Apparently, there was a TV programme in Australia the other day in which a there was a discussion of assisted dying. It got reported in The Guardian, largely on the basis that an 81-year-old audience member kept calling Margaret Somerville “darling” and then got mildly sweary. I’ve only seen those clips from the programme that […]
Category: Life and Death
Aid-in-Dying Laws and the Physician’s Duty to Inform
Guest Post: Mara Buchbinder Paper: Aid-in-dying laws and the physician’s duty to inform Why do so many people assume that any clinical communication about aid-in-dying (AID, also known as assisted suicide), where it is legal, ought to be patient-initiated? Physician participants in my ongoing study tend to assume that physicians should wait for patients to initiate […]
Response to ‘A Matter of Life and Death: Controversy at the Interface Between Clinical and Legal Decision-Making in Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness’
Guest Post: Julian Sheather, British Medical Association Response to: A matter of life and death: controversy at the interface between clinical and legal decision-making in prolonged disorders of consciousness (also available as a blog summary) The law has to work in generalities. The prohibitions it imposes and the liberties it describes are set for all of […]
How to Keep HIV Cure-Related Trials Ethical: The Benefit/Risk Ratio Challenge
Guest Post by Nir Eyal Re: Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics on the ethics and challenges of an HIV cure For most patients with HIV who have access to antiretroviral treatment and use it properly, that treatment works well. But the holy grail of HIV research remains finding a cure. Sometimes that […]
Chappell on Midwives and Regulation
Richard Yetter Chappell has drawn my attention to this – a blog post in which he bemoans the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s rules about indemnity insurance, and the effects that they’ll have on independent midwives. (I’d never heard of independent midwives – but an IM – according to Independent Midwives UK – is “a fully […]
The Importance of Disambiguating Questions about Consent and Refusal
Guest Post: Rob Lawlor Re: Cake or death? Ending confusions about asymmetries between consent and refusal Imagine you have an adolescent patient who is in need of life saving treatment. You offer him the treatment, assuming that he would consent, but he refuses. As he is not yet a competent adult, you decide to treat […]
A Matter of Life and Death
Guest Post by Professor Lynn Turner-Stokes Re: A matter of life and death – controversy at the interface between clinical and legal decision-making in prolonged disorders of consciousness In an article published in the JME, I highlight the confusion that exists amongst many clinicians, lawyers and members of the public about decisions with withdraw life-sustaining treatments […]
A Hot Take on a Cold Body
It’s good to see Nils’ post about the recent UK cryonics ruling getting shared around quite a bit – so it should. I thought I’d throw in my own voice, too. About 18 months ago, Imogen Jones and I wrote a paper musing on some of the ethical and legal dimensions of Christopher Priest’s The Prestige. […]
Justice Cryogenically Delayed is Justice Denied?
Guest Post by Nils Hoppe Re JS (Disposal of Body) [2016] EWHC 2859 (Fam) This unusual and sad case concerns a court application by a 14 year old girl, JS. In 2015 she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer which proved terminal and, at the time of her application, she was receiving palliative […]
Victims, Vectors and Villains? Are Those Who Opt Out of Vaccination Morally Responsible for the Deaths of Others?
Guest Post by Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Toby Handfield, Michael J Selgelid Re: Victims, vectors and villains: are those who opt out of vaccination morally responsible for the deaths of others? Who is responsible for the harms caused by an outbreak for vaccine preventable disease? Are those who opt out of vaccination and transmit disease responsible for the resultant harms […]