By Kyoko L. Yoda “It’s 10pm, do you know where your children are?” The Atlanta Child Murders (1979-1981) are not simply history to me. I was a child in suburban Atlanta then, and I remember the fear surrounding the disappearances and murders. I remember Atlanta news reporter, Monica Kaufman, saying the above haunting phrase every […]
Category: Justice
AI companies have hijacked academic norms
By Brandon Yates Most people, upon becoming the subject of a Retraction Watch article, might wish to diminish that fact or move on quickly to try and course correct. I’m in the peculiar position of having a Retraction Watch article that largely exonerated my work from the scrutiny that it had faced. It came into […]
First, do no harm – then what?
What Iranian physicians under the Mahsa Amini crackdown reveal about medicine, complicity, and conscience. By Amir Davoodi In September 2022, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Tehran, three days after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab improperly. What followed was one of the largest protest movements […]
For whom the cry for help tolls?
By Nicola Cocco, Valentina Marchese and Federico Nicoli “Who is here on the shore? Who is watching this shipwreck from the mainland? Is it really just me, no one else?” Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat, 2023 On February 2, 2026, the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans reported that up to 1,000 people could be missing […]
Two ears, one standard: Why and how bilateral cochlear implantation should be routine care for adults
By Wendy J. Huinck, Simone Naber, Stef Groenewoud and Adriana L. Smit Cochlear implantation (CI) is an effective treatment for severe hearing loss with major benefits for quality of life. Untreated hearing loss has far‑reaching consequences: children with congenital deafness show altered development with long‑term effects on language and speech, while adults who lose hearing […]
Gaza and boycotts – an ethical perspective
By Zohar Lederman As I write this, the Jewish Film Festival is playing in Hong Kong. After buying tickets, I learned that some people are boycotting the event to protest Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Another friend has suggested that Israeli academics should expect and understand being boycotted for the same reason. In a recent conference […]
Weaponized beneficence: Decision-making capacity challenges as instruments of medical hegemony
By Omar F. Mirza, Yekaterina Angelova, Marie S. Thearle, Gregg A Robbins-Welty, and Stephanie Cheung Informed consent is part of the bedrock of clinical ethics. Composed of voluntariness, disclosure, and capacity, informed consent is designed to center the patient in their own care amidst an asymmetric power dyad that can easily overpower individual choice. Despite […]
Global bioethics and global health in the context of a new antidemocratic era
by Gabriela Arguedas-Ramírez Five years ago, I wrote an editorial arguing that authoritarian and right-wing populism were a threat to global health and bioethics. Early this year, with colleagues from the US and the UK, we published a piece about pandemics, bioethics and populism. Since then, the global scenario has become dreadfully worse. What began […]
USAID cuts: A moral failure
By G. Owen Schaefer The effects of recent massive cuts to USAID are still unfolding, but the likely catastrophic consequences for the globe are evident. A recent analysis estimated that the program prevented over 90 million deaths in the past two decades due to efforts in treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other […]
The Fence Around Us: How India’s Medical System Enables Cultural Misogyny
By Anonymous* A baby girl starved to death in a South Indian hospital. No one was held accountable. I first heard about her during a forensic medicine lecture on starvation. The regular faculty were away, so a professor from a different specialty stepped in. As she listed various types of starvation, she paused to reflect […]