Prequel: The God Squad

Back in the 1960s, a committee of seven Seattle residents met regularly to decide which patients with chronic kidney disease were “worthy” of life-saving dialysis.  Whoever wasn’t selected by the committee would likely die within months. An exposé of this so-called “God Squad” helped spark the form…

The Future of Baby-Making

In this episode we head into the future to learn about a controversial technology that could change the face of reproduction. Researchers are developing a technology called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), which can reprogram human cells–like a skin cell–to become eggs or sperm. With IVG we could reac…

Miracle Drugs, Million Dollar Price Tags

Cheryl Yoder’s son Jase, was born with an incurable rare disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which meant he was unlikely to live beyond two years old. Jase managed to get a spot in a clinical trial for an experimental drug. It halted the disease and allowed him to grow up as an active lit…

An Off Switch For Depression?

For years Brandy Ellis had tried everything to treat depression but nothing worked. Then one day she heard about something called deep brain stimulation, a brain implant that treats some neurological conditions. This technological intervention–that changed her life–also raises ethics questions. Bec…

Creating One Life to Save Another

When Laurie Strongin’s son Henry was born with the rare, often fatal disease of Fanconi anemia, doctors told her that the best way to save his life was with an umbilical cord blood transplant from a genetically matched sibling. But Henry had no matching siblings. Laurie and her husband then got a c…

A Womb of One’s Own?

Jen Dingle yearned to get pregnant and have children, but there was one problem: she was born without a uterus. So when she was ready to have children she was desperate to find a way to do it. That’s when she learned that a local research hospital was starting up a uterus transplant program – one o…

Why Can’t I Buy a Kidney?

It can take years to get to the top of the waiting list for a donated kidney in the U.S. So when Sally Satel found out she’d need a kidney transplant, she wondered why she couldn’t just buy one. We’ll hear from a behavioral economist and a bioethicist who shed light on the ban on organ sales and wh…

Need a new Liver? Drinkers to the back of the Line.

One day, when she was only 39, bar manager Jamie Imhof collapsed. While she lay in a coma, doctors told her family that they knew how to save her life: she needed an immediate liver transplant. But, transplant centers follow an informal “rule” when it comes to patients whose livers fail due to heav…

The Girl Who Died Twice

When a 13 year-old girl from Oakland named Jahi McMath was pronounced brain dead after a surgical complication in 2013, California issued her a death certificate. Five years later, she received a second death certificate in New Jersey. How could one person die twice? In this episode, we learn that …

I Would’ve Let You Die, Too

While Andrea Rubin lay unconscious and severely burned after a car fire, her father told doctors to do everything they could to keep her alive. She would need many surgeries. Her quality of life wouldn’t be the same. Her friends were outraged. They told doctors that Andrea would not want to live th…