By Dr Aisling McMahon & Prof Susi Geiger In the last number of weeks, many emergency pandemic related health measures were removed in Ireland and the UK, and there is an expectation in many other high-income countries that remaining measures will end in the very near future. This news has been greeted with understandable relief […]
Latest articles
Was Djokovic unethically blamed and shamed?
By Dominic Wilkinson, Julian Savulescu and Jonathan Pugh. [Cross post from Practical Ethics blog] The decision about whether to grant tennis star Novak Djokovic a visa allowing him to stay in Australia to compete in the Australian Open Championship has generated significant controversy. Last week, the Australian Immigration minister exercised his power to cancel the player’s […]
Getting “done” for concealment of pregnancy: Does a woman have a duty to inform healthcare staff of her pregnancy status?
By Gemma McKenzie. In England a pregnant woman – like any adult with mental capacity – enjoys the rights to autonomy and bodily integrity. As a result, she can only be subjected to a medical intervention with her informed consent. The law does not consider a human fetus as a separate legal entity; therefore, a […]
The cost of preventing pediatric influenza deaths
By Dianela Perdomo. How much is the life of one child worth? That is part of the question I asked myself when reflecting on influenza’s latest disappearance. In the U.S., the past three flu seasons have resulted in 144 to 199 pediatric deaths from influenza infection. Strikingly, only one pediatric flu death was recorded during […]
Meeting the challenges of using automated second opinions
By Hendrik Kempt and Saskia K. Nagel. Diagnostics is a difficult inferential process requiring an immense amount of cognitive labor. Not only must physicians gather evidence and evaluate that evidence to fit the symptoms of a patient, they usually need to do that with imperfect knowledge in an ever changing field of research, and limited […]
We can’t just follow the science
By Franklin G. Miller. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a common refrain voiced by many public health experts and government officials in the U.S. is that public policy should “just follow the science.” For example, consider the following statement by Anthony Fauci, the chief scientific spokesperson for the Biden administration, in an interview published in The […]
Against ethical experts
By Doug Hardman and Phil Hutchinson. The clinical ethics business is booming. Since the field’s emergence in the 1970s, ethicists have established research and teaching centres, taken control of teaching ethics to medical students, and more recently begun to establish a new applied role: the clinical ethics consultant. Academics in philosophy, law and the social […]
The ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of PPE in COVID-19
By Cliff Shelton, Kariem El-Boghdadly, John B Appleby. Personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a frequent source of controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic. At times, supplies have run short, leading individuals to purchase (and sometimes improvise) their own PPE; debate has raged over what PPE should be worn in different circumstances; and pictures of healthcare […]
Respecting autonomy in altered states: Navigating ethical quandaries in psychedelic therapy
By Hannah McLane, Courtney Hutchison, Daniel Wikler, Timothy Howell, & Emma Knighton. Research into psychedelic-assisted therapy has grown in the past ten years as non-profits, academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and even venture capitalists race to develop protocols for using MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, and other psychedelic substances to treat mental illness. Already, dozens of ketamine clinics […]
Global vaccine equity for COVID-19: A myriad of proposals, but are there too many cooks or too many recipes?
By Susi Geiger & Aisling McMahon. As we are nearing the second year-end in the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine inequity is a stark global reality: on December 13th 2021, while global vaccine coverage stands at 56% of the population, this figure drops to 7.1% for low-income countries. In addition, new variants such as Omicron threaten to […]