By Natalie Kofler and Françoise Baylis In the midst of worldwide protests against anti-Black racism and violent policing, private companies and governments are developing a novel platform for discrimination that would effectively increase the reach of law enforcement into public society – so called, digital “immunity passports”. It all starts with a seemingly innocuous plan […]
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Evidence-based injustices
By Jonathan Michaels. In healthcare, and many other areas of endeavour, policy and guidance claims legitimacy on the basis that it is evidence-based and follows the best scientific advice. Expert advisory committees collect, consider and interpret extensive, and often complex, scientific evidence. As we have seen in the diverse responses to Covid-19, evidence and expertise […]
Can Welfare Powers of Attorney in Scotland refuse medical treatment on the granter’s behalf?
By Amanda Ward There is ambiguity to what extent Welfare Powers of Attorney (WPA) in Scotland can refuse or withhold consent to medical treatment. The primary legislation to be consulted is the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 (AWIA). A welfare power of attorney relates to decision making in relation to the granter’s personal and […]
Co-producing ethics: thinking about trust
By Mark Sheehan. Our paper, ‘Trust, trustworthiness, and sharing patient data for research’ represents the outcome of a distinctive co-production method for doing applied philosophical work in bioethics. The paper is jointly authored by eight members of the public and two academic bioethicists (both with a background in philosophy) and emerges from a novel approach […]
BMJ Covid 19 free access research archive
By John McMillan The BMJ has produced an archive that collects all the Covid 19 research that has appeared in BMJ journals. All Covid 19 research is being published as freely available and that includes papers published in the JME. We are expediting the review and production of Covid 19 papers. Several significant papers are […]
What happens when a healthcare institution becomes a research subject?
By Jan Piasecki and Vilius Dranseika. Consider a hospital manager who works in a large hospital employing hundreds of medical professionals and receiving thousands of patients every day. When she is approached by a group of researchers, she faces a difficult decision. On the one hand, she and the staff of her hospital are committed […]
Don’t let the ethics of despair infect the intensive care unit
By David Shaw, Dan Harvey and Dale Gardiner. Coronavirus is a killer, and most countries have implemented measures to reduce this mortality. On the one hand, public health measures aim to limit the spread of the disease, and hence limit the number of people requiring hospitalisation; on the other, healthcare professionals working in intensive care […]
What’s in the applesauce? The ethics of covert administration of medication in food
By Megan Dean, Laura Guidry-Grimes and Elizabeth Victor. Do you know what’s in your food? Food is a site of physical and epistemic vulnerability for us all–we rely on often invisible others to produce, store, transport, prepare, and serve our food safely, without contamination or adulteration, and to be honest and accurate when describing and […]
A bird in the hand or two in the bush? On ethics of HCV screening in pregnancy
By Marielle Gross. Since the beginning of my medical career, the American opioid crisis-turned-epidemic made nearly daily headlines. It reflected a complex set of challenges for our healthcare system which concern me not only as a physician and surgeon, but as a bioethicist focused on dismantling “prejudice-based medicine.” It is a perfect storm of moneyed […]
How should we regulate child sex robots: restriction or experimentation?
By John Danaher This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. In 2017, the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) decided to clamp down on the importation of child sex dolls into the UK. In doing so, they faced […]