Last week, I excitedly registered to attend TEDx UM, which will take place in exactly a week. I attended TEDx last year and thoroughly enjoyed the stimulating environment and the intriguing discussions with friends and strangers alike between lectures and over lunch. Since then, I have listened to a myriad of online and podcasted lectures, [...]

Discussions of both climate change and its solutions often entail deliberation on human action and inaction. Evidence clearly indicates human action as the cause of extreme climate change, the worst of which is yet to come, making both past and present human beings responsible. Much has been debated regarding the solution: how best to mitigate [...]

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent and our 2012 graduation speaker, is writing a book of fiction. Gupta’s book explores the dynamics of the physician-patient relationship and analyzes ideas of doctor accountability, responsibilities, and medical advancement. Gupta argues that “there has been an erosion of the patient-physician relationship over the past couple of decades. [...]

Resuming where we left off last week: India is the largest provider of cheap, lifesaving medicines in poor countries across the globe and its supreme Court is currently facing a case that could alter that situation. In addition to the ethical discussion that balances competing values of access to affordable and needed health care and honoring intellectual [...]

Drug design, development, and distribution present a dynamic dilemma. Patenting drugs protects a company’s hard work while limits others from developing a similar drug. With patents, some argue, very few patients who need the drugs can afford them because that company has essentially a monopoly on that drug’s production and sales. Without patents, others argue, [...]

In the US, 18 patients on the organ waiting list die each day. The US, like every other country except Iran, relies on a non-commercial or altruistic system in which organs must be donated (either from living or recently deceased individuals), rather than for-profit. The US has an opt-in system in which people must elect [...]