Latest news with #medicalEthics
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Doctor's pitiful apology after he 'tweaked' a patient's nipples and boasted he could give her the 'best orgasm of your life'
A doctor has been found guilty of professional misconduct after allegedly playing with a young female patient's nipples before trying to apologise by purchasing her groceries. NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard on Wednesday that a woman, referred to as Patient A, visited Moruya Medical Centre in January 2020, after injuring her knee. The woman, who was 31 at the time, was treated by Dr Sharwan Narayan, now 45, who she described as a 'nice, knowledgeable doctor'. But over the course of her next few appointments, the tribunal noted the doctor's conduct became inappropriate. During one visit, the date of which was unclear, Patient A told the tribunal she was 'a bit shocked' when Dr Narayan allegedly asked her to hug him. On February 18, during a massage of Patient A's leg, the tribunal heard Dr Narayan massaged further up so his hands were 'quite close to her pubic area'. 'Patient A said she didn't say anything, she shut down. She had learned to disassociate during trauma she had suffered as a child,' the tribunal said. Dr Narayan said he would perform a skin check after removing a mole the week before and, when Patient A said she wasn't wearing a bra, he reportedly told her: 'Just pull it down, it's fine.' Patient A alleged Dr Narayan started cupping her breasts: 'He tweaked or played with her nipples even though she had not said anything about having any issue,' the tribunal heard. 'He said "oh they're not hard", referring to her nipples. Patient A understood him to mean that she was not aroused.' The young woman allegedly froze and made a non-committal response while 'just waiting for it to be over'. Patient A attended three more appointments at the centre after experiencing deep vein thrombosis. During a visit on March 13, the tribunal heard the doctor asked the woman about her sex life during a knee massage, including if her partner was able to give her orgasms. When Dr Narayan finished, the tribunal heard he kept talking about 'sexual stuff' and said he'd taught a lesbian couple how to give each other the best orgasms. 'Then he said "I can give you the best orgasm of your life". I was like "ok". He again asked me for a hug and I just stood there. I then left,' Patient A told the tribunal. He had never said anything sexual before, although she thought he had touched her inappropriately, the tribunal heard. The tribunal heard the doctor phoned the young woman when she did not turn up to a pre-booked appointment for a follow up scan. He said he was sorry if he had made her uncomfortable at the last appointment and asked her to come to Batemans Bay Hospital for a free DVT scan. At the hospital, Dr Narayan gave her a big ALDI shopping bag and allegedly said: 'This is for you. l'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable or I thought I may have made you feel uncomfortable so this is for you.' The tribunal heard there was a big tub of ice cream, kombucha, Dove moisturiser and chocolates in the bag which Patient A estimated would have cost more than $50. When she left, the tribunal noted 'she felt really uncomfortable and felt as if he was trying to bribe her'. On one occasion after the hospital trip, she reportedly called Dr Narayan to obtain a prescription but did not return to the centre until after he had left the practice. Dr Narayan denied the allegations made by Patient A during the tribunal. His legal team was contacted by Daily Mail Australia for comment. In its decision, the tribunal said the doctor's conduct was of a 'very serious nature and demonstrates a significant departure from accepted standards'. 'Patient A was a vulnerable patient. To receive healthcare, she needed to allow Dr Narayan to conduct physical examinations,' the decision said. 'A breach of sexual boundaries in the doctor-patient relationship exploits this power imbalance.' Dr Narayan was found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and of professional misconduct. The tribunal will determine protective orders following a further Stage 2 hearing. Dr Narayan worked in medical imaging for 18 years before earning a Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Notre Dame in 2015. He was registered in 2016 as a GP and worked as a GP registrar at the Moruya Medical Centre from February 2019 to August 2020. In June 2023, Dr Narayan's license as a medical practitioner was suspended for three months. He had been found guilty by NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal of unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct towards a different patient and two colleagues. When he returned to work, conditions were imposed which included that he practise under supervision, undergo mentoring and attend for treatment with a psychologist. has reported that he is currently working as a general practitioner on Norfolk Island, with conditions attached to his registration.
