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 […]
Latest articles
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 […]
The Moral Elephant in the Room – Patient Morality in Psychiatry
By Doug McConnell, Matthew Broome, and Julian Savulescu. In our paper, “Making psychiatry moral again”, we aim to develop and justify a practical ethical guide for psychiatric involvement in patient moral growth. Ultimately we land on the view that psychiatrists should help patients express their own moral values by default but move to address the […]
Egg freezing in the UK: Recent developments in the broader context of reproductive ageing
By Giulia Cavaliere and James Rupert Fletcher. The UK government has just amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 and extended the limit for storing gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos from 10 to 55 years. Previously, only people with a medical reason, such as infertility caused by cancer treatment, could store their gametes […]
If some inhalers contribute to global warming, how should healthcare respond?
By Joshua Parker. Most people are surprised to hear that if industrialised healthcare were a country it would be the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. In 2019, the NHS was responsible for around 7% of England’s total carbon footprint; approximately 25 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. We can already see the effects […]
Doctors should not be forced to refer patients for controversial procedures
By David Albert Jones. Should doctors have a right not to provide legal but morally controversial procedures such as assisted suicide or abortion? And, if a doctor declines to provide some procedure, should the doctor be required to refer the patient to another doctor who will provide it? Where abortion or assisted suicide are legal, […]