Initially, the idea of organ transplantation was met with disdain and seen as a comical creation of the imagination. Illness was perceived as a disturbance of equilibrium, leading treatments to prioritize restoring balance —such a narrative left no room for the idea of organ transplantation (Schlich, 2011). However in the later half of the 19th century, “surgeons began to view the body as a composite of organs and tissues with specific functions and realised that surgery could be used to remove diseased tissues or restore function” (Schlich, 2011). This time period also saw the rise of antibiotics, making surgery safer by decreasing the risk of infection. This shift in mindset, coupled with significant technological advancements, set the stage for the emergence of organ transplantation.

Brought into the spotlight through the work of Swiss surgeon Theodor Kocher, thyroid transplants became the first instance of organ transplantation —setting a precedent for subsequent transplants and laying the groundwork for the field as a whole (Schlich, 2011). The idea of removing an organ from one specimen and inserting it into the body of another eventually gained general acceptance in 1900, and in 1954, the kidney became “the first human organ to be transplanted successfully” (“The History of Organ Donation,” 2023). In the following decades, surgeons would perform successful liver, heart, pancreas, and lung transplants, widening the scope of both the field and the ethical questions surrounding it.

Mental health issues have always been present in college life, as students go through many complex transitions. From leaving the comforts of home and adjusting to dorm life, to finding new support systems, these transitions are unquestionably overwhelming. However, the larger question is, how often students speak up about these struggles? Many students are often afraid to communicate their struggles due to academic consequences, social pressures, and many other factors. At Yale, one of the greatest unspoken rules is the idea of trying to “fit in” to a culture of academic excellence and the standard of a “perfect Yale student” that everyone should strive toward. There are internships, clubs, and fellowships to apply for, grades to maintain, and future careers to plan for. These aspirations come with heavy sacrifices such as friendships, sleep, and more dangerously, efforts to hide one’s own internal struggles. Tyler Brown says to the Yale Daily News, “The bar is so high…You have to perform and you have to be healthy in order to meet this vision of a Yale student. People will keep moving on and say, ‘Okay, you know, everyone around me seems to be doing fine. They’re not struggling. I should be fine, too” (Hodgman, 2021). It’s a culture that feeds itself and keeps on growing and will continue until students and institutions recognize and become aware of the pressure, anxiety, and frustration that tug at every student.

It is time that the fatal repercussions of biases from our nation’s health care providers against Native Americans and other ethnic minorities is better scrutinized. Native American women have the highest maternal mortality rate of any ethnic group living in the United States. Indigenous women are approximately three times as likely as White women to die of pregnancy-related causes, and hemorrhage and hypertensive disorders during the gestational period are among the biggest contributors1. According to the CDC, sixty percent of maternal deaths are preventable, and it is well overdue to implement greater preventive efforts, including funding more and better research, as well as responding to factors that contribute to these disproportionate maternal mortality rates2, 3. This study deals with institutional racism within the US health care sector and its impact on Native American women during and after childbirth, as well as the related social determinants of health, social injustice, and structural racism that continues to permeate within this community .

Mesa Verde, the striking name of a California ICE detention facility that adopted a head-in-the-sand approach to tracking COVID-19 cases in immigrants due to the unwillingness of private prison contractors. The striking name of a center in which more than half the detainees tested positive for the deadly virus after a federally ordered testing procedure.

Mesa Verde was not the exception, but rather the standard across the country when the historic pandemic shrouded the United States in uncertainty. America is home to the world’s largest immigration detention system, and the U.S. government’s incompetency in responding to COVID-19 has been significant. After the first person in an American immigration center contracted the deadly COVID-19 virus in March 2020, more than an astonishing 18% of 30,000 detainees have tested positive to date. This statistic is outrageously disproportionate to national and global case averages. However, this comes as no surprise in the context of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention system’s many longstanding concerns.

In the last two decades, many pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer, have outsourced their clinical trials to developing countries, where testing is significantly cheaper and faster. Developing nations have welcomed drug testing as a mechanism to provide otherwise unaffordable healthcare to the public. However, treating patients in the developing world has triggered several ethical debates. Clinical trials in the developing world have failed to receive clear consent from patients, inform them about potential risks, and compensate them for their cooperation. Furthermore, it remains uncertain whether data collected in these trials abroad are applicable at home.

Drug-testing in the developing world appeals to pharmaceutical companies that seek to maximize the cost-effectiveness of drug trials. The New England Journal of Medicine reported in 2009 that conducting a trial at an academic medical center in India, where companies pay their clinical staff far lower salaries, costs less than a tenth of the cost of a trial in the U.S.

Many drugs or treatments that are FDA-approved bring about a multitude of side effects, some potentially fatal, and it is within the rights of patients to refuse any treatment that they do not wish to endure. However, when the competency of the patient is questionable, the right to make medical decisions can be controversial. For minors, a parent or guardian must make such decisions on behalf of the patient. Problems arise when a lack of treatment threatens the lives of the children: the parents’ refusal of treatment conflicts with the hospital’s responsibility to preserve the child’s life. Past lawsuits have not set a clear precedent for how to approach these concerns, so legal decisions regarding treatment have been made on a case-by-case basis.