By Nancy S. Jecker. Since its inception, the novel coronavirus pandemic has prompted two distinct societal responses. Zero-Covid dominates Pacific Rim societies, such as New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It targets zero deaths as a goal and forcefully contains disease transmission to reach it. Mitigation dominates […]
Latest articles
Wealthier nations should stump up for COVID-19 jab tax to drive vaccine equity
Fairer than donation model as it better reflects ability to pay, argues political scientist Wealthier nations should pay a COVID-19 vaccine tax as part of the price they pay to manufacturers, to ensure a fairer distribution of the jab to poorer nations, argues a political scientist in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Taxation is fairer […]
Healthcare professionals and disruptive climate protest – unjustified, or a professional responsibility?
By Ellen Tullo. The coordinated actions of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in 2019 and 2021 raised public consciousness about global failures to act on the climate emergency. Some of the methods employed by XR – road obstruction, non-permanent marking of private property and the breaking of windows – prompted a divergence of opinion on what degree […]
Patients reading their medical notes: the end of deceptive placebos?
By Charlotte Blease Martha* – not her real name – is 40 years old. For ten years – throughout her thirties – Martha experienced health changes: “excessive fatigue, tingling in my feet, and muscle tightness in my hands.” These symptoms were serious enough for Martha to visit her GP. Various things were prescribed but no […]
Backstreet abortion deaths: not as common or preventable as thought
By Calum Miller. One of the foremost arguments for legalising abortion in developing countries attempts to bypass fetal moral status by appealing to practical considerations: 1) banning abortion doesn’t prevent abortions, but 2) it does put women at risk of dangerous backstreet abortions, killing women in large numbers. Since 3) legalising abortion significantly reduces unsafe […]
The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and revised ventilator triage guidance: since we are still implementing outdated and more inequitable frameworks now, will we learn any lessons longer term?
By Harald Schmidt, Dorothy E Roberts, Amaka D Eneanya Ventilator triage guidance can reduce, maintain, or exacerbate existing social, racial and ethnic health inequities, raising non-trivial legal issues. Over the last 18 months, there has been an intense reckoning with the fact that traditional rationing frameworks focused on maximizing overall benefits tend to worsen Covid-19’s disparate impact on disadvantaged communities of color. Yet, as ICUs […]
How we never met – and wrote an article about it: Communication, relationship and ethics in video-based telepsychiatric consultations
By: Eva-Maria Frittgen, Joschka Haltaufderheide During the first waves of the COVID-pandemic, videoconferencing quickly became one of the preferred ways of communicating. This was also the way how we as authors first met (and have met ever since without ever meeting in person) and started to think about the use of video-based consultations in healthcare: […]
Who gets to decide when I can’t? End of life decision-making and deceased donation
By Dominique E. Martin and Shih-Ning Then Most of us have ideas about how we want decisions to be made at the end of our lives, and some of us also have strong views about donating our organs and tissues after we die. Many of us appoint a loved one to make decisions on our […]
Let the patient speak! The need for patient-developed concepts of empowerment
By Brenda Bogaert We talk so much about patient empowerment today that it is hard to imagine that the concept only became part of healthcare policy in the past few decades. How did patient empowerment come to be discussed and conceptualised? And what has been the patient’s involvement in this process? Firstly, it is important […]
Should resident physicians in the United States unionize?
By Arjun S Byju and Kajsa A Mayo The coronavirus pandemic in the United States has offered ample opportunity for those in medicine to reflect upon the nation’s healthcare system and its various shortcomings in delivering care during a time of crisis. As the term “essential worker” made its way into the public lexicon, the […]