IN THE MIDST OF ETHICAL INSIGHT UNCERTAINTY

Are you prepared to identify, assess, and address the complex ethical issues that arise in clinical practice? The MA in Bioethics provides advanced interdisciplinary training for medical professionals who are motivated by the social and ethical challenges of our time. You can learn from a dynamic network of experts, scholars, and policymakers in order to help you respond to ethical challenges in your workplace.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS:

• Distinguished interdisciplinary faculty across clinical, research, and policy areas, including neuroethics, biotechnology, public health, religious ethics, and moral philosophy

• One year full-time study or flexible part-time study options

• Innovative, career-building practicum sites, including the Georgia Legislature, NASA, and the CDC

• Two track options: thesis or comprehensive exam

The MAB experience has left me feeling intellectually refreshed. I would strongly recommend the program to practicing physicians.

—Joel Zivot, bioethics student and Emory anesthesiologist ethics.emory.edu/mabioethics

A Perfect Storm: When thunderstorm asthma strikes

Thunderstorm asthma—a rare event in which raindrops break pollen grains into particles tiny enough to be inhaled—can be deadly. The wind and fast-moving rain mixed with pollen from seed plants allow the fragmented particles to bypass the body’s natural defense systems and find their way into the lungs.

Cities from Atlanta to Australia have experienced this phenomenon in recent years. In the most recent incident in November in Sydney, Australia, thousands of people flooded emergency rooms struggling for breath and several died.

Stefanie Sarnat, associate professor of environmental health at Emory, has studied the occurrence in Atlanta. She says it most often strikes in areas with high humidity when specific conditions are met, such as compromised air quality (like increased pollen) and a large population that is susceptible to asthma. A small increase (about 3%) in ER visits for asthma occurs after every thunderstorm, Sarnat adds, because asthma sufferers’ symptoms are inflamed, but large-scale outbreaks are rare.

Thunderstorm asthma usually affects people with an allergy to grass pollens, says Jennifer Shih, an Emory physician and medical director of the pediatric allergy clinics. It can be worse in those that also have asthma. In fact, in one study that looked at an earlier event in Australia in 1997, 96% of those affected proved sensitive to grass pollen upon testing. “This phenomenon is literally the culmination of a perfect storm,” Shih says. “Grass pollen is usually too large to enter the small airways of the lungs and is filtered out by the nose. In thunderstorm asthma, stormy winds and moisture can cause the pollen to rupture into tiny particles, small enough to be inhaled. The outflow winds of a thunderstorm can then concentrate these tiny particles at ground level, where people breathe them in and they cause an acute asthma attack in those who are allergic to grass pollens.”