly impacted. (Read More)

(Daily Mail) – Lab–grown life has taken a major leap forward as scientists use AI to create a new virus that has never been seen before.

The virus, dubbed Evo–Φ2147, was created by scientists from scratch using new technologies that could revolutionise the course of evolution.

With just 11 genes, compared to the 200,000 in the human genome, this virus is among the simplest forms of life.

However, scientists believe that the same tools could one day create entire living organisms or resurrect long–extinct species. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Drawing on his love of fly-fishing, he developed a balloon catheter that removes blood clots from patients’ limbs in a minimally invasive way. It has saved millions of lives.

Six-plus decades after its invention, the Fogarty catheter is used hundreds of thousands of times a year around the world in vascular, cardiac and thoracic surgeries. According to the American College of Surgeons and Fogarty Innovation, a nonprofit he founded, it remains the most widely used catheter for removal of blood clots and is credited with having saved an estimated 20 million lives globally. (Read More)

(NBC News) – The agency plays a key role in tracking disease spread and vaccination rates. Last year, it seemed to back away from some of that work, according to new research.

Nearly half of the databases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to update regularly — surveillance systems that tracked public health information like Covid vaccination rates and hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus — have been paused without explanation, according to new research.

The findings, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, indicate that at the start of 2025, the CDC maintained 82 databases that were updated at least monthly. But by the end of October, the study found, 38 had gone stale, with 34 showing no new entries at all in the previous six months. (Read More)

(NBC News) – The agency plays a key role in tracking disease spread and vaccination rates. Last year, it seemed to back away from some of that work, according to new research.

Nearly half of the databases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to update regularly — surveillance systems that tracked public health information like Covid vaccination rates and hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus — have been paused without explanation, according to new research.

The findings, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, indicate that at the start of 2025, the CDC maintained 82 databases that were updated at least monthly. But by the end of October, the study found, 38 had gone stale, with 34 showing no new entries at all in the previous six months. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Dozens of doctors and therapists said chatbots had led their patients to psychosis, isolation and unhealthy habits.

Mental health workers across the country are navigating how to treat problems caused or exacerbated by A.I. chatbots, according to more than 100 therapists and psychiatrists who told The New York Times about their experiences.

While many mentioned positive effects of the bots — like helping patients understand their diagnoses — they also said the conversations deepened their patients’ feelings of isolation or anxiety. More than 30 described cases resulting in dangerous emergencies like psychosis or suicidal thoughts. One California psychiatrist who often evaluates people in the legal system said she had seen two cases of violent crimes influenced by A.I. (Read More)

(Washington Post via MSN) – Safety standards have improved since the industry’s early days in China, when botched surgeries and unlicensed aesthetic products were commonplace. But the combination of social media, cosmetic clinics trawling for business in a competitive market and practitioners without proper qualifications is creating a dangerous underbelly in the industry, according to interviews with plastic surgeons, clinic owners, influencers, patients and industry experts in China. (Read More)

(Wired) – More and more Chinese adoptees in the US are trying to reunite with their birth parents. For Youxue, it took more than a decade, and a remarkable coincidence.

Decades earlier, the conditions that shaped this family’s life were set in motion by China’s one-child policy. The government’s population control program, enacted in the late 1970s, turned family planning into state-mandated decisions about which children were allowed to exist. In the ’80s, rural parents were allowed to have a second child only if the first was a daughter. Families who violated the policy received large fines and other penalties, sometimes sterilization and physical violence.

Today, there are more than 82,000 Chinese adoptees in the United States, most adopted between 1999 and 2016. More than 60 percent of the children adopted in that period were girls. The majority of adoptive parents are white, wealthy, and well educated. Because child abandonment is illegal in China, very little documentation connects Chinese adoptees with their birth families. (Read More)

(Washington Post via Yahoo!) – For years, parents alleged that top social media companies had gotten teens hooked on their products with addictive design features, arguing in legal filings these choices led to depression, anxiety, eating disorders – and in some tragic circumstances – death.

These stories helped spur a sweeping regulatory movement that led states and governments around the world to pass laws restricting teens’ use of social media and forced tech companies to take bolder actions to protect young people.

Now, those concerned parents will make their argument in court this week when the first of several high-profile social media addiction lawsuits against Meta, TikTok and YouTube goes to trial. These suits will test the proposition of whether social media causes psychological harm, which could have profound implications for the industry along with ordinary consumers. (Read More)

(CNN) – Beware of the AI chatbot that becomes more than just a friend, or worse, an emotional crutch. Pope Leo XIV has warned about overly “affectionate” chatbots, urging regulation to prevent humans from forming serious emotional bonds with their AI companions.

The US-born pontiff, writing in a message ahead of the Catholic Church’s annual World Day of Social Communications, said artificial intelligence risked diluting human creativity and decision-making. (Read More)

(SF Gate) – Nearly six years later, a generation of first-year college students is still feeling the fallout, shaped by years of online high school, isolation and disrupted learning during some of their most formative years. Even as college life is back to business as usual, educators say the pandemic’s academic and emotional aftershocks remain. The students in the “COVID cohort,” or those who graduated high school after 2020, are starting college with noticeable learning gaps and deep anxiety about belonging, effects that experts warn could linger for years. (Read More)