Apr 1, 2021

TASK & PURPOSE: Frank Sullivan, 69, was sentenced to five years probation and given a $2,500 fine after telling a judge that post-traumatic stress developed over four combat tours “prompted him to turn to child pornography." “Many victims say that having the digital images of them being raped and traded on the Internet is far worse than the hands-on sex abuse because the images are everywhere and the victims have no control,” professor Warren Binford said, explaining research showing that viewing child pornography is far from a “victimless crime,” since many victims suffer from lifelong anxiety, paranoia, disassociation, and depression over the thought that anyone they meet may have seen their images of abuse. “It will never end for them,” Binford said.

Apr 1, 2021

THE NATION'S HEALTH: “Without considering ethics, defeating the pandemic will be difficult,” said Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities. With limited supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, ethicists are striving to ensure that people at greatest risk for severe disease and death are prioritized. “These are not only scientific decisions. They are decisions about values too, and that is where ethicists come into the conversation.”

Mar 18, 2021

BBC NEWSHOUR: Warren Binford, JD, Ed.M, the W.H. Lea for Justice Endowed Chair in Pediatric Law, Ethics & Policy and Director for Pediatric Law, Ethics & Policy at the Kempe Center, was interviewed by BBC Newshour about the causes and context of the surge of migrant children coming across the US-Mexico border, where they are being held in deplorable conditions. Listen to the program at 49:00 to 53:00>>

Mar 16, 2021

ANNALS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE: Increasing employment of physicians, changing practice models, new regulatory requirements, and market dynamics all affect medical practice. Business practices can challenge the ethics and professionalism of individual physicians and the collective responsibility of the medical profession to patients. Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD and co-author Lois Snyder Sulmasy, JD, argue that the practice of medicine must be defined by the ethics of medicine. Efficiency and productivity are important but secondary to serving the needs of patients. This policy paper offers recommendations on business practices, employment and ethics.

Mar 9, 2021

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL: Clinical research in drugs and devices is often corrupted because of the involvement of commercial interests preventing it from achieving its potential. Lisa Bero, PhD, and co-authors identify key sources of bias in clinical research and offer recommendations for minimizing or eliminating them.

Mar 2, 2021

NOLA.com: Vaccine guilt is a common phenomenon. Dr. Matthew Wynia experienced it himself when he got vaccinated in December. Normally an academic, he happened to be seeing patients and was in the right place at the right time. He got the vaccine before his elderly mother. “If you could take the vaccine dose and walk across the street and give it to your mother or another elderly person, then I would say you should do that, but you can’t. It’s not the way the distribution system works. It’s not a perfect system; no system would be. It’s not 100% fair. Aiming for perfection could actually slow the system down.”

Mar 5, 2021

SALON: "There is a difference between accepting and even taking advantage of unfairness that exists, and creating unfairness," Dr. Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, told Denver-based Magazine 5280. "We all have an obligation to try not to create unfairness."

Mar 8, 2021

NEW YORK TIMES: Health authorities have detected the worrisome coronavirus variant B.1.351 that is circulating in South Africa was found in two staff members and one inmate at the Buena Vista Correctional Complex in Chaffee County. More than half of the state’s roughly 13,000 inmates have already had the coronavirus, according to state data. “These places, they’re almost designed for the transmission of respiratory viruses,” said Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH. “They’re cramped, they’re enclosed, they don’t have a lot of windows that you can open easily. They’re just a setup for big outbreaks — and we’ve seen multiple big outbreaks, not only in Colorado, but all over the country.” Most states have not given prisoners priority. In Colorado, only 664 inmates in the state's prison system have been vaccinated, the health department said.

Jan 15, 2021

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW SCHOOLS; Professor H. Binford Warren Binford, JD, Ed.M, the W.H. Lea for Justice Endowed Chair in Pediatric Law, Ethics & Policy and Director for Pediatric Law, Ethics & Policy at the Kempe Center was elected Chair of the International Human Rights Section of the AALS. The Section promotes the communication of ideas, interests, and activities among members and makes recommendations to the Association on matters of interest in the teaching and improvement of the law relating to international human rights.

Mar 1, 2021

BIZWEST: Twelve months ago Chad Wittenmyer, a 40-year old father and stepfather of four, worked fabricating windmill blades and was in the best shape of his adult life. But after he contracted COVID-19 in March, a host of medical issues started to emerge. Constant fatigue set in. His heart rhythm was off, and he struggled to breathe under exertion. Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD says medical practitioners have historically been poor at treating patients whose pain evades diagnostics because they often simply don’t believe the patient is as sick as they’re saying. Those illnesses are known as “contested illnesses,” and Goldberg is not surprised that some people’s "Long-COVID" symptoms are being denied as real, as are their claims for disability insurance or accommodations at work. All the while, Witteneyer waits for the pandemic to end, and he hopes that his condition doesn’t last a lifetime. “I know that the medical industry is in triage right now, just trying to get to the people who are the worst,” he said. “But there’s still something wrong with me.”

