By Thomas Donaldson. Intensive care (ICU) medicine is amazing. When a disease causes a patient to become critically ill because their lungs, kidneys or cardiovascular system have started to fail, ICU treatments can take over the job of these organ systems to provide extra time for them to recover. Intensive care treatment has prevented the […]
Category: Medical ethics
From bytes to bedside: Exploring AI in medical ethics
By Michael Balas. In the swiftly advancing realm of artificial intelligence (AI), a tantalizing question emerges: can AI systems help us navigate the murky waters of medical ethics? Our recent study, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), tackled this very question, and our findings were enlightening. At the heart of our research was […]
Threats to autonomy in uterus provision
By J. Y. Lee. In my recent extended essay published in JME, I argued that transitioning transgender men and cisgender women who do not wish to gestate should not be excluded from opportunities to autonomously provide their uterus in service of uterus transplantations (UTx). My argument was motivated by the fact that it is the norm […]
If only we’d known
By Edwin Jesudason. Lee Fierro was an actress who played Mrs Kintner in the Steven Spielberg classic “Jaws”. After slapping Chief Brodie, a sheriff with responsibilities for public safety, she cries: “I just found out that a girl got killed here last week and you knew, you knew there was a shark out there. You […]
How to reduce the carbon footprint of anaesthesia
By Joshua Parker, Nathan Hodson, Paul Young & Cliff Shelton. If asked what an anaesthetist does, most would picture a doctor placing a mask on a patient’s face and asking them to count backwards from ten to one. As they count, they inhale a colourless gas and before passing the halfway mark their countdown stops […]
Outgrowing the infancy? The concept of “Meaningful Human Control” in health
By Eva Maria Hille, Patrik Hummel and Matthias Braun. It takes its first steps over time, some of which are successful, some which aren’t. Its steps are becoming more regular and steady until the tempo picks up and it strives to run. As time goes by, it’s outgrowing its infancy. Similar to the steps of […]
“Good Medical Practice” and the Climate Crisis
By Rammina Yassaie. Primum non nocere. First do no harm. Words that are ingrained into every doctor from the moment they graduate medical school, as the resounding ethical principle to live and practice by. Medicine is often thought of as a career that involves ‘saving lives’, but how commonly are doctors encouraged to consider the […]
Allocating physicians to rural areas in Japan: Validity and ethical considerations
By Masatoshi Matsumoto. Physicians predominantly cluster in urban areas, often leaving rural populations underserved. This phenomenon is observed worldwide. Consequently, the question arises: is it both necessary and justifiable for governments to allocate physicians to rural regions? In addressing this issue, the Japanese government has adopted an approach involving the establishment of Jichi Medical University […]
Different emergency departments, different triage systems: when is it an ethical problem that two patients with the same condition are triaged with different criteria? And should the public know about it?
By Davide Battisti and Silvia Camporesi. It is likely that, like us, you will have had an experience in Emergency Departments (EDs), or that you can recall an experience of accompanying a relative or friend there. Let’s consider the scenario where the reason for you, your relative, or friend going to the ED was the […]
AI in healthcare: promise, peril, and professional responsibility
By Helen Smith, John Downer and Jonathan Ives. Everyone is excited about the idea of AI being brought to the bedside, and who wouldn’t be? We’re short of all staffing groups, daily stories of how everyone is overloaded, overworked, struggling; all help is heartily welcomed, no? But, at risk of being called a killjoy here, […]