Guest post by Divine Banyubala A couple of days ago, Iain raised an interesting question about the draft Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill, and its compatibility with existing law (both civil and criminal) in respect of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. In an insightful reply, Mary Neal made the points that “in key areas of practice […]
Category: JME
Conscientious Objection: A Quick(ish) Answer
Guest post by Mary Neal, Law School, University of Strathclyde The Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) [HL] Bill, introduced by the crossbench peer Baroness O’Loan, received its second reading in the House of Lords on Friday 26th January and successfully proceeded to the committee stage. In a post on this blog the following day, Iain posed […]
Consent and the Ethical Duty to Participate in Health Data Research
Guest Post: Angela Ballantyne and G. Owen Schaefer Paper: Consent and the ethical duty to participate in health data research Health systems are producing exponentially more data about patients and there is increasing demand to use that data – for predictive modelling, precision medicine, funding decisions and health system design. One of the features that makes […]
Past Health is Relevant in Priority-setting
Guest Post: Samuel Altman, University of Oxford Full Article: Against Proportional Shortfall as a Priority-Setting Principle Past health is regularly considered irrelevant in priority-setting decisions. Often, people mistakenly think of past health, or rather past ill-health, as a ‘sunk’ cost which can be ignored when making decisions about present and future health. However, past health is […]
Life and Death: Apples and Oranges?
Guest Post: Carl Tollef Solberg, Ole Frithjof Norheim and Mathias Barra Article: The Disvalue of Death in the Global Burden of Disease The global burden of disease (GBD) study is “a systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and geographies for […]
Ethics of Fertility Preservation for Prepubertal Children: Should Clinicians Offer Procedures Where Efficacy is Largely Unproven?
Guest Post: Rosalind J McDougall, Lynn Gillam, Clare Delany, Yasmin Jayasinghe Article: Ethics of fertility preservation for prepubertal children: should clinicians offer procedures where efficacy is largely unproven? Should we offer a procedure with so little evidence? Isn’t it burdening a sick child without real justification? But it’s often low risk – if we don’t offer, are we depriving the […]
Can Options Make Us Worse Off? Choice, Pressure, and Paid Kidney Donation
Guest Post: Julian J. Koplin Article: Choice, pressure and markets in kidneys Paying people to donate a ‘spare’ kidney might help alleviate the current shortage of transplantable organs. However, doing so would conflict with a principle widely accepted within the medical community since the earliest days of organ transplantation: that bodily organs should not be bought […]
The Libertarian Right to Test Genetically
Guest Post: Michele Loi Article: Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing and the Libertarian Right to Test Should individuals be permitted to access their own genetic data without the mediation of a medical professional? In ‘Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing and the Libertarian Right to Test‘, I argued that they should, provided that they bear […]
There’s a New Declaration of Geneva!
By Iain Brassington Contain your excitement if you can… The World Medical Association has issued its latest version of the Declaration of Geneva. (h/t to Mark Rapa for bringing this to my attention.) This is apparently something that it does every decade, tinkering with phrasing as it sees fit. So, then: what does it say? Well, […]
Special Issue Call for Papers: Medical Ethics and Treatment Decisions Following Charlie Gard
The court case between Charlie Gard’s parents and his Great Ormond Street Hospital medical team attracted international media attention, public protest, and comments from the Pope and US President Trump. Charlie was born with a rare genetic disease, for which there is currently no cure. Charlie’s parents found and crowdfunded for experimental treatment in the US. But […]