W e are two of the scientist members of the President's Council on Bioethics. In late 2001, we were invited by the President of the United States to serve on this Council. The Bioethics Council was appointed by the President to " monitor stem-cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifi cations of biomedical innovation...

In their essay in the April 2004 issue of PLoS Biology, Elizabeth Blackburn and Janet Rowley (2004), two distinguished cellular biologists and members of the President’s Council on Bioethics, strongly question the scientifi c foundation of two reports from the Council (President’s Council on Bioethics 2003, 2004). The Council on Bioethics was formed by executive order “to advise the President o...

Radiation chimeras prepared by injecting H-2 heterozygous F1 stem cells into lethally irradiated parental hosts show a marked, but not absolute, preference for host-type H-2 antigens in the H-2-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response to minor histocompatibility (minor H) antigens. We have selected for the anti-minor HCTL that are restricted to the parental H-2 type absent from the chim...

Background The risk-adjusted mortality rate (RAMR) is used widely by healthcare agencies to evaluate hospital performance. The RAMR is insensitive to case volume and requires a confidence interval for proper interpretation, which results in a hypothesis testing framework. Unfamiliarity with hypothesis testing can lead to erroneous interpretations by the public and other stakeholders. We argue t...