This paper explores the notions of hope and how individual patient autonomy can trump carefully reasoned ethical concerns and policies intended to regulate stem cell transplants. We argue that the same limits of knowledge that inform arguments to restrain and regulate unproven treatments might also undermine our ability to comprehensively dismiss or condemn them. Incautiously or indiscriminately reasoned policies and attitudes may drive critical information and data underground, impel patients away from working with clinical researchers, and tread needlessly on hope, (...) the essential motivator of patients, advocates and researchers alike. We offer recommendations to clinicians and health care providers to help balance the discourse with individuals seeking treatment while guarding against fraud, misconception, and patient harm. (shrink)

Hank Greely’s target article, “Human Brain Surrogates Research: The Onrushing Ethical Dilemma” reviews the manifold scientific and ethical questions surrounding models of human brains used i...

This paper explores the notions of hope and how individual patient autonomy can trump carefully reasoned ethical concerns and policies intended to regulate stem cell transplants. We argue that the same limits of knowledge that inform arguments to restrain and regulate unproven treatments might also undermine our ability to comprehensively dismiss or condemn them. Incautiously or indiscriminately reasoned policies and attitudes may drive critical information and data underground, impel patients away from working with clinical researchers, and tread needlessly on hope, (...) the essential motivator of patients, advocates and researchers alike. We offer recommendations to clinicians and health care providers to help balance the discourse with individuals seeking treatment while guarding against fraud, misconception, and patient harm. (shrink)

Traditional methods of instruction can fail to produce enduring ways of learning, especially in rapidly changing disciplines in the life sciences. Educators and funding agencies are thus calling for new, integrated teaching approaches to address the life sciences. Hierarchical frameworks are being proposed as ways to tackle curricula with large numbers of concepts. Comparing lecture‐based and interactive formats by measuring performance with pre‐ and post‐tests indicated significantly higher learning gains and better conceptual understanding in the more interactive course. Other work (...) has examined how the history of biology can be used to infuse relevance into the biology curriculum. In this paper, I describe a project at Stanford to create, implement, and evaluate an integrated curriculum in undergraduate stem cell education comprised of scientific, laboratory, and ELSI topics. (shrink)