There’s a flurry of papers on conscientious objection in the latest JME: Giles Birchley argues, taking his cue from Arendt, that conscientious objection has a place in medicine here; Sophie Strickland’s paper on medical students’ attitude to conscientious objection (which I mentioned in July) is here; and Morten Magelssen wonders when conscientious objection should be accepted here. […]
Category: clinical ethics
What can we Learn from “The Exorcist”?
When John Sentamu stood up in the House of Lords a couple of weeks ago and spoke about the need for the NHS to concern itself with “spiritual” needs – and illustrated his claim with an anecdote about something resembling an exorcism – the response from a lot of the blogosphere was, at its friendliest, one […]
Exporting and Using Medical Equipment
A student writes: I am a 5th Year Medical Student involved in a charity organisation that collects medical goods that are recycled/past expiry dates but still in good condition for re-use/excess from stocks, and aims to provide more impoverished clinics and hospitals abroad with these goods through students’ electives. I have been trying to find […]
Three Quiet Cheers for Uterine Transplants
Charles Foster’s post over at Practical Ethics about the news of the womb-transplant surgery that’s slated to take place in the near future is on the money in many respects. Foster points out that [p]redictably the newspapers loved it. And, equally predictably, clever people from the world’s great universities queued up to be eloquently wise […]
Special Offer! Genital Mutilation!
Today’s dose of righteous anger comes, via Ophelia Benson and Marie Myung-Ok Lee writing in The Atlantic, from the fifth annual Congress on Aesthetic Vaginal Surgery, held just outside Tuscon at the end of last year. The affable organizer of the Tucson event, Dr. Red Alinsod, was an early entrant into cosmetic-gyn, and is recognized for […]
Language and ethics – being “let” to go overdue
By David Hunter The more I think about it the more I think that one issue bioethicists should play much closer attention to is the language used to describe things. This isn’t a new thought, Kongzi (known as Confucius in the West) said: Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in […]
A New Standard for Medics: Perfection
Lord knows why, but I keep going back to Secondhand Smoke, the pro-life, global-warmin’-denyin’, public-healthcare-hatin’, intelligent-design-lovin’, Daily-Mail-quotin’ blog written by Discovery Institute affiliated lawyer Wesley Smith. I try to stay away, but like a child peeping between his fingers while hiding his eyes, I’m just fascinated by it. A recent post concerns a Kiwi woman […]