Feb 21, 2021

COLORADO SUN: Drugs don’t work if people cannot afford them. No one should be forced to fill a prescription they need instead of paying their rent or putting food on the table. But, that is increasingly happening in the U.S. because we let brand-name manufacturers charge whatever they want for their products. Even prior to the pandemic, nearly one in three Coloradans reported skipping doses, cutting pills, or not filling a prescription they need because they cannot afford the cost of the drug. And yet, Americans pay 60% to 85% more than people in other countries do for the same drugs. Co-authors Lisa Bero, PhD, Mark Levine, MD and colleagues write in this opinion column, "Colorado legislators have the opportunity to lead the way to rein in drug costs, and we strongly encourage them to take it."

Feb 9, 2021

Center faculty, staff and friends volunteered with Food Bank of the Rockies on February 9th at Hinkley High School in Aurora. Food was distributed to about 260 cars in the community. (behind masks l-r) Matthew Wynia, Rosa Lawrence, Meleah Himber, David Weil, Heather Cluff and Dave Maltby-Lisa Bero's husband).

Feb 8, 2021

DISABILITY SCOOP: The vast majority of doctors across the nation believe that people with significant disabilities have worse quality of life than others, according to a first-of-its-kind study. “We wouldn’t expect most physicians to say that racial or ethnic minorities have a lower quality of life, yet four-fifths of physicians made that pronouncement about people with disabilities,” noted lead author Lisa Iezzoni, PhD. “Our results clearly raise concern about the ability of the health care system to ensure equitable care for people with disability,” said co-author Eric G. Campbell, PhD.

Feb 8, 2021

5280 MAGAZINE: There is not any data on the prevalence of vaccine guilt, but Dr. Matthew Wynia surmises that many people who have already received the COVID-19 vaccine probably feel like their doses could have gone to someone more deserving. “If you could take your vaccine dose and walk across the street and give it to your elderly neighbor, then I would say you should do that,” says Wynia. “But you can’t. That’s not an option.”

Feb 7, 2021

THE GAZETTE: Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH says, “We’ve created really nuanced vaccination and allocation strategies, when the main problems turn out to just be logistics.” In Colorado, we relied on individuals to figure out when they were eligible themselves, and then we kept changing the priorities. At this stage, Wynia believes the most effective use of the vaccine is to get it to those communities that are particularly hard hit, but it takes time and the energy and resources to reach out to people in those communities. "It really lifts a psychological burden when you get the shot," said Wynia. "It really does. People cry. It’s emotional. It's amazing." Said Wynia of the mood at vaccination clinics right now: "It is the happiest place on Earth.”

Feb 4, 2021

CNN: Just 56.5% of doctors strongly agreed that they welcomed patients with disabilities into their practices, and only 40.7% of doctors surveyed reported feeling very confident about their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with disabilities, according to the study, co-authored by Eric G. Campbell and Julie Ressalam, published in the journal Health Affairs. "You would think that doctors should be very confident in their ability to provide equal quality care to all the patients that they agree to see, so that's a troubling finding," said lead study author Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Jan 29, 2021

AMA JOURNAL OF ETHICS: State officials often don’t want to take responsibility for activating crisis standards of care because doing so “implies that their planning to avoid crisis standards of care didn't work,” says Center Director Dr. Matthew Wynia. "I understand why a governor would not want to acknowledge the reality of their situation. It feels bad. It looks bad. It is bad,” he said. “But failure to acknowledge the reality of a situation does not change the reality of the situation. And that’s unfortunately where some localities and states are at right now.” In an “Ethics Talk” video podcast from the AMA, Wynia outlines the tough decisions administrators and physicians face when confronted with rapidly dwindling resources. Listen to podcast>>

Jan 25, 2021

BILL OF HEALTH; HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Laws and social policies not only shape health in a given society, but also go a long way in determining which populations and communities have relative health gains/losses. The absence of critically needed public health laws or a “public health law vacuum,” has, and continues to have, devastating consequences in the COVID-19 pandemic. Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD illustrates how the federal government could have done and still could do to regulate in the name of public health emergency response (and preparedness for the future).

Jan 21, 2021

SURVEY PRACTICE: A national survey by Eric Campbell, PhD and co-authors asked oncologists about views regarding Medicinal Cannabis' (MC) risks/benefits, and whether they had sufficient knowledge to make MC recommendations clinically. Testing of the survey instrument suggested that physicians did not always feel that they possessed adequate MC knowledge in all domains, so Don't Know options were added to six of 27 survey items. The DKs appear to be valid responses, improving data quality by providing some respondents with an answer category that best fits their “true” answer.

Jan 21, 2021

BOULDER WEEKLY: Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH reflects, “I don’t think many people thought that we would do so poorly as a society in coming together around this pandemic and around a coherent response. Our assumption was that the national leadership would come together around this, like in a war or after 9/11. This is not just about the pandemic, it goes outside of bioethics and into social ethics, and is something we’re going to be grappling with as a society for a long time.”