Do we exaggerate expected benefits when we communicate with our patients?

By Ramy Sedhom As a first year oncology fellow, I am eager to help patients suffering from cancer. And although some cancer drugs offer large, definite benefit, many drugs improve outcomes only marginally. The medical community and laypersons recognize the need to develop therapeutics that is clinically meaningful. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) defines […]

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The best interest standard and the ethical work it does in making medical and public policy decisions for children

By Johan Bester For a while now, I’ve been interested in ethical questions in medicine and public policy concerning children. It started with my work on vaccination ethics, which continues to raise ethical questions of various kinds. Things like: What is the source and limits of parental authority over children? What do we do when […]

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In defence of participants buying their way onto drug trials

By Angela Ballantyne and Mike King Donor-funded research is research funded by private donors in exchange for research-related benefits, such as trial participation or access to the trial intervention. An example of this is the oncolytic virus trial for neuroendocrine cancer at Uppsala University, for which Alexander Masters procured £2 million in funding from a […]

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The fetishisation of clinical guidelines

By Charles Foster The Supreme Court has recently, in An NHS Trust v Y decided that adherence to guidelines produced by various medical organisations will safeguard adequately against inappropriate withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from patients in vegetative state/Minimally Conscious State. I have criticised that decision in detail in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics […]

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We need more arguments in clinical ethics

By Melanie Jansen Ethics is a philosophical discipline. The bedrock of philosophical scholarship is the construction of arguments – a set of reasons that justify a particular position. Philosophers spend years cultivating critical reasoning skills and applying them to many and varied problems. While philosophy has universal application, it is often erroneously perceived as an […]

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