Doctor David recently posted about a scary case recently that presented, if ever so briefly, an interesting ethical issue involving two sibling patients, one of whom was donating bone marrow to the other. There was trouble:

We had to continue, because her brother (the recipient) had already received what would otherwise be lethal doses of chemotherapy, and would surely die without getting bone marrow from her. So, with a choice of risk to one patient versus certain death of the other, the choice was easy.

For me, that choice doesn’t necessarily seem so easy at first glance. We’re talking about a perfectly healthy sister and her clinging-to-life (at least relatively-speaking) brother here. It’s an interesting interplay of primum non nocere—first, do no harm—with the struggle to heal the patient himself. Any living donor procedure presents such an issue, but this one is especially heavy.

AC from the Bayblab blog wrote recently about his experience with teaching an undergraduate course last semester as a graduate student. No, not assisting with the teaching; teaching. Preparing lectures, writing exams, grading exams, answering questions, knowing stuff…Kudos to AC. That’s damn impressive. I think I’d vomit if I were in his position, not that I will be any time soon—ever?—during my graduate career.