By Phillip Wozniak, Ashley Fernandes Could a live baby outside its mother’s womb remain “unborn?” On its face, it seems like an absurd question, but scientific advancement in the field of neonatology has made answering this question a priority. In 2017, Dr. Emily Partridge and her colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published the […]
Latest articles
Helping global neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic
By Nancy S. Jecker, Aaron G. Wightman, Douglas S. Diekema Why should high-income nations help their global neighbors during a pandemic emergency? If they help, what is a just way to distribute the goods and services they make available? In “Vaccine Ethics: An Ethical Framework for Global Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines,” we take up these […]
Against legalized abortion
By Perry Hendricks Suppose while you’re hiking in the mountains, you stumble upon a young infant. The infant is crying and clearly hungry. With no other humans in sight, you’re the only person able to help her (the infant). Fortunately, you have a bottle of milk with you, and you’re able to feed her. Nearly […]
Why we should not extend the 14-day rule
By Bruce P. Blackshaw In 1978, the first baby conceived by IVF was born in the UK, and public concern about how rapidly science was advancing resulted in a government inquiry being set up. It produced the Warnock Report, which recommended (amongst other things) that human embryos could be cultured in vitro for no longer […]
Lessons from pandemic priority-setting
By Keegan Guidolin, Jessica Marangos, Fayez Quereshy University Health Network (UHN) is the largest hospital system in Canada and delivers health services ranging from primary to quaternary care to over six-million people in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, like many other hospitals and in response to […]
Finding meaning in loss: family experience of research on imminently dying patients in the intensive care unit
By Amanda van Beinum, Nicholas Murphy, Charles Weijer, and Jennifer Chandler “…this study […] it was a way of […] making him live on, in certain ways, or be able to say, ‘hey my dad did this’ you know, we did this, and maybe some good will come out of it…” Intensive care units can […]
Regulation of aid to die: the Spanish case.
By Tamara Raquel Velasco Sanz, Pilar Pinto Pastor, Beatriz Moreno-Milán, Lydia Frances Mower Hanlon, Benjamín Herreros. Since its entry into force, on 25th June 2021, euthanasia and medically assisted suicide are part of the portfolio of services of the Spanish National Health System. In this way, Spain has become the fourth European country, after the […]
Why we agreed to review the first COVID-19 human challenge study
By Simon E. Kolstoe, Tony Lockett and Hugh Davies Reliable information is essential for good decision making. This is particularly true when complex medical situations are combined with political and social ramifications, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last two years have been revealing from the perspective of seeing how societies rely upon, but […]
Heritable human genome editing: Who decides? Science or society?
By Françoise Baylis Many describe the move from bench to bedside (from basic science to therapeutic or preventive applications) as a sprint – a short quick race. Others suggest that the race (such as it is) is more like hurdles given the many obstacles that must be overcome. Still others prefer to think of the […]
Delaying COVID-19 Boosters: the Duty to Vaccinate the World
By Nancy S. Jecker The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged a temporary halt to COVID-19 boosters to enable 10% of the people of every nation to be vaccinated. Despite solid ethical backing for this stance, a spate of countries has gone full steam ahead with booster shots. Israel was the first, […]