Eva C.A. Asscher and Suzanne van de Vathorst. On April 21st the Supreme Court passed judgement on the case of the first doctor to be prosecuted since the 2002 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act. In September 2019 a Dutch nursing home doctor performing euthanasia on a patient with severe […]
Latest articles
A lesson from COVID-19: Persuasion can be a more powerful tool than mandates in improving vaccine uptake
By Jennifer O’Neill. Only months ago, it would have been hard to believe that the citizens of Western democracies would forsake their basic liberties. Yet, in recent weeks, the public have accepted that life as we know it is on hold for an undefined period of time and that during that time they cannot see […]
Is it ethical to forcibly withdraw ventilators from nursing home patients for reallocation to Covid-19 patients?
By: Andrew Peterson, Adrian M. Owen, Charles Weijer. In the race to save lives in the Covid-19 pandemic, we must not sacrifice those most vulnerable. Covid-19 kills not only by attacking the respiratory system, but also by attacking the health care system. Overwhelmed ICUs may not have enough ventilators for patients in respiratory distress. The […]
Withdrawing ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic: When is it justified?
By Jeremy Davis. One of the most concerning aspects of our current crisis is the massive shortage of mechanical ventilators. Such scarcity has already led to rationing in some places; elsewhere, rationing will soon be unavoidable. This raises difficult ethical questions, perhaps the most central and urgent of which is: Which patients should we prioritize? […]
Be careful what you wish for: ICU is no panacea
By Angela Ballantyne, Wendy Rogers, Vikki Entwistle, Cindy Towns In current debates about allocation of scarce ICU resources, we suggest there is undue optimism about the ‘good’ of intensive care unit (ICU) access. Most critical COVID-19 patients who receive access to a ventilator will still die. The minority who survive will likely leave with significant […]
Consent in the time of COVID-19
By Helen Turnham, Michael Dunn, Guy Thornburn, Elaine Hill, Dominic Wilkinson Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one widely discussed issue has been the diversion of medical systems to support patients with acute COVID-19 disease. This diversion inevitably reduces availability of routine and urgent treatments for non-COVID-related illness. Patients with acute surgical emergencies such […]
Extreme altruism in a pandemic
By Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson. Altruism is one person sacrificing or risking his or her own interests for another’s interests. Humans, like other animals, have a tendency towards altruism. This is usually directed to members of their own group. An example is donating a kidney to a family member. This is quite risky – […]
Key workers have a stronger claim to compensation and hazard pay for working during the COVID-19 pandemic than the Armed Forces do when on deployment
By Doug McConnell and Dominic Wilkinson. While the general public enjoy the relative safety of social distancing, key workers are at a higher risk of both contracting COVID-19 and transmitting it to their families. This is especially the case for ‘frontline’ workers who are frequently exposed to the virus and may not have access to […]
Oops! Mistakes and moral responsibility under COVID19
By Neil Pickering I’ve been pondering for some time about the use of the term ‘mistake’ to describe one’s actions, and this has been brought to the fore again by actions of government ministers during the COVID 19 pandemic. The BBC recently reported on the case of Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer. Calderwood […]
BMJ Covid 19 free access research archive
By John McMillan The BMJ has produced an archive that collects all the Covid 19 research that has appeared in BMJ journals. All Covid 19 research is being published as freely available and that includes papers published in the JME. We are expediting the review and production of Covid 19 papers. Several significant papers are […]