By Nancy S. Jecker. The extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic warrant waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently considering such a move, which over 100 Nobel laureates and 75 former heads of state have backed, calling it a “vital and necessary step” that would “expand global manufacturing […]
Latest articles
Enough already about conscientious objection in voluntary assisted dying – what about the conscientious participants?
By Jodhi Rutherford There is a copious literature on conscientious objection in voluntary assisted dying (VAD), also known as MAID, voluntary euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, or death with dignity. Yet, there has been relative silence in the bioethics literature on what might motivate ‘conscientious participation’ in VAD, whereby clinicians may actively, morally, and purposively support the […]
Persuading anti-vaxxers: Stop talking about facts
By Michelle Bach. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the WHO named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. The WHO attributes vaccine hesitancy to factors such as a lack of confidence, complacency, and convenience. In the UK, hesitancy has been associated with certain demographic factors such as race, age, and […]
FDA approves aducanumab – do not get carried away!
By Erik Gustavsson, Pauline Raaschou, Gerd Lärfars, Lars Sandman, Niklas Juth. In spring 2019 Gerd Lärfars (head of the pharmaceutical division at the Stockholm Region in Sweden) suggested that we put together an interdisciplinary group consisting of clinicians, medical ethicists, and scholars with experience in health care administration. The aim for this group would be […]
Coerced sterilization of women in immigration detention: how did we get here?
By Mariam O. Fofana, On September 14 2020, the news broke that Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), a privately operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, had blown the whistle regarding coerced sterilization of women at the facility. Wooten reported an alarmingly high rate of hysterectomies sometimes performed […]
A kind of care: sexual intimacy for older adults in long term care
By Vanessa Schouten. How sexual intimacy is conceptualized matters, and this is particularly true for people whose decisions are shaped by the fact that they live in a communal facility under the care of others, such as older adult residents of long-term care facilities. As one of the participants in our study pointed out, intimate […]
Urgency, Delayed Decision-making and Ethics in the Court of Protection
By Dominic Wilkinson. [Cross post from the Practical Ethics blog] On 11th June 2021, I was a public observer (via MS Teams) of a case in the Court of Protection: Case No. 1375980T Re GU (also blogged about by Jenny Kitzinger here). The case was (though I did not know it beforehand) related closely to issues that I […]
“I am used to my happy life, not this” – why mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for care home staff is an essential humanitarian and ethical intervention
By Ayesha Ahmad. When traditional healers heal, they empathise with the pain being endured. The traditional healer is distinguished by their strength and ability to channel the suffering through, and beyond, them. What this shows is that there is a distinction between the person who is a healer and the person who is being healed. […]
Medical complicity in torture
By Derek Summerfield. During the Middle Ages in Europe the practice of torture drew distinction from its association with confessed truth, repentance, and salvation, yet by 1874 Victor Hugo could write that “torture has ceased to exist.” However there has never been any doubt that torture would outlive its obituarists. As I record in my […]
Do doctors engaging in advocacy speak for themselves or their profession?
By Elizabeth Lanphier In the United States, where I live and work, it is common for physicians to speak out on a variety of topics both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, physicians advocate against gun violence as a matter of public health. Pediatricians become #tweetiatrician on social media to raise awareness about […]