By Pinghui Xiao and Hong Hong. On July 19, 2024, Li Sheng, a cardiologist from the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University was stabbed by an irate relative of a patient. Li suffered multiple serious injuries, including to his liver, intestines, pancreas and abdominal aorta. Despite emergency treatment, he died on the same day. […]
Latest articles
Is deepfake therapy ethically and legally acceptable?
By Marieke Bak and Saar Hoek When is technology helpful and when is it harmful? Can new technologies be used to create a better world, or are they only making matters worse? These are the questions that first crossed our minds when we came across deepfake therapy. All deepfake technology uses deep learning—a form of […]
Mind the anticipatory gap: factoring future moral change into the governance of human genome editing
By John Danaher. Human genome editing is a potentially transformative emerging technology. Current clinical trials of CRISPR, for example, suggest it can be used as a therapeutic to treat a wide range of hereditary and acquired diseases. More speculatively, it could also be used as an enhancer, improving the capacities of generally normal or healthy […]
Making visible the invisible elements of clinical ethics consultation
By Clare Delany, Sharon Feldman, Barbara Kameniar, and Lynn Gillam. In our article, ‘Making clinical ethics facilitation visible and accessible: Seven steps of the Critical Dialogue method of Ethics Consultation’, we detail our method of clinical ethics facilitation, broken down into seven steps. We also share the rationale for the various steps, and provide concrete […]
What does it mean to diagnose and live with cancer risk?
By Elspeth Davies In the past, people only became patients when they felt unwell and visited their doctor in search of remedies. In recent decades, a shift towards prevention in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has meant that people can become patients on the basis of their future risk of disease, rather than only […]
There is no health on a dead planet
By Rammina Yassaie and Lucy Brooks Our paper “Reassessing ‘Good’ Medical Practice and the Climate Crisis” takes an ethical dive into the roles and responsibilities of the medical profession and the medical regulator, in light of the climate and ecological crisis and its profound implications for health. The health sector has been called to action […]
Interdisciplinary collaboration to identify and address ethical issues arising from the development of irreversible, high risk medical treatments
By Alex Harris & Frederic Gilbert. There are increasing numbers of clinical trials assessing high risk, irreversible treatments. While a clinical trial aims to assess the safety and efficacy of a clinical intervention, participants enrolled in trials of high risk, irreversible treatments may be left with significant ongoing or emerging burdens after exiting the trial. […]
Thoraco-Abdominal Normothermic Regional Perfusion: Can the dead “beheaded” donor be killed?
By Christos Lazaridis. Thoraco-abdominal normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP) is a relatively novel technique for donation after the circulatory determination of death (DCDD). In short, after declaration of death by circulatory criteria (as in conventional DCDD), the circulation to the brain is surgically excluded followed by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and perfusion of the thoracoabdominal organs. […]
Confronting ableism: Reflections on the ethical failings of academic health research
By Joanne Hunt and Charlotte Blease. Health research, much like healthcare, is often plagued by persistent ableism. These two issues are likely connected. Disabled people across the globe experience a multitude of institutional, physical and attitudinal barriers to healthcare. Beyond inaccessible clinical environments and equipment, people with disabilities are confronted with clinical ambivalence, discriminatory attitudes […]
Polygenic testing for IVF embryo selection in Singapore: Proceed with caution
By Alexis Heng Boon Chin, Lee Wei Lim, and Sayyed Mohamed Muhsin Singapore, like most affluent East Asian countries, has seen a drastic decline in total fertility rates (TFR) in recent years. In 2022 and 2023, the TFR hit new lows of 1.04 and 0.97 children per woman, respectively. This has dire implications for […]