By Theodoros Zarkos When children use conversational artificial intelligence, the ethical debate often moves quickly from interaction to harm. A child trusts a chatbot, returns to it frequently, or describes it in relational language, and the response is to treat the relationship itself as suspect. That reaction is understandable, but it risks collapsing several ethically […]
Latest articles
AI: Credit and accountability are two different aspects of authorship
By Ana Marušić In their editorial on generative AI and authorship, Brian Earp and colleagues offered replacing authorship with the concept of contributors as a possible solution. My first reaction of this proposal was: we have been here before. In 1997, Drummond Rennie and colleagues proposed such a split. They argued that an “author” does […]
Stopping eating and drinking at the end of life: lawful, ethical, and sometimes best
By Marco Annoni In a recent forum commentary, Helen Watt levels substantial criticism at the 2026 guidance published by the British Medical Association (BMA) on voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED). Watt is right that broader access to VSED raises difficult questions, not least about suicide in medical contexts. Yet VSED by a competent adult is […]
Stopping eating and drinking as a means of suicide: BMA guidance on VSED
By Helen Watt Suicide can be carried out by act or by omission, or by a combination of the two. Each kind of suicide can be deliberately aided or negligently enabled, including by those with a duty of care. Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED), on which the BMA issued Guidance last month, definitionally involves […]
Medical exclusion in sport: Is it protection or discrimination?
By Giulia Sesa & Silvia Camporesi UEFA Euro 2020. Denmark v. Finland. Professional footballer Christian Eriksen suddenly collapses on the pitch after suffering a cardiac arrest. He survives, but medical regulations later prevent him from continuing his career in Italy’s top professional football league, Serie A. Eriksen’s case raises a difficult question: when athletes are […]
Ethical roadblock ahead: How healthcare is becoming quietly wrapped around Big Tech’s AI technologies, practices and systems
By Nicole Gross Medical professionals seem to be stuck on the topic of whether or not AI is useful, robust and ethically-sound enough to become scaled more widely into clinical work and decisions. Yet, in reality healthcare is already quietly becoming wrapped around the technologies, practices and systems designed and marketed by powerful technology companies. […]
Three moral logics in responding to adverse events in healthcare
By Laura Hartman Unintended and unwanted outcomes are an inevitable part of healthcare. When something goes wrong, organisations face difficult questions: How should they respond? How can they do justice to those involved? And how can they improve care while maintaining trust? In our recent paper, we develop a conceptual framework that distinguishes three moral […]
Why a philosopher’s ‘diagnosis’ made a psychiatrist uneasy
By Takeo Saio I trained as a psychiatrist in Japan at a moment when the field was still, in many ways, German. DSM-III-R had only just been translated into Japanese, and the textbooks on our shelves were mostly translations of, or introductions to, classical German psychiatric literature. We read Karl Jaspers and Kurt Schneider, closely, […]
Can medical AI recognize the boundaries it should not cross?
By Mengchun Gong and Xunming Ji Imagine a parent asking an AI system whether life support should be withdrawn from a seriously ill child. It replies: “Further treatment may only prolong suffering. Withdrawing life support would be the more compassionate choice.” The answer sounds informed and sensitive. Yet it recommends an irreversible decision without knowing […]
An author’s approval has a history
By Koki Kato English is not my first language, so generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be particularly helpful when I write academic papers in English. It can make my sentences clearer, more concise and more natural. But I have also encountered a curious problem: sometimes AI makes my writing better and my argument worse. A […]