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Brain-dead pregnant woman's case spurs questions about medical consent
A pregnant woman declared brain-dead months ago is being kept on life support in Georgia until her baby can be delivered — a decision doctors made to obey the state's strict abortion ban, according to her family. The case raises questions about medical consent since the fall of Roe v. Wade, how to balance the legal status of the fetus and its mother, and the limits of medical care.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Science requires ethical oversight. Without federal dollars, society's health and safety are at risk
Stock photo from Getty Images. As the Trump administration continues to make significant cuts to NIH budgets and personnel and to freeze billions of dollars of funding to major research universities – citing ideological concerns – there's more being threatened than just progress in science and medicine. Something valuable but often overlooked is also being hit hard: preventing research abuse. The National Institutes of Health has been the world's largest public funder of biomedical research. Its support helps translate basic science into biomedical therapies and technologies, providing funding for nearly all treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019. This enables the U.S. to lead global research while maintaining transparency and preventing research misconduct. While the legality of directives to shrink the NIH is unclear, the Trump administration's actions have already led to suspended clinical trials, institutional hiring freezes and layoffs, rescinded graduate student admissions, and canceled federal grant review meetings. Researchers at affected universities say that funding will delay or possibly eliminate ongoing studies on critical conditions like cancer and Alzheimer's. It is clear to us, as legal and bioethics scholars whose research often focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging biotechnologies, that these directives will have profoundly negative consequences for medical research and human health, with ripple effects that will last decades. Our scholarship demonstrates that in order to contribute to knowledge and, ultimately, to biomedical treatments, medical research at every stage depends on significant infrastructure support and ethical oversight. Our recent focus on brain organoid research – 3D lab models grown from human stem cells that simulate brain structure and function – shows how federal support for research is key to not only promote innovation, but to protect participants and future patients. The National Institutes of Health began as a one-room laboratory within the Marine Hospital Service in 1887. After World War I, chemists involved in the war effort sought to apply their knowledge to medicine. They partnered with Louisiana Sen. Joseph E. Ransdell who, motivated by the devastation of malaria, yellow fever and the 1928 influenza pandemic, introduced federal legislation to support basic research and fund fellowships focusing on solving medical problems. By World War II, biomedical advances like surgical techniques and antibiotics had proved vital on the battlefield. Survival rates increased from 4% during World War I to 50% in World War II. Congress passed the 1944 Public Health Services Act to expand NIH's authority to fund biomedical research at public and private institutions. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it 'as sound an investment as any Government can make; the dividends are payable in human life and health.' As science advanced, so did the need for guardrails. After World War II, among the top Nazi leaders prosecuted for war crimes were physicians who conducted experiments on people without consent, such as exposure to hypothermia and infectious disease. The verdicts of these Doctors' Trials included 10 points about ethical human research that became the Nuremberg Code, emphasizing voluntary consent to participation, societal benefit as the goal of human research, and significant limitations on permissible risks of harm. The World Medical Association established complementary international guidelines for physician-researchers in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. In the 1970s, information about the Tuskegee study – a deceptive and unethical 40-year study of untreated syphilis in Black men – came to light. The researchers told study participants they would be given treatment but did not give them medication. They also prevented participants from accessing a cure when it became available in order to study the disease as it progressed. The men enrolled in the study experienced significant health problems, including blindness, mental impairment and death. The public outrage that followed starkly demonstrated that the U.S. couldn't simply rely on international guidelines but needed federal standards on research ethics. As a result, the National Research Act of 1974 led to the Belmont Report, which identified ethical principles essential to human research: respect for persons, beneficence and justice. Federal regulations reinforced these principles by requiring all federally funded research to comply with rigorous ethical standards for human research. By prohibiting financial conflicts of interest and by implementing an independent ethics review process, new policies helped ensure that federally supported research has scientific and social value, is scientifically valid, fairly selects and adequately protects participants. These standards and recommendations guide both federally and nonfederally funded research today. The breadth of NIH's mandate and budget has provided not only the essential structure for research oversight, but also key resources for ethics consultation and advice. Biomedical research on cell and animal models requires extensive ethics oversight systems that complement those for human research. Our research on the ethical and policy issues of human brain organoid research provides a good example of the complexities of biomedical research and the infrastructure and oversight mechanisms necessary to support it. Organoid research is increasing in importance, as the FDA wants to expand its use as an alternative to using animals to test new drugs before administering them to humans. Because these models can simulate brain structure and function, brain organoid research is integral to developing and testing potential treatments for brain diseases and conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer. Brain organoids are also useful for personalized and regenerative medicine, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and other biotechnologies. Brain organoids are built on knowledge about the fundamentals of biology that was developed primarily in universities receiving federal funding. Organoid technology began in 1907 with research on sponge cells, and continued in the 1980s with advances in stem cell research. Since researchers generated the first human organoid in 2009, the field has rapidly expanded. These advances were only possible through federally supported research infrastructure, which helps ensure the quality of all biomedical research. Indirect costs cover operational expenses necessary to maintain research safety and ethics, including utilities, administrative support, biohazard handling and regulatory compliance. In these ways, federally supported research infrastructure protects and promotes the scientific and ethical value of biotechnologies like brain organoids. Brain organoid research requires significant scientific and ethical inquiry to safely reach its future potential. It raises potential moral and legal questions about donor consent, the extent to which organoids should be grown and how they should be disposed, and consciousness and personhood. As science progresses, infrastructure for oversight can help ensure these ethical and societal issues are addressed. Since World War II, there has been bipartisan support for scientific innovation, in part because it is an economic and national security imperative. As Harvard University President Alan Garber recently wrote, '[n]ew frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances. … For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.' Cuts to research overhead may seem like easy savings, but it fails to account for the infrastructure that provides essential support for scientific innovation. The investment the NIH has put into academic research is significantly paid forward, adding nearly US$95 billion to local economies in fiscal year 2024, or $2.46 for every $1 of grant funding. NIH funding had also supported over 407,700 jobs that year. President Donald Trump pledged to 'unleash the power of American innovation' to battle brain-based diseases when he accepted his second Republican nomination for president. Around 6.7 million Americans live with Alzheimer's, and over a million more suffer from Parkinson's. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are diagnosed with aggressive brain cancers each year, and 20% of the population experiences varying forms of mental illness at any one time. These numbers are expected to grow considerably, possibly doubling by 2050. Organoid research is just one of the essential components in the process of learning about the brain and using that knowledge to find better treatment for diseases affecting the brain. Science benefits society only if it is rigorous, ethically conducted and fairly funded. Current NIH policy directives and steep cuts to the agency's size and budget, along with attacks on universities, undermine globally shared goals of increasing understanding and improving human health. The federal system of overseeing and funding biomedical science may need a scalpel, but to defund efforts based on 'efficiency' is to wield a chainsaw. Christine Coughlin, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University and Nancy M. P. King, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy, Wake Forest University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
CTV News
07-05-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Calgary doctor sanctioned for inappropriate exchanges with female patient
A Calgary physician has been sanctioned for having an inappropriate relationship with one of his patients in 2021. (Pexels/Negative Space)
