Ernest Hemingway understood courage to be “grace under pressure” and doctors, nurses and health care professionals have been profoundly courageous in the face of the Covid 19 pandemic. It is too early for philosophical or scholarly reflection upon this crisis, the priority should be to find a path through it and for those of us […]
Category: JME
Advance decisions in dementia: when the past conflicts with the present
By George Gillett Last month, the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote an article in support of assisted dying. She wrote about Katherine Whitehorn, her former colleague at the Observer. Describing Whitehorn, Toynbee writes: She is not herself. Her old self would not recognise herself in this other being who sits in the care home. What […]
A sales rep and a doctor walk into a theatre – why this is no joke
By Quinn Grundy, Katrina Hutchison, Jane Johnson, Brette Blakely, Robyn Clay-Wlliams, Bernadette Richards, Wendy A Rogers Imagine that your elderly mother undergoes a hip replacement. During the post-operative appointment, the surgeon informs your mother that an error has been made: the two parts of the joint implant, a ball and socket, are mismatched. He explains that […]
A Moral Framework for Living Donor Transplantation
By Lainie Friedman Ross and J. Richard Thistlethwaite Living donor transplantation has been controversial since its inception because it exposes donors to medical risks for the medical benefit of their intended recipients. The usual bioethics argument about the moral permissibility of living kidney donation focuses on the concept of respect for persons which is often […]
Organismal death, the dead donor rule and the ethics of vital organ procurement
Guest Authors: Xavier Symons, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Reginald Mary Chua, Philosophy, Catholic Theological College, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Paper: Organismal death, the dead donor rule and the ethics of vital organ procurement The brain death criterion for death (as it is currently understood in medical practice) was first propounded in 1968 by an […]
First principles: The need for ethical guidance for pragmatic trials
Post authors: Dean Fergusson, Monica Taljaard and Charles Weijer [authors listed alphabetically] Paper: Thinking clearly about the FIRST trial: addressing ethical challenges in cluster randomised trials of policy interventions involving health providers Recently, members of our research team published an ethical analysis of the Flexibility in Duty Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees (FIRST) trial in the Journal […]
Impact Factors and Ethics
The news that the Journal of Medical Ethics now has an impact factor of 1.889 is a commendation for those who have contributed to the journal’s success over recent years. It reflects the efforts of the editorial team led by Julian Savulescu, Tom Douglas and Dominic Wilkinson to maintain consistently high editorial standards and ensure the journal covered […]
Conflicts of duty: What do they mean?
Guest Post Author: Andreas Eriksen, ARENA, Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; SPS, Centre for the Study of Professions, Oslo and Akershus University College, Oslo, Norway Paper: Conflicting duties and restitution of the trusting relationship Medical professionals constantly face hard cases in their interaction with patients, colleagues, and the public. They are torn between different considerations and exposed to seemingly […]
Guest Post: The eternal life of the biobank participant
Authors: Maria Stuifbergen, Lars Ursin Paper: The Ethics of dead participants: policy recommendations for biobank research Have you ever been operated at a hospital, donated blood, or participated in a health survey? Then you might have agreed to let health information and tissue samples from you be stored in a research biobank. You gave your […]
Guest Post: Ethical arguments for access to abortion services in the Republic of Ireland: recent developments in the public discourse.
Authors: Joan McCarthy, Katherine O’Donnell, Louise Campbell, Dolores Dooley Paper: Ethical arguments for access to abortion services in the Republic of Ireland: recent developments in the public discourse Some people argue that abortion is immoral, yet others don’t think so. Some think that abortion is immoral in general, and in the abstract, and yet judge that […]