By Dr. Richard Armitage As a GP, I rarely see a single-issue consultation. One person comes with a sore throat, a bad back, and queries about their medications. Another comes with a headache, low mood, and wanting the results of a recent blood test. This is the nature of routine primary care. But it creates […]
Latest articles
“Will my baby be disabled?”
By Peter D. Murray As a neonatologist, I’ve been asked this question countless times. Usually, it arises amid some crisis impacting the baby, through no fault of their own. If I could predict outcomes with 100% certainty, I could offer the distressed parent words of comfort or reassurance in such moments. Since I do not […]
When death becomes a checklist: Confronting secular bias in healthcare
By Hana Abbasian In modern healthcare, death is often treated as a medical event to manage, a problem to solve, or a process to streamline. We focus on measurable outcomes: pain scores, vital signs, sedation levels. While these metrics are important, they can obscure a deeper truth: dying is a human and often spiritual experience. […]
Circumcision and autism? When medical institutions, not conspiracy theorists, undermine trust
By Max Buckler Headlines over the last two weeks featured a strange-sounding claim linking newborn circumcision to autism. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the controversial US secretary of health and human services, claimed at a White House cabinet meeting that “two studies” show circumcised boys are twice as likely to develop autism or autism spectrum disorder […]
Weaponized beneficence: Decision-making capacity challenges as instruments of medical hegemony
By Omar F. Mirza, Yekaterina Angelova, Marie S. Thearle, Gregg A Robbins-Welty, and Stephanie Cheung Informed consent is part of the bedrock of clinical ethics. Composed of voluntariness, disclosure, and capacity, informed consent is designed to center the patient in their own care amidst an asymmetric power dyad that can easily overpower individual choice. Despite […]
M3GAN 2.0: A case study in AI ethics and policy
By Ambria Williams, Lisa Kearns, and Kellie Owens This piece contains spoilers for the films “M3GAN” and “M3GAN 2.0”. Imagine a science fiction horror movie with an ethicist as the protagonist. As improbable as that seems, it’s the case in M3GAN 2.0, the sequel to the 2023 box-office hit M3GAN, in which an AI tech […]
“What my hand does, my heart does”: Conscience and assisted dying
By Helen Watt The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would permit assisted suicide in England and Wales for mentally capable adults reasonably expected to die within 6 months. Progress on the Bill has met a roadblock: we now wait as the House of Lords begins committee-stage consideration. After vigorous debate in the Lords, […]
Examining norms in medical & scientific communications amid rapidly advancing technologies
By Rafael Escandon A recent social media posting got my attention for a couple of reasons. First, because it is quite unusual and second, because the detail behind the headline tells a different story than the headline suggests. This was the first posting since the advent of social media where I have seen a company […]
Should we still quote Osler?
by Daniel Sokol In a BMJ article of 19 August 2025, Dr Helen Salisbury wrote: ‘I hesitate to quote Osler given his views on race, but he was right about this.’ The next day, Dr Ikenna Ogbu, a GP, wrote in a Rapid Response: ‘I must admit that I also feel guilty agreeing with Osler, but we would […]
Global bioethics and global health in the context of a new antidemocratic era
by Gabriela Arguedas-Ramírez Five years ago, I wrote an editorial arguing that authoritarian and right-wing populism were a threat to global health and bioethics. Early this year, with colleagues from the US and the UK, we published a piece about pandemics, bioethics and populism. Since then, the global scenario has become dreadfully worse. What began […]