Justice Roberts' Health; The Ethics of Organ Harvesting; Ruling on City Immigration Laws; Lose Weight or Pay; Why This Universe?
Justice Roberts' Health
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure yesterday near his vacation home in Maine. He was kept overnight in a local hospital for evaluation and released this morning. Doctors who examined Roberts said they found no tumor, stroke or any other explanation for the episode. Justice Roberts suffered a similar seizure in 1993. Larry talks about seizure disorders with Dr. Marc Nuwer, Professor of Neurology at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.
The Ethics of Organ Harvesting
A San Francisco surgeon has been charged with prescribing drugs to a disabled patient in order to hasten his death and harvest his organs for transplantion. Prosecutors said a 26-year-old man had been in a coma and on life support since he suffered from cardiac arrest last year. The family of the man decided to remove him from life support in order to donate his organs, but he didn't die right away as expected. The doctor then allegedly tried "to accelerate (his) death" with morphine and another drug. Larry Mantle talks about the story and about the ethics of organ harvesting with LA Times writer Charlie Ornstein, Dr. David Goldstein of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics at USC, and Tom Mone of the non-profit organ and tissue recovery agency, One Legacy.
Ruling on City Immigration Laws
Last Thursday a federal judge struck down a Pennsylvania city ordinance that would punish landlords who rent to or hire illegal immigrants. Larry discusses the case with Kris Kobach, attorney for the city of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, and Witold Walczak, lead attorney in the case defending the illegal immigrants.
Lose Weight or Pay
More and more employers are coming up with incentives to encourage their employees to stay, or become, healthy. Some are offering bonuses to workers for keeping their weight down or not smoking. Others are actually penalizing employees who they deem obese. Larry talks about the controversial new trend with Walter Lindstrom, Director of the Obesity Law and Advocacy Center, Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, and Tanya Butler of the Employers Group.
Why This Universe?
Larry speaks with Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author of the article Why This Universe: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations from the most recent issue of Skeptic magazine, about the many possible explanations for the existence of our universe.