. A report last week in the New York Times of a pig heart transplant performed at the University of Maryland Medical Center exemplifies a common myopic view of xenotransplantation research.

Black women are three times as likely to die from preventable pregnancy-related complications as white women in the United States. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that Black women have lower rates of health insurance. Without insurance, they cannot afford the pre-pregnancy and prenatal care they need to reduce their maternal mortality rate. A fundamental way to address this problem is to expand Medicaid.

“Between the time of my heart transplant and the moment my hair began to fall out, I arguably had suffered enough,” writes Leilani R. Graham. “Transplant brought four open-heart surgeries, ten days on ECMO, an intra-aortic balloon pump, delirium, necrotizing pneumonia, and so much muscular atrophy that I had to re-learn how to walk. [Transplant] was not the miracle I was hoping for.”

Children are returning to classrooms amid another wave of Covid cases, but some public health leaders have leaned into the message that “most of us” can ignore the continued presence of Covid by taking just “a few basic steps,” such as staying up to date with vaccinations. “Most of us,” however, does not include families with young babies, among other groups for whom these steps are unavailable or insufficient.

What happens when a health care provider decides that the patient is not a reliable narrator of their own pain? The Retrievals, a recent documentary podcast, explores this question and the excruciating pain that 12 women endured while receiving fertility treatments.

Despite its intended use as a treatment of last resort, some patients can remain on ECMO for weeks or months. And some are awake, alert, and capable of medical decision-making. RD was one such patient.

There is significant reproductive injustice and lack of access to fertility treatments by diverse populations. Nowhere is this more obvious than with egg freezing.

Recent policies by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams to identify homeless mentally ill people and remove them from the streets for involuntary...

Christopher Nolan’s film, “Oppenheimer,” which opens in theaters on July 21, highlights a value judgment that the Manhattan Project scientists had to make before Trinity, the test of the first atomic bomb.

“The Doctor,” a new play by Robert Icke, powerfully dramatizes many controversial issues of medical ethics, along with identity politics.

State medical boards and other government-appointed health officials have an obligation to follow evidence-based medicine to frame their opinions and regulations. However, there is disturbing evidence that, in some cases, political ideology is guiding health policy.

Most patients who die with medical aid in states where the practice is legal are enrolled in hospice, but coordination between those providing hospice care and those providing medical aid-in-dying (MAiD) is woefully inadequate. Many hospice facilities have policies against supporting patients who request MAiD and do not disclose these policies to prospective patients, even in states where disclosure is required.