Procreation After Passing: Balancing Interests in Levirate Marriage and Posthumous Reproduction

(Excerpt) After the heart-wrenching death of a partner, a child, or a family member, it is difficult for those left behind to imagine how to bring their loved one with them into the future. Memories fade, people move on with their lives, and it seems almost inevitable that the dead will be left behind, static. For some, especially those whose loved one died early in life, posthumous reproduction can seem like a way to keep the deceased alive. With relatively new technology and a myriad of associated ethical concerns, however, society, courts, and individuals struggle to determine who should have access to this solution. This Note explores the complex legal and ethical considerations surrounding posthumous reproduction, with a special emphasis on how the biblical commandment of levirate marriage can inform this debate. Part I introduces the technological capabilities of posthumous reproduction and examines the surrounding legal landscape, particularly focusing on the critical role of the decedent’s consent in United States jurisprudence. It also discusses alternative ethical frameworks that may be used when evaluating requests for posthumous reproduction. Part II delves into the ancient practice of levirate marriage from the Hebrew Bible, providing a historical context for understanding reproductive continuity and family legacy. Part III offers a comparative analysis, drawing parallels between levirate marriage and modern posthumous reproduction, challenging the current U.S. legal approach that narrowly focuses on the decedent’s explicit consent

Antiarrhythmics in patients with out-of-hospital-cardiac arrest do not improve survival to hospital discharge

VoRSUNY DownstateEmergency MedicineN/

Decreased thermal tolerance under recurrent heat stress conditions explains summer mass mortality of the blue mussel Mytilus edulis

Extreme events such as heat waves have increased in frequency and duration over the last decades. Under future climate scenarios, these discrete climatic events are expected to become even more recurrent and severe. Heat waves are particularly important on rocky intertidal shores, one of the most thermally variable and stressful habitats on the planet. Intertidal mussels, such as the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, are ecosystem engineers of global ecological and economic importance, that occasionally suffer mass mortalities. This study investigates the potential causes and consequences of a mass mortality event of M. edulis that occurred along the French coast of the eastern English Channel in summer 2018. We used an integrative, climatological and ecophysiological methodology based on three complementary approaches. We first showed that the observed mass mortality (representing 49 to 59% of the annual commercial value of local recreational and professional fisheries combined) occurred under relatively moderate heat wave conditions. This result indicates that M. edulis body temperature is controlled by non-climatic heat sources instead of climatic heat sources, as previously reported for intertidal gastropods. Using biomimetic loggers (i.e. 'robomussels'), we identified four periods of 5 to 6 consecutive days when M. edulis body temperatures consistently reached more than 30 °C, and occasionally more than 35 °C and even more than 40 °C. We subsequently reproduced these body temperature patterns in the laboratory to infer M. edulis thermal tolerance under conditions of repeated heat stress. We found that thermal tolerance consistently decreased with the number of successive daily exposures. These results are discussed in the context of an era of global change where heat events are expected to increase in intensity and frequency, especially in the eastern English Channel where the low frequency of commercially exploitable mussels already questions both their ecological and commercial sustainability.Funding Agency French Ministere de l'Enseignement Superieur et de la Recherche Region Hauts-de-France European Funds for Regional Economical Development Pierre Hubert Curien PESSOA Felloswhip Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT-MEC, Portugal) IF/01413/2014/CP1217/CT0004 National Research Foundation - South Africa 64801 South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) of the Department of Science and Technology National Research Foundation - South Africainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The "NUTS" statistic: Applying an EBM disease model to defensive medicine.

Physicians believe that malpractice concerns result in unnecessary testing, and many emergency physicians state that avoiding malpractice is a contributing factor to ordering medically unnecessary tests. Unfortunately, defensive medicine does not come without possible harm to patients who may be subject to non-beneficial, downstream testing, procedures, and hospitalizations. We submit a novel statistic, "NUTS" or "Number of Unnecessary Tests to avoid one Suit. " We calculated a NUTS of 4737 for troponin testing in ED patients with suspected myocardial infarction, meaning a clinician will need to order 4737 medically unnecessary troponin tests to avoid one missed myocardial infarction lawsuit. The NUTS framework offers us an evidence-based lens to examine defensive medicine less superstitiously and more based on currently available data.AMSUNY DownstateEmergency MedicineN/

Toxin-Based Therapeutic Approaches

Protein toxins confer a defense against predation/grazing or a superior pathogenic competence upon the producing organism. Such toxins have been perfected through evolution in poisonous animals/plants and pathogenic bacteria. Over the past five decades, a lot of effort has been invested in studying their mechanism of action, the way they contribute to pathogenicity and in the development of antidotes that neutralize their action. In parallel, many research groups turned to explore the pharmaceutical potential of such toxins when they are used to efficiently impair essential cellular processes and/or damage the integrity of their target cells. The following review summarizes major advances in the field of toxin based therapeutics and offers a comprehensive description of the mode of action of each applied toxin

La Migración Cambió Mi Visión (Migration Changed My Vision) : How and Why Oaxacan Return Migrants Run for Mayor of Their Hometowns

This thesis studies the phenomenon of migrants returning to their communities of origin to run for municipal president (mayor) in San Pablo Huixtepec and Silacayoapam, two indigenous communities in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. I ask why political parties seek migrants to run on their ticket for the municipal presidency, a puzzling phenomenon given that Oaxacan local politics is rooted in traditional indigenous governing norms which privilege in-person communal service. I also ask why return migrants seek the role of the municipal presidency. Data is collected through 19 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with return migrant municipal presidents, return migrants who sought the municipal presidency but lost, other prominent community members of the two communities, as well as Oaxacan and American migration scholars. I find that political parties seek partnerships with return migrants to increase their odds of electoral victory by associating with ‘return migrant prestige’ - a set of positive communal perceptions which are attributed to migrants. I also find that international migration instills in migrants a vision of how to modernize their communities of origin, which I posit is linked to new forms of administrative knowledge and personal administrative efficacy. This vision, and its constitutive phenomena of knowledge and efficacy, motivate return migrants to seek the municipal presidency