By Stuart WG Derbyshire and John C Bockmann. In the early 1990s new techniques for fetal surgery emerged and a group working at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital were posed a question by their pregnant patients that they had not previously considered: will it hurt the fetus when you inject it? Obviously the surgeons could not ask […]
Category: Medical ethics
A sexual rights puzzle, un-puzzled!
By Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders The debate over sexual rights for the disabled is of profound political, ethical, and philosophical importance. In a recent debate in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Steven J. Firth argues for a welfare founded ‘sex doula’ programme. This blog post stands as a criticism of Di Nucci’s response to […]
Euthanasia, palliative opioid use and palliative sedation: A rejoinder
By Thomas David Riisfeldt. One of my recent essays has generated a considerable amount of critique which I was fortunate to be able to explore in my essay ‘A response to critics: Weakening the ethical distinction between euthanasia, palliative opioid use and palliative sedation’. I will briefly comment on some of these points here. I […]
“But it’s not my fault”: what not to say when confronting medical errors (even if it’s true)
By Daniel Tigard. Healthcare professionals are only human—at least, for now. As such, they are prone to simple oversights, or even occasional acts of gross negligence. What makes errors in medical contexts especially concerning is, of course, that any failure can have devastating effects. Patients come to healthcare facilities needing attention for some ailment and […]
How I came to write “Why not Common Morality?”
By Rosamond Rhodes When I first began my work at Mount Sinai, I was the sole philosopher at the institution, and I certainly felt like a stranger among the hundreds of medical professionals. As the only bioethicist on campus, I was called upon by any department that wanted ethics education for their trainees and any […]
Medical ethics is far too important to leave to doctors
By Søren Holm. The rise of ‘professionalism’ as the panacea to all of the ills afflicting the medical profession has led to a resurgence of the idea that medical ethics should be professional ethics, and that the content of this professional ethics should be decided by the profession. In my comment “Roles, professions and ethics – […]
Public Reason and Physicians’ Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse
By Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard We recently offered a reply to criticisms of our view that physicians should refrain from deliberating with their patients on religious grounds when helping them make medical decisions. Part of what prompted our research into this topic is recent work discussing appropriate ways of communicating with religious patients who […]
The irrelevance and elusiveness of consciousness
By Charles Foster I am aware (as my academic critics will agree) of only a tiny proportion of what I do and what I am. It is not clear what sort of creature I am, but what is clear is that very little of me is visible to myself – let alone to others. We […]