The Editor’s Choice for the June issue of Medical Humanities is an original article by medical student Jason Leiboqwitz entitled “Moral erosion: how can medical professionals safeguard against the slippery slope?” Following his participation in a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics program, Jason concludes that physicians are as vulnerable to corruption of their guiding principles today as they have ever been, and he poses an important question, asking what, if anything, they can do to stop themselves sliding down their own morally eroded slippery slope.

http://mh.bmj.com/

Do read his article. Its free to download. And then please take part in our online poll about any slippery slopes of your own. As always we’d love to hear you thoughts.

On the 8th and 9th of July 2010 the Faculty of Health and Social Care at London South Bank University will be hosting a pioneering conference focusing on Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision Making. For the first time in the UK, this conference will bring together an international and inter-professional dialogue between different stakeholders with the aim of fostering and developing best practice in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making across all sectors of healthcare. more…

Lesotho is one of the highest countries and is entirely landlocked by South Africa. 40% of Lesotho’s population survives on less than $1.25 a day. In centuries gone by, the people of Lesotho were driven high up into the mountains by the Xhosa and Zulu people and have repeated a solitary and isolated life, mainly farming, ever since. However, Lesotho is also experiencing one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDs infection rates in the world. This is their modern day crisis. What does survival mean in this situation? How can we conform to a meaning of being human when our human situations differ so dramatically?

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After spending some time away from medicine, I return to find that there seems to be a surreptitious, mysterious pandemic infiltrating the junior doctors that practice medicine in the United Kingdom. The cause of this pandemic has largely been overlooked but recent research can now confirm the existence and rampancy of the condition, which can now be revealed as Robotisism. Although the mechanism remains unclear it is thought that Robotisism metamorphose human doctors into machine like –robots programmed to solely perform tasks. They may look like the epitome of the healthy doctor, but closer inspection reveal that they are far from this. more…

Crossing borders always presents the potential for a hold-up. When I prepared to cross the border from Macedonia (or Skopje if you are Greek), into the tiny nation of Kosovo, preparation was the key. I had one mission: to visit the hospital in the capital, Pristina. I travelled by car to the border where a contact of mine in Macedonia had arranged for another car to meet me and drive me across to the other side. I would be travelling with an ethnic Albanian who was well-versed in dealing with the officials. Macedonia has experienced its war wounds in recent years but in Kosovo these wounds are healing but very visable. Lines of hardship tell the story of the past across many faces that I saw. more…

I am fortunate enough to count Professor Jonathan Glover, a world renowned medical ethicist, amongst my former teachers. A very modest and thoughtful man, Jonathan Glover spent a number of years writing a similarly thoughtful book in which he tries to understand what he terms man’s inhumanity to man (Humanity: a Moral History of the Twentieth Century. Pimlico, London 2001). His starting premise is that, given the wrong circumstances, we are all capable of doing evil things to other human beings. At the heart of his efforts are a desire to understand, for all our sakes, what it  has taken in the past, and by extension what it would take in the future, for people- just like you and me- to be willing to take part in our own equivalent of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

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Half a lifetime ago I went to Australia for my medical elective, a joyous interlude just before finals that allows doctors-to-be to savour, for one last time, the freedom of life as a student. Eight weeks is barely time to get over the jetlag let alone to adjust to the stark and breathtaking landscapes that unfurl in any journey across this large and mystifying country. Yet long enough to leave the lasting impression that no matter how impressive the delights of Sydney and Melbourne and Australia’s other cities and towns, this is a country only a blink away from submission to its own awesome forces of nature.

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A couple of weeks ago a doctor friend from California was visiting me in London. Shortly before her arrival date swine flu fever was gripping the world’s media, with California proving a hotbed for new cases. And, illogically I’ll admit, I felt a certain disquiet that a doctor from the first US State to suffer a swine flu death would shortly arrive in my already less than healthy home. more…

Yes, I know patients don’t actually complain of being normal, but isn’t there sometimes a not so small voice in your head telling you that this is, effectively, what’s happening? Why, you wonder, is this person surprised that if they continue to wear tight shoes their corns will keep returning? And why, oh why, do they think it makes sense to ask you for advice rather than the local shoe shop assistant?

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