By Nicola Grignoli. Today the team of the internal medicine ward asked me as a psychologist to participate in a family meeting: a patient with mental disorder was to be told of a life-threatening illness. We discussed whether the patient had to be present or if the bad news should be disclosed to the partner […]
Latest articles
Ensuring equity in vascularized composite allotransplantation
By Laura L. Kimberly, Elie P. Ramly, and Eduardo D. Rodriguez Vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) can be considered the innovative cousin of solid organ transplantation. VCA is the transplantation of multiple tissues, such as skin, muscle, nerve, and bone as a functional unit. This includes facial, upper and lower extremity, uterine, penile and abdominal wall […]
Medical ethics in the anthropocene – the health sector must divest from industries impacting planetary health
By Christian M. Schulz. The fifth mass extinction began 66 million years ago after an asteroid, measuring 10 kilometers in diameter, hit the peninsula of Yucatán. At the end of this huge loss of biodiversity, caused probably by ocean acidification, the most prominent victims were the dinosaurs. Currently, biodiversity is declining faster than at any […]
Frauds and misconduct in scientific research: a harsh lesson from the pandemic
By Erik Boetto and Davide Golinelli. Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. A well-known example is that of former-doctor A.J. Wakefield, who published a study in 1998 reporting the association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and a syndrome of autism in children. Only in 2011 was it proven that […]
Expanding insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization with pre-implantation genetic testing
By Madison K. Kilbride When prospective parents learn that they’re at risk of passing a genetic condition to their future children, they’re often very concerned. Currently, there are two ways to ensure that one’s biological children do not inherit a hereditary condition. The first is to conceive naturally, use prenatal diagnosis to test the fetus […]
Should unethical research be retracted?
By William Bülow It is no news that researchers sometimes make mistakes, or that some of us even commit fraudulent acts, such as data fabrication or falsification. Despite precautionary measures, such as careful editorial practices and peer-review, fraudulent or flawed research papers sometimes get published. When this happens, these papers should be retracted. This is […]
Does consent make open label placebo research ethical?
By Laura Specker Sullivan Open label placebo studies hypothesize that placebos can be effective even when there is complete transparency about what participants are given. These studies are being run for conditions such as chronic pain, cancer-related fatigue, and irritable bowel syndrome. Open label placebos have garnered significant interest in the popular imagination, perhaps due […]
Are children who are born without a cerebral cortex conscious?
By Anna-Karin Margareta Andersson The article highlights an important but surprisingly neglected medical ethical topic: new research suggests that children born without a cerebral cortex are conscious. What types of care should they be provided in order to respect their human rights? This topic caught my attention thanks to Professor Alan Shewmon and colleagues’ pivotal […]
Do No Harm in cancer screening programmes: can consent save the day?
By Lotte Elton Screening might harm you. That isn’t what the adverts will tell you. But, increasingly, there is a growing awareness that, for some, cancer screening might lead to unnecessary and potentially harmful investigations and treatments. This seems to violate the ethical principle of non-maleficence: the injunction that doctors ‘do no harm’ to their […]
What end of life care do we want to give to persons with end-stage dementia?
By Joseph Dimech, Emmanuel Agius, Julian C Hughes and Paul Bartolo. Dementia is a degenerative neurocognitive disorder that leads to a high level of physical and cognitive disability as the disease progresses to its end-stage. Such patients are also at high risk of suffering from co-morbidities, including aspiration pneumonia secondary to swallowing difficulties. Thus, such […]