By Ben Bramble We urgently need a vaccine for COVID-19, in order to fully end our lockdowns. The trouble is such vaccines usually take years to develop and test for efficacy and safety. Recently, a number of bioethicists have proposed “human challenge” vaccine trials to speed up the testing process. These involve volunteers receiving a […]
Month: July 2020
Finding a vaccine against the novel coronavirus: why challenge trials can be ethical even when a lot remains unknown
By Robert Steel, Lara Buchak, Nir Eyal Multiple authors believe that the development of coronavirus vaccines could be substantially accelerated through the use of challenge trials, in which participants are deliberately exposed to the virus. The tremendous loss of life and health and significant social and economic upheaval from ongoing worldwide pandemic make acceleration of […]
Challenging cognitive biases in the intensive care unit
By Harleen Kaur Johal & Christopher Danbury Unsurprisingly, the intensive care unit (ICU) is an “intense” environment, for staff, patients, and their families. These busy, 24-hour units provide care for the most unwell patients in a hospital. As many of these patients are incapacitated, due to the effects of their illness or sedation, decisions must […]
Imagining a Different Future: Ectogenesis and Self-Determination
By Claire Horn Like other academics who write about artificial wombs, much of the work I’ve done in the last few years has required me to operate at least in part on a speculative level, tracing the problems that present themselves in our contemporary context to understand what the impact of this technology in development […]
Utilizing parents to hand-bag ventilate when resources are scarce: Is it ethical?
By Emily E. Barsky and Sadath Sayeed Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many nations are coping with what resource limited settings are all too familiar with—ventilator scarcity. In low-income countries, people— and particularly children— frequently die of reversible, acute respiratory failure due to across-the-board resource scarcity. Some such settings have responded to this by allowing parents […]
AI in healthcare – why start a conversation with the general public?
By Elizabeth Ford Imagine the future. Imagine you are 76 years old. You visit your doctor to have her examine your knee, which hurts since you fell over yesterday, tripping on your front step. After tapping some information into her computer, your doctor turns to you and says, “Would you like to discuss any concerns […]
Consent in an acute clinical research setting – what should that look like?
Peta Coulson-Smith and Anneke Lucassen. Consent to an intervention serves to recognise a person’s autonomy, be that in clinical care – or in the research that informs that clinical care. Consent is not valid unless it is given voluntarily, on the basis of sufficient information to make the decision, and by someone who has the […]
COVID-19 is a wake-up call for ethical health communication
By Jamie Carlin Watson Increased understanding of social determinants of health and health literacy have expanded the responsibilities of the medical community from patients in the clinic to citizens at increased health risks. Fulfilling these responsibilities involves, in part, distributing timely and accurate health information that is accessible, understandable, and usable. Though increased commitment to […]
Surgery in COVID-19 Crisis Conditions: Can We Protect Our Ethical Integrity Against the Odds?
By J Macleod, S Mezher and R Hasan Since the dawn of the COVID-19 crisis, drastic changes have swept across many organisations. Healthcare providers are particularly affected by this; which we have experienced first-hand working in cardiac surgery. Working in this constantly evolving situation inevitably leads to uncertainty, inconsistency and even fear despite the best […]
Do people have rights to their emotional support animals?
By Sara Kolmes. Concepts of ‘body-rights’ allow us to discuss the kind of violation that occurs when people invade or harm our bodies, a violation that seems to go beyond merely harming something that belongs to us. Bioethicists have argued that people who use prosthetics have body-like rights to their prosthetics. This means that when […]