By Aileen Editha. “Not only were the HeLa cells derived from Henrietta Lacks – the HeLa cells are Henrietta Lacks” – Ben Crump, attorney for the Lacks family. (He)nrietta (La)cks Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer living in Baltimore, Maryland. She was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, one of the […]
Latest articles
Addressing the current research gap on the ethical evaluation of epigenome editing
By Karla Alex and Eva C. Winkler. Epigenome editing is a new research tool that has many potential applications in medicine but has not yet received much attention from ethicists. Our new article in Journal of Medical Ethics addresses this gap and proposes criteria for the assessments of risks of genome editing versus epigenome editing. […]
Can representatives of more than 10 million physicians worldwide agree on a foundation of medical ethical principles?
By Ramin W Parsa-Parsi, Raanan Gillon, Urban Wiesing. In today’s polarised world, achieving unanimous support for anything is a rare occurrence – let alone anything ethical. Simply agreeing to disagree to avoid outright confrontation is already a high enough bar to clear. It is in this climate that the World Medical Association (WMA) faced the […]
Sweet melancholies
By Charlotte Duffee. William Blake’s famous painting, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, pictures the devil pinning the Old Testament saint to the ground while afflicting his flesh. We see Job in great physical distress: neck bent—almost broken—backwards; fingers splayed stiffly; widened eyes wild with alarm. In his drawing of this same scene, Blake places […]
Are terminally ill patients disabled?
By Philip Reed. Asked to name groups of individuals who commonly face discrimination, most of us would probably come up with roughly the same list: racial minorities, people with disabilities, certain religious groups, women, and LGBTQ persons. If we have extra time to think, we might also mention heightism, sizeism, and lookism as lesser-known or […]
The Supreme Court on consent for treatment: practical but unfair?
By Abeezar I Sarela. On 12 July 2023, the Supreme Court issued its judgment in McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board. This judgment resolves a contentious issue in contemporary legal and ethical paradigms of consent for medical treatment; so, it requires careful attention. In an earlier blogpost, I discussed that, as per the ruling of […]
Grieving those frozen between life and death
By Robin Hillenbrink. This paper was inspired by a 2019 documentary about the youngest person to ever be cryopreserved. The documentary, “Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice” , tells the story of a Thai Buddhist couple who decide to cryopreserve their 2-year-old daughter Einz, after she passes away from brain cancer. Cryopreservation, or cryonics, […]
The UK Supreme Court just made meaningful patient involvement in medical decision-making more difficult
By Jennifer O’Neill. This week, the United Kingdom Supreme Court (UKSC) revisited its ruling in the landmark case of Montgomery v Lanarkshire [2015]. In McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board [2023], the Supreme Court Justices established that doctors do not need to inform patients of all possible treatment alternatives as a requirement of informed consent. […]
Ethical disclosure of information in childbirth
Kelly Irvine and Rebecca CH Brown. Contemplating what ethical care during pregnancy looks like leads to considerations of how, when and what information is provided. The provision of information is not a new concept medically or legally: it is well established that healthcare providers must ensure that patients are informed about the medical treatments available […]
Synthetic human embryo models: A new frontier in science with ethical implications
By Ricardo Diaz Milian. The world has recently seen a significant breakthrough, as researchers announced the creation of the first synthetic human embryos derived from stem cells without using sperm or eggs. The details are lacking since the work has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, this development clearly raises both interesting […]