NHSD motions

Finally got the time to link =). The pros and cons are IMHO... feel free to comment, or even better, write something about the motions. Any news on the selection outcomes?

NHSD 2007

Theme: 21st Century Medicine: Making us better?

1. THW give the government the go-ahead in eKesihatan. (eventually revoked/put on hold)

• Pro: Accountability, Road Safety, Outsourcing.
  
• Cons: Monopoly, Cost-efficiency, Political will, Ethical issues, *A total waste of time? / counterproposal

2. THW stand behind hybrid-embryonic cloning.(*Christ! First, understand what the heck is cloning here.)

• Pro: Scientific breakthrough, Medical benefits - eg infertility, Regulations of use
  
• Cons: Playing God, Ethical issues, Abuse, Protection for the Privileged
  

3. THBT the private sector should do more to support the healthcare service in Malaysia.

4. THW make medical insurance compulsory for all.

5. THBT the Malaysian Government is not paying enough attention to the healthcare sector.

6. THW stand behind a National Healthcare Plan.

7. THW urge the Malaysian Government to play a larger role in women's healthcare.

8. THBT only pharmacists has the right to dispense drugs.

9. THW only honor the words of the terminally ill patient for euthanasia.

10. THW make passing an aptitude and communication test compulsory for all medical student before progressing to their clinical years.

11. THW make organ donation compulsory for all brain dead patients.

12. THBT medical schools should do away with the current PBL based medical curriculum.

13. THBT that medical services provided in-flight by a doctor should be absolutely free.

14. THBT the US child health insurance program should be implemented in Malaysia.

15. THBT athletes suffering from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome should be excluded from the Gender Testing regulations.

16. THBT the government should make it compulsory for the private sector to offer the option of the 5 years maternity leave.

Tagging the forgetful

This article about tagging forgetful people (Alzheimer's) with chips that store personal info. I'm sure everyone knew about the angkasawan and the debate on space exploration, so i thought I may interest you with something else. Read on!

We've tagged you

Sub Head: Uproar flares in the United States over Alzheimer's tags.

Byline: By CELESTE BIEVER

IT looks deceptively familiar. The patient rolls up his sleeve, the doctor sticks a needle into his arm, and soon it's all over.

But this is no routine vaccination. Instead, the patient has been injected with a fleck of silicon that will uniquely identify him when zapped with radio waves.

Now, nearly three years after their use was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are the focus of a new controversy.

The battle lines are being drawn in a quiet corner of West Palm Beach, Florida. On May 12, some 30 protesters held an inter-faith prayer vigil outside Alzheimer's Community Care, a day-care facility for people with dementia.

At issue is the facility's plan to implant 200 patients with microchips manufactured and donated by VeriChip of nearby Delray Beach. When scanned, the chip reveals a unique ID number, which when entered into a password-protected database gives access to medical information about its owner.

If the plan goes ahead, it will be the first time the technology has been tried on a group of people with a specific mental impairment. The forgetfulness that comes with Alzheimer's can make it impossible for people with the condition to pass on vital information when faced with a medical emergency, which is why advocates are keen to make use of RFID chips with this group.

"If for whatever reason – an automobile accident or hurricane – the person becomes separated from their loved one, they are totally, totally helpless. They can't share what medically is wrong with them," says Mary Barnes of Alzheimer's Community Care. "This could be a safety net."

Privacy advocates say that it is precisely this helplessness that makes the proposed use of the tags unacceptable. "This is a community that is not in a position to give fully informed consent or to say no," says Katherine Albrecht, of CASPIAN, a Florida-based consumer rights organisation. "The nature of the disease is that they can't fully understand."

Albrecht likens "the violent and invasive act" of implanting a chip in someone who does not have the ability to consent to the act of rape. Others agree with the sentiment, if not the comparison. "This is by definition a way of doing something that denies a person control," says Lee Tien, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco, California. "If that doesn't strike at the heart of human dignity, I don't know what does."

He and Albrecht would rather see a chip implanted in a bracelet.

Barnes says a bracelet would not be nearly as useful. People might remove it if it got uncomfortable, especially those with Alzheimer's, who might not understand why they should wear it.

Bracelets could also label people as mentally ill, whereas an implanted chip is much less obvious, says Rick Rader, of the Orange Grove Center, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The centre, which cares for children with Down's syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism, was in the media spotlight two years ago when it considered using VeriChip's device in a similar study on its patients, a plan that has since been put on the back burner.

At the time, there was an outcry from those who saw an implantable RFID as reminiscent of the "mark of the beast", as described in the book of Revelation. As explained on Albrecht's Web site, the Bible states that people who take the mark of the beast – a mark on the right hand or the forehead that contains a number or a name that is required for buying and selling – will receive a "grievous sore" as well as the "wrath of God", while those who refuse will be rewarded.

It is something Albrecht, a Christian, takes seriously. "I don't think anyone is arguing that the VeriChip implant in its current incarnation would meet that definition," she says. "But the concern for many people is that this would be a necessary precursor to getting to that point and therefore probably should be objected to." – New Scientist Magazine/Premium Health News Services/TMSI

Pix: Injecting microchips into patients with Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia would violate their rights, some say.

