By David Shaw The last report of the outgoing UK Chief Medical Officer, Dr Sally Davies, is entitled “Time to Solve Childhood Obesity”. It makes many sensible public health recommendations, including increases in the levy on sweet drinks and taxation on snacks, and reducing portion sizes and marketing aimed at children. But a different recommendation […]
Category: Public Health
The ethics of disposing of amputated limbs
By Esmée Hanna and Glenn Robert Whilst ethical issues relating to the disposal of body parts generally are increasingly discussed (largely prompted by high profile organ retention scandals), what happens in the specific case of amputated limbs has not received much attention. Amputation is however increasingly common, in part due to growing rates of diabetes […]
More ethics is good, right?
By Jane Johnson and Chris Degeling The ethics of synthetic biology, the ethics of conspiracy theories, the ethics of movie producers… it seems there could be a separate ethics for almost anything. And with each separate ethics there could be distinctive issues that are involved, as well as specialized ethical approaches, theories, and so on. […]
Stay in Your Lane: On the National Rifle Association’s Response to Physicians’ Support for a Public Health Approach to Firearms-Related Violence
By Christian Chartier and Philippe April. On July 21st, 2018, the American College of Physicians’ (ACP) Board of Regents approved a policy paper commissioned to reiterate the ACP’s support for a public health approach to firearms-related violence. On November 7th, eight days after the article’s eventual publication, the National Rifle Association (NRA) issued a reply […]
Getting libertarians on board with mandatory vaccination
By Charlie T. Blunden Non-vaccination is causing serious problems worldwide. Take measles as an example. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control say that 95% of a population must receive two doses of a measles vaccine in order to prevent transmission of the disease through the population. However, many nations are falling below this […]
Should Iceland Ban Circumcision? A Legal and Ethical Analysis
By Lauren Notini and Brian D. Earp *Note: this article also appears on the Practical Ethics Blog, and a condensed version titled “Iceland’s Proposed Circumcision Ban” is being cross-published at Pursuit. For a small country, Iceland has had a big impact on global media coverage recently, following its proposed ban on male circumcision before […]
Guest Post: Who Calls the Shots? Teens and the HPV Vaccine
Suchi Agrawal Paper: Who calls the shots? The ethics of adolescent self-consent for HPV vaccination During my pediatric hospital medicine rotation, I stopped the team before we entered the room of our sixteen-year-old patient and her parents. “Just a reminder, the patient does not want her parents to know she was tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia.” […]
Guest Post: The Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill: Some Objections Rebutted
David S. Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading On March 23rd 2018, the House of Lords will enter the Committee Stage of debate on the Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill, a Private Members’ Bill sponsored by Baroness O’Loan. It will be a time for line-by-line examination, with many amendments expected to be tabled both […]
Unethical World Medical Association Standards for Placebo Trials?
Guest post by Jeremy Howick Trials show that drugs called ‘interferon alpha’ extend life in people with advanced skin cancer (by a bit). If we invented a new drug to treat advanced skin cancer, most patients would want to know whether the new drug was better than interferon alpha. It would be less useful […]
Surrogacy, Obstetric Risk and the Kardashian Wests
Guest post by Nathan Hodson Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West announced the birth of their third child, named Chicago, last month. Chicago West was born via surrogate. All the significant events of Kardashian West’s life have been documented season by season on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and naturally her surrogacy […]