By Christian M. Schulz. The fifth mass extinction began 66 million years ago after an asteroid, measuring 10 kilometers in diameter, hit the peninsula of Yucatán. At the end of this huge loss of biodiversity, caused probably by ocean acidification, the most prominent victims were the dinosaurs. Currently, biodiversity is declining faster than at any […]
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Solidarity and similarity: what kind of “we” are we, and why does it matter?
By Avery Kolers. Think of a time when you were trying to flex a rarely used muscle: say, learning to raise one eyebrow. In the moment, the action isn’t hard to do in the sense of being costly or requiring strength you don’t have, it’s hard to do because you don’t know how to isolate […]
AI in healthcare – why start a conversation with the general public?
By Elizabeth Ford Imagine the future. Imagine you are 76 years old. You visit your doctor to have her examine your knee, which hurts since you fell over yesterday, tripping on your front step. After tapping some information into her computer, your doctor turns to you and says, “Would you like to discuss any concerns […]
Evidence-based injustices
By Jonathan Michaels. In healthcare, and many other areas of endeavour, policy and guidance claim legitimacy on the basis that they are evidence-based and follow 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 […]
Clamping down on unethical research: time for a moratorium on publishing Chinese transplant research
By Wendy A Rogers, Angela Ballantyne, Wendy C Higgins, Wendy Lipworth. Our paper in JME investigates the pros and cons of publishing and/or retracting unethical biomedical research. We focus on Chinese transplant research using organs procured from non-consenting executed prisoners. However, this is not the only topic currently raising questions about the justifiability of publishing […]
Immunity passports – reopening the economy and repackaging racism
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 […]
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 […]