By Anna Nelson. Prompted by a sensationalist headline in the Daily Mail, there has been a furore on social media around an article published last year by bioethicist Anna Smajdor in which she defends ‘Whole Bodily Gestational Donation’ (WBGD). Put simply WBGD means that, with prior consent, the bodies of women in a permanent vegetative […]
Latest articles
Developing an honesty test for doctors
By Daniel Sokol. When not working as a barrister, I teach medical ethics to doctors who are going through disciplinary proceedings. The majority are in trouble because of dishonest conduct. They may have lied on a job application, cheated in a membership exam, or forged a document for personal gain. Medical Practitioners Tribunals have often […]
Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and doctors’ conscientious commitment to provide abortion care
By Alberto Giubilini, Udo Schuklenk, Francesca Minerva. Julian Savulescu. The reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the Constitutional protection of women’s right to access abortion services in the US. This decision has resulted in renewed interest in the […]
Housestaff unionization in the United States and our duties to each other
By Karel-Bart Celie. In a recent issue of JAMA, Ahmed et al. published data on healthcare unionization in the United States between 2009 and 2021. Despite the observed association between unionization and higher wages, better benefits, and more equitable compensation, unionization among healthcare workers has evidently remained low. Richman and Schulman (R&S) wrote a commentary […]
What’s the big deal with ‘whole body gestational donation’? On defending bioethics
By J. Y. Lee. Over the past week, a flurry of articles on the internet (for example: 1, 2, 3) sensationalized the contents of a journal article published by philosopher Anna Smadjor, on what she calls “Whole body gestational donation” – with discussants on social media largely condemning the proposed concept, and implying that “bioethics” […]
Reassessing the “VaxTax”
By Nathan Petrovic. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that inequalities are still a worldwide problem concerning healthcare, especially regarding the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. As more affluent countries bought massive stocks of vaccines, lower and middle income (LMICs) countries struggled to gather enough vaccines. To counteract this predicament, Albertsen and Germani et al. have proposed […]
Dying like (never) before
By Ezio Di Nucci. At no (other) time during the COVID-19 pandemic were excess deaths as high as they are this January 2023 in Denmark. That’s right, more people are dying now than at any other time since the beginning of the pandemic (the last time excess death numbers were comparable was, in fact, the […]
How much credibility does my testimony deserve? This is not for an algorithm to decide!
By Giorgia Pozzi. The hype about the promises of machine learning (ML) systems in medicine is real, even though not always justified. As ethicists have been increasingly pointing out in the past years, quite some work still needs to be done to ensure their responsible use and safeguard fundamental bioethical principles, such as justice and […]
Challenging lesser evil justifications for non-clinically indicated uses of antipsychotics in aged care facilities
By Hojjat Soofi. The administration of antipsychotic medications to residents with dementia in aged care facilities remains a subject of considerable controversy. A major focus of the controversy has been on the (questionable) influence that non-clinical considerations have on the rate of antipsychotic prescriptions in aged care facilities. Often, the primary beneficiaries of antipsychotic uses […]
A political approach to thinking about self-harm
By Guy Aitchison and Ryan Essex. In April 2016, the Iranian refugee, Omid Masoumali, set himself on fire in front of UN inspectors at the Nauru island detention centre run by Australia. He later died of his injuries after delays in his treatment. Before carrying out his act, he shouted “This is how tired we […]