Monthly Archives: February 2010
Western Physicians in China see things differently
Dr. Richard Cyr of the excellent "My Health Beijing" blog has had a practice, in Beijing, for the past three years. Sometime ago I communicated to him that it would be fascinating to read how his Beijing experience differs from his experience as a physician, in the United States. Over on his blog, he recently put up an entry called "An American Doctor in China: What's Different?"
Medical tourism and its related issues are complicated , but scholarship is starting to look into it.
Glenn Cohen is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School. His working paper "Protecting Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism and the Patient Protective-Argument" is the most in depth exploration of the medical tourism industry and the legal issues it raises for would-be patients and would-be providers.
In this paper Cohen explores medical tourism that involves patients seeking out treatment in other countries that is legal both there and in their own country of residence. This is one of three types of medical tourism that Cohen categorizes, the other two involving treatment is illegal in the patient's home country but legal in the destination country, and treatment that is illegal everywhere (like organ harvesting). [...]
The useful, the comedic, and the odd. It’s Links Saturday!
Once in a while we like to let you know what we’re reading. Some of the stories below may end up as the focus of a column we do in the future, most will not. But, strangely enough, all are entertaining in their own right. We have gone ahead and annotated them for you so [...]
Human Organ Printing makes sense in a world that’s 9 billion people strong
The number of biotech patents in Asia has skyrocketed in the past decade. Moreover, Asian labs have taken to stem cells as a champion issue of national prestige; stem cell technology, again, is crucial to pushing forward the development of 3D organ printing . Throw in the fact that the number of scientists, engineers, and medical doctors in the West is stagnating, and it would not be iconoclastic to say that Asia could very quickly find itself at the forefront of organ printing technology; or, at least, find itself in the very thick of things.
Sex ratio and saving, in China