Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 104-105.

Shared decision-making between patients and physicians strives to balance decisional responsibility for clinical decisions. Directed by patients, SDM incorporates patients’ values and prefere...

Over the past decade, US patients and clinicians have endured medication shortages of nearly every class, including many lifesaving medications. These shortages have persisted despite determined efforts by federal, academic, and professional organizations. Medication shortages have resulted in lost lives, medication errors, and substantial financial cost. Economic drivers are the primary cause for drug shortages, exacerbated by manufacturing and quality problems, and unreliable and uncertain sources for many raw materials required to synthesize these drugs. Drug shortages force clinicians to make (...) untenable choices and decide which of their patients should receive a lifesaving scarce medication. The COVID-19 pandemic has stressed many hospitals’ ability to provide basic care and aggravated existing drug shortages. The influx of patients suffering from COVID-19 has exposed flaws in the fractured manner in which essential medications reach patients. The unique nature of COVID-19, often requiring prompt and decisive clinical decision-making, challenges the accepted approach for ethical analysis adopted by clinical ethicists. The author, a clinician and bioethicist, notes the ethical challenges he and other frontline providers have faced in deciding which patients are “more deserving” of a scarce medication. (shrink)

The present issue of Science in Context comprises a collection of articles dealing with various, specific aspects of the history of mathematics during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Like the September issue of 2003 of this journal, which was devoted to the history of ancient mathematics, this collection originated in the aftermath of a meeting held in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem in May 2001, under the title: “History of Mathematics in the Last (...) 25 Years: New Departures, New Questions, New Ideas.” Taken together, these two topical issues are meant as a token of appreciation for the work of Sabetai Unguru and his achievements in the history of mathematics. (shrink)