CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS: BioEdge: Chinese surgeon is planning a body transplant

domingo, 19 de junio de 2016

BioEdge: Chinese surgeon is planning a body transplant

BioEdge: Chinese surgeon is planning a body transplant

Bioedge

Chinese surgeon is planning a body transplant

by Michael Cook | 18 Jun 2016 |

Another Chinese scientist is stretching medical ethics to the breaking point. According to the New York Times, Dr. Ren Xiaoping of Harbin Medical University, is planning to do a body transplant. Several patients have already volunteered for the daring experiment, which involves attaching the head of a live person to the body of a cadaver.

At the moment the procedure seems impossible, as it seems almost impossible to reconnect the nerves in the spinal column.

But Dr Ren is eager to try. “I’ve been practicing medicine in China and overseas for more than 30 years,” he told the Times. “I’ve done the most complicated operations. But compared to this one, there’s no comparison … Whether it’s ethical or not, this is a person’s life. There is nothing higher than a life, and that’s the core of ethics.”

Leading medical experts, even in China, have condemned the plan as reckless and unethical. “The Chinese system is not transparent in any way,” according to Arthur L. Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University. “I do not trust Chinese bioethical deliberation or policy. Add healthy doses of politics, national pride and entrepreneurship, and it is tough to know what is going on.”

And a medical ethicist at Peking University, Cong Yali, said in dismay: “I don’t want to see China’s scholars, transplant doctors and scientists deepening the impression that people have of us internationally, that when Chinese people do things they have no bottom line — that anything goes.”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/chinese-surgeon-is-planning-a-body-transplant/11921#sthash.pbY7JoN1.dpuf

Bioedge

I have no love for Donald Trump, but it does seem unfair that only he is being accused of being crazy in this year’s election for president. It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man (or woman) who hankers after high public office must be in need of a psychiatrist. In 2013 psychologists published an article asserting that most recent presidents have suffered from “grandiose narcissism, which comprises immodesty, boastfulness and interpersonal dominance”. Remember that Hillary Clinton has been accused of all these failings, not just Trump. Perhaps they are crafty, not crazy.

That’s why the Goldwater Rule is a good thing. As Xavier Symons mentions below, this is an informal rule of medical ethics for psychologists and psychiatrists which bans them from commenting on the mental state and stability of public figures. It’s very rash to predict that psychological flaws disqualify a person from holding public office. Winston Churchill was depressive and an alcoholic and became the most admired statesman of the 20th century. Abraham Lincoln probably suffered from depression but is the most revered of all American presidents. Mr Trump may be unsuited to the job of president, but I’d prefer to make up my own mind on the subject without airy speculation from psychiatrists who have never spoken to the man himself.