Some news excerpts: click links to read

Dear all,

Selamat Hari Raya, and happy holidays! I am also stuck in the Raya mood, and the most exciting event that happened in Malaysia was the Angkasawan blast-off to space. "We have lift-off!". Nina has sent me her take on the AIDS debate, I'll post it online next week. So, just a quick summary on what's interesting (that I know of):

1.'Legalise drugs' report supported (BBC)

North Wales Police Authority has backed a review of drug laws after its chief constable urged legalisation.
Richard Brunstrom asked the authority to back his calls to scrap current laws, legalise most drugs and bring in a new system to control them. While it agreed to support the report - to go to the Home Secretary as part of UK-wide consultation, it stopped short of calling to scrap current laws. A senior police officers' body called legalisation "a counsel of despair".

2. Genetic testing, Discrimination and Privacy (Council for Responsible Genetics)
The Genome Project has sparked a huge debate on its repercussions on the society. One of the most important issue was the abuse of genetic information and accompanying discrimination. Surf this site for more information.
3. Sensationalism in journalism - Yellow Journalism (Wikipedia)
Where do we draw the line?

4. Space tourism and Space exploration
The next frontier vs a total waste of time (and money)

That's all folks for this week :).
WW

The transplant debate

Weekly highlights - and links to reports/commentaries
1. Heart transplant - MAS
2. Myanmar's violence to silence- there
3. Methadone programme for drug addicts -MAS
4. Deporting and banning Bangladeshi immigrants - MAS
5. Jena Six - USA
*This is not new, but interesting: racial tensions still deeply ingrained in parts of the US.*
6. I hate sports pages... so anything in sports please let us know.

I'm sure all of us had debated organ transplants and organ donations one way or another. Be it the idea of who gets the transplant, the black market and organ "selling", or the rights to organs.

The recent case where Tee Hui Yee, a 14-year-old living on a mechanical heart for about one year, gets not one, but two heart transplants within the span of 1 week. The donor's picture was in the frontpage of nearly every newspaper in town. We celebrated the generosity of the young man, who was killed in the accident. I wonder what happened to the general rule that donors aren't supposed to reveal their identities.

That sparked an idea of a motion: THBT transplant patients can have a second chance.

Do give your supporting or dissenting arguments in the comment box below, or if you have problems with the motion, do shout-out! =)

Cheers, WW

A nuke-free world?

Source: International Herald Tribune

It's time to junk nuclear weapons

Sometimes I wonder if superpowers like the US wanted world peace. Without the "dictators" in the Middle East needing weapons, or Gaza's troops needing tonnes of bullets everyday, they can kiss a big chunk of their revenue goodbye. I may be cynical, but hey, this is a debate ;).

Should the United States aim to achieve a world free of all nuclear weapons? In one sense, the question is trivial - nuclear disarmament has been a stated aim of the United States since the dawn of the nuclear age. And the United States also committed to working toward this end when it signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968.

But in another sense, the question is fundamental. Although successive administrations (at least until the current one) have mouthed the words affirming this objective, few have actually made this commitment an organizing principle of their nuclear weapons policies. That may be about to change. Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama pledged that as president he would say: "America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons." Former Senator John Edwards has also pledged to lead an international effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, as has Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

And it isn't just presidential candidates who are talking about a nuclear-free world. So are former statesmen like Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Bill Perry, and Sam Nunn. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last January, they urged that the United States set the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, and proposed specific actions to that end.

Nearly 20 years after the Cold War ended, the time has come to make a concerted effort to verifiably rid the world of all nuclear weapons. The United States must start by recognizing that the threats it confronts have changed and so, consequently, has the role and purpose of our nuclear weapons. During the Cold War we worried about the possibility, however small, of a disarming bolt-out-of-the-blue attack on our nuclear forces. That is no longer a realistic possibility. We also confronted a superior conventional foe in Europe and elsewhere that we sought to deter by threatening nuclear escalation. Today, our overwhelming conventional forces can defeat any nation, anywhere on earth.

Tomorrow's nuclear threats are different. They are that unstable regimes or, worse, nihilistic terrorists get their hands on a bomb and use it. This threat is becoming more real as nuclear technology and materials spread around the world. The first order of business must be to ensure that all the nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and elsewhere are safe and secure. While recognizing the threat of loose nukes and materials, this administration has done far too little to make sure this happens. The next administration must do better.

The second order of business, though, is to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in order to ease the road to their elimination. The only reason the United States should maintain nuclear weapons is because others have them. There cannot be another purpose. We don't need them to deter a non-nuclear attack on ourselves or our allies; our conventional forces can deal with those contingencies. We certainly don't need them to attack some far-away or deeply buried targets, because there isn't a target whose destruction is worth breaking the 62-year-old taboo against using a single nuclear weapon.

Given this limited role for nuclear weapons, there is much that the United States can do to lift the dark nuclear shadow over the world. It can sharply reduce its nuclear stockpile to 1,000 weapons or less, if Russia agrees to go down to the same level. It can eliminate tactical nuclear weapons to underscore that it understands that a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon, no matter its size, yield, range, or mode of delivery. It can agree never to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons purposes, and accept the need for intrusive verification if other states agree to end such production as well. It can commit never again to test a nuclear device, and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

If the United States were to do all these things, it would make clear, to our citizens and the world, that it is serious about tackling the nuclear danger. It would reestablish the nation as the leader of the global nuclear nonproliferation movement. Above all, it would make the world a much safer place.

Ivo Daalder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. John Holum led the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Clinton administration. This article appeared first in The Boston Globe.