Rabid Kitten Risk; Spiritual Teams Quash Abortion Exemptions; Redefining Death

Welcome to the latest version of Investigative Roundup, highlighting a few of the finest investigative reporting on healthcare every week.

Rabid Kitten Sparks Public Health Response

A kitten in Omaha with an uncommon pressure of rabies sparked a large emergency response that exhibits how illness detectives work to comprise a illness, discover its origin, and defend public well being, in response to the Washington Post.

The tiny kitten died inside 48 hours of a pair discovering him and bringing him to the vet. Tests outcomes, which got here again after the animal died, confirmed it was optimistic for a uncommon pressure of rabies present in raccoons that had by no means earlier than been detected west of the Appalachian mountains.

“The stakes had been excessive,” the article acknowledged. “If the virus had been capable of unfold unchecked in raccoons, transmission would simply radiate out from Omaha to surrounding areas, as a result of there aren’t many massive mountain chains, rivers, or deserts in that a part of the nation to behave as pure obstacles.”

Wildlife biologists from eight states converged on Omaha, trapping raccoons, vaccinating them, and organising labs to check roadkill for the virus. County well being officers administered rabies therapy to anybody who had been involved with the kitten.

“We’ve by no means had a nine-alarm fireplace like this,” Richard Chipman, coordinator of the nationwide rabies program on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, instructed the Post. Yet it is going to be onerous to inform whether or not the trouble was profitable till subsequent 12 months, as a result of lengthy incubation interval of the rabies virus and the time it takes to check useless animals.

Activists Prevent Abortion Compromises

A ProfessionalPublica overview of 12 of the strictest state abortion bans revealed the chokehold that anti-abortion teams have on conservative legislators who tried to cross even minor exceptions to whole abortion bans.

Republicans in lots of states with whole bans have tried to introduce quite a lot of exceptions — together with for rape and incest; giving medical doctors broader authority over well being dangers; and when the fetus clearly would not survive.

Yet organizations equivalent to Idaho Chooses Life, Tennessee Right to Life, and the North Dakota Catholic Conference have led attack advert campaigns in opposition to lawmakers who do not align with their views, ProfessionalPublica discovered. These teams even have ranking programs that give dangerous scores to legislators who do not fall into line.

Ultimately, solely 4 of the 12 states with the strictest bans made any modifications — primarily to permit abortions for instantly life-threatening ectopic and molar pregnancies — and these had been “restricted and steered by non secular organizations,” ProfessionalPublica wrote.

Redefining Death

A case in California has shone a lightweight on the method of when loss of life actually occurs, the Guardian reported.

Days after Mike O’Connor was instructed that his daughter Brittany was mind useless, the hospital had a police officer take away him from her beside, and eliminated her organs for donation. O’Connor hadn’t given his consent to take action, and was underneath the impression that Brittany was responding to his contact. Later, he discovered that his ex-wife had felt pressured to comply with the association.

O’Connor sued the hospital and the organ procurement organization, Donor Network West, and in the end gained. The courtroom dominated that the hospital had inflicted intentional misery on O’Connor by shutting him out of the method. A California legislation required consent from each mother and father.

“They did it for money,” O’Connor instructed the Guardian. “They did it as a result of they wished physique components.”

Organ donation has lengthy been the topic of criticism and debate. Part of this has centered across the Uniform Determination of Death Act that defines authorized loss of life based mostly on both circulatory or neurologic failure, after which organ donation can change into an choice for a household.

Bioethicists, legal professionals, and medical doctors have known as for a revision to the legislation to raised outline mind loss of life (for instance, by specifying assessments for it), which might enhance medical and public confidence in it. They additionally argue it could make the method much less traumatizing for fogeys like O’Connor and extra equitable for households of individuals of shade or others which were inequitably handled by the organ transplant system.