By Philip Reed. According to the way people commonly talk, laws and social practices can express certain messages. We might say that a strict immigration policy expresses an unwelcome message and disrespect to immigrants. Or a law that requires employers to provide paid family leave expresses encouragement for people to have children. This idea is […]
Latest articles
Clamping down on unethical research: time for a moratorium on publishing Chinese transplant research
By Wendy A Rogers, Angela Ballantyne, Wendy C Higgins, Wendy Lipworth. Our paper in JME investigates the pros and cons of publishing and/or retracting unethical biomedical research. We focus on Chinese transplant research using organs procured from non-consenting executed prisoners. However, this is not the only topic currently raising questions about the justifiability of publishing […]
Immunity passports – reopening the economy and repackaging racism
By Natalie Kofler and Françoise Baylis In the midst of worldwide protests against anti-Black racism and violent policing, private companies and governments are developing a novel platform for discrimination that would effectively increase the reach of law enforcement into public society – so called, digital “immunity passports”. It all starts with a seemingly innocuous plan […]
Can research participants break from the chain of traditional data sharing consent?
By Vasiliki Rahimzadeh In their recent article, Mann et al. propose to share biomedical research data more widely, securely and efficiently using blockchain technologies. Used to power cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, blockchain and the wider group of distributed ledger technologies provide new ways of exchanging data, including sensitive data such as health data, in that […]
More Than Just Filler? Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Non-Surgical Cosmetic Procedures
By Natalie M Lane. High streets across the country may have been largely shuttered up over the past few months. But cast your mind back, and you’ll recall that it’s no longer just food, drink, and clothing on offer in the typical, bustling town centre – but lip plumping, skin smoothing, and cheek augmentation too. The […]
Lockdown of the elderly is misguided policy
By Franklin G. Miller. The Covid-19 pandemic poses policy challenges that may call for controversial measures. Savulescu and Cameron have recently argued in favor of “lockdown “of the elderly as a reasonable alternative to the population-wide lockdowns that have been implemented during the pandemic in various jurisdictions around the world. They claim correctly that such […]
The ethics of State-sponsored and clinical promotion of long-acting reversible contraception
Originally published in the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health Blog. By Jeffrey Wale and Sam Rowlands. Global responses to the Covid-19 pandemic offer a good opportunity to re-examine the role of State actors (policymakers, regulatory bodies, clinical commissioning groups, service providers) and healthcare professionals in the promotion of health-related behaviours. Just how far should healthcare […]
Triaging ethical issues during a pandemic: a rough guide
By David Shaw Covid-19 raises dozens of fascinating ethical issues, but you might not know it from looking at the narrow focus of many ethics papers published since the pandemic began. Most of these papers have focused on the issue of allocating scarce resources in intensive care units, because of the anticipated pressure on these […]
How should the risks of infecting research participants with SARS-CoV-2 be assessed?
By Susan Bull, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Ariella Binik, Michael Parker Vaccine development processes typically take ten to twenty years. The exceptional pace of COVID-19 vaccine research has resulted in early human trials being commenced with vaccine candidates. Calls have been made to conduct controlled human infection studies (CHIs), also known as challenge studies, with SARS-CoV-2 to […]
Ethical oversight during COVID-19: rewriting the norms of research ethics review?
By Anna Chiumento and Lucy Frith One consequence of physical distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid suspension or adaptation of ongoing research activity. This presents an opportunity for the research ethics community and researchers to promote ethical oversight that integrates the situated and informed judgement of researchers, rebalancing away from […]