By Wayne Shelton and Cynthia Geppert. The case of Margo, introduced by Ronald Dworkin in 1993, described an individual with advanced dementia who would spend hours happily gazing at the same magazines, interacting in discrete experiential moments with those around her, and eating heartily. By all accounts, Margo was a happy individual. However, years earlier […]
Latest articles
Should the public health response to Nipah virus disease be like that of COVID-19?
By Tara Hurst, Tess Johnson, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Phaikyeong Cheah and Michael Parker. Nipah virus made the international news recently for an outbreak in Kerala, India. This bat-borne virus has occurred seasonally in Bangladesh since the first outbreaks were identified in Malaysia and Singapore in 1998-1999 (Figure 1). The course of Nipah virus disease may be […]
Terms of cervix: IUD trials as a condition of elective sterilisation
By Teresa Baron. Getting your tubes tied is no easy feat. Plenty has been said in recent years about barriers to elective sterilisation, and persuading a doctor to do the deed is a particularly difficult for young, child-free women. If a woman has a long-term partner, her practitioner will often encourage her to see if […]
Sustainable health care beyond the paradox of prevention
By Cristina Richie. High carbon health care has global environmental effects—population health is damaged by the carbon of health care industries. Many countries have medically underserved residents, and as such, it could be argued that there is an obligation on the part of health care systems to reduce carbon emissions through laws or policy. For […]
Respecting and learning from the dead: Ethical research involving the recently deceased
By Brendan Parent, Mary Homan, Olivia Kates, Wadih Arap, Brian Childs, and Kathy Kinlaw. Our bodies can have value after our death. Organs can be donated to save multiple lives through transplantation. Preserved cadavers or body parts may contribute to medical education to prepare future physicians to practice medicine on the living. Dead bodies can […]
Institutional Duty of Rescue: An obligation to vaccinate against seasonal influenza
By Abigail Harmer. Vaccines have always been a hotly debated subject, invoking incredibly strong opinions, whether this be for or against their use. This has particularly been the case in light of covid-19. Towards the end of 2020, when the first vaccines to protect against coronavirus were approved for use, vaccines were everywhere you looked; […]
How state abortion policies are impacting future physicians
By Kellen Mermin-Bunnell and Ariana Traub. In June 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overruled the federal right to abortion. This decision has long-standing implications not just for reproductive healthcare but for all healthcare in the US. Since the decision, individual states have created their own laws protecting, limiting, or banning abortion. […]
Letting the side down – should vaccination refusal influence healthcare resource allocation?
By Isaac Jarratt-Barnham. We live in an increasingly polarised, siloed and fractured world. The week in UK politics as I write shows this all too starkly – five days ago, 300,000 protesters marched through London for peace in Palestine, the far-right attempted to storm the cenotaph, and 145 were arrested for crimes including racially aggravated […]
Research by any other name: The case of MEURI
By G. Owen Schaefer. Sorting and categorization is a classic and sometimes entertaining parlor game. Is a taco a sandwich? Is a couch a chair? Are calculators computers? Other times, though, the stakes are higher, particularly when classification has moral or legal implications – such as the question of whether corporations are people, or whether […]
The delicate balance between aggressive treatments and palliative care
By Ilaria Bertini. In recent months the story of Indi Gregory has been brought to light by the media as another dreadful story of life and death involving a critically ill 8-month-old baby with no prospect of recovery. When Indi was born, she was admitted as a PICU patient at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham […]