By Daniel Taylor and Dawn Goodwin Why do we still search for individuals to blame when things go wrong in healthcare? Decades of research, healthcare ‘scandals’ and their inquiries, and current guidance on patient safety tell us to focus less on the individual and more on the organisational factors that predispose practitioners to error or […]
Latest articles
Teaching abortion
By Ezio Di Nucci Many thanks to Helen Watt for engaging with my piece on teaching abortion anno 2022. We might disagree on the ethics and politics of abortion itself, but we clearly agree on (the ethics and politics of) teaching it. As she says, ‘universities should extend, not curtail, students’ exposure to other views’ […]
David Bennett and the first porcine xenotransplantation
By Christopher Gyngell and Julian Savulescu. At 57, David Bennett was dying. He had a decades long history of heart disease. Prior treatments, including surgery, had proved ineffective. In November 2021, he was diagnosed with uncontrollable arrhythmia and was admitted to the University of Maryland Medical Centre. Despite the best efforts of clinicians, his condition […]
Abortion: a no-go area in teaching medical ethics?
By Helen Watt The shockwaves emitting from the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs/Roe v. Wade, and the leaked draft opinion before that, have travelled far beyond the US. Those interested in a diverse academy will be intrigued to learn of the recent experience of Ezio Di Nucci, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Copenhagen, […]
Well-intended harms
By Edwin Jesudason. Whatever could be wrong with kindness? In fact, the answers might surprise us. My paper explores ways in which kindness can interfere with key principles of healthcare ethics, leading to potentially serious side effects for patients and staff alike. The idea for the paper has been a long time coming. Over decades […]
Why hospitals should not ban visitors
By Emily McTernan Under Covid-era restrictions in hospitals, some died unable to see loved ones a last time, and some were unable to say goodbye to those they loved. Some women gave birth, some having stillbirths, without any companion present. Many women had to care for their babies shortly after birth on the post-natal ward, […]
When the rule of rescue fails to rescue
By Kayla Wiebe, Simon Kelley, Roxanne Kirsch An arguably positive accident of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it rejuvenated public, political, and academic interest in the ethical dimensions of resource allocation, with specific focus on how extreme resource shortages (like in triage) exacerbates health inequities. Unfortunately, of far greater significance, are the kinds of exacerbations […]
Fetal alcohol syndrome and abortion
By Simon Cushing In several publications, the philosopher Perry Hendricks has pushed an argument that he calls “the impairment argument,” intended to demonstrate that our horror at causing impairments such as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) to our children in utero should lead us to regard abortion with at least equal horror, as surely death is […]
Why trusted research environments are not about trust
By Paige Fitzsimmons. In April 2022 the UK Department of Health and Social Care published ‘Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis’. This report, which has come to be known as the ‘Goldacre Review’, recommends the use of Trusted Research Environments (TREs) to facilitate the building of public trust in health data […]
Sex, Drugs and Athletics: Should female athletes like Caster Semenya be required to take drugs to lower their performance levels?
By Sebastian Jon Holmen, Thomas Søbirk Petersen and Jesper Ryberg The South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, former winner of two Olympic gold medals, recently participated in the 2022 World Athletics Championships. Semenya was permitted to run in the women’s 5,000m competition, where she did not qualify for the final. However, she was not allowed […]