By Daniel M. Hausman. According to surveys most of the population in many countries maintain that health policy should favour treating those who are more severely ill, even if the benefit to them is somewhat less than the benefit the same resources could have provided to those who are less severely ill. Most bioethicists who […]
Latest articles
The Truth Behind Conscientious Objection in Medicine
By Nir Ben-Moshe. Conscientious objection in medicine has become a topic of heated debate in recent years, but answers to the question of what justifies such objections in medicine have proven to be elusive. According to the two primary justifications found in the literature, conscientious objection in medicine is justified either out of respect for […]
Can Rationing Ethics Foster Access to Scarce Specialists?
By Andrew Hantel, Gregory Abel, Mark Siegler Few people would consider rationing to be a positive concept. When confronted with restricted access to something we want or need, we inevitably react with negative feelings. Such a reaction belies the overall concept of allocating a scare resource and distracts from the good that can come from […]
When ideology and physiology don’t align: transwomen in elite women’s sport
By Lynley C. Anderson, Alison Heather, Taryn Knox In recent years there has been a huge amount of media interest in the inclusion of elite transwomen athletes in the women’s division. Reasoned debate focuses on the delicate balance between the inclusion of transwomen based on “a fundamental human right for everyone to be recognized in […]
Building bridges between the global south and north in research ethics
By Cory Goldstein, Tiwonge Mtande, and Charles Weijer. How does successful international collaboration in research ethics happen? We would like to share our experience. Tiwonge Mtande’s Perspective: I am a health researcher working at UNC-Project Malawi in Lilongwe, Malawi. In November 2017, while I was working on my Master’s degree, my supervisor, Prof. Doug Wassenaar, […]
‘Was this on the consent form?’ Can you really consent in a one-off conversation to interventions with uncertain and evolving consequences?
By Rachel Horton, Benjamin Bell, Angela Fenwick, Anneke Lucassen A child conceived with a donated egg has multiple health problems but no unifying diagnosis. Given that testing of biological parents may help make a genetic diagnosis in a child, is it OK to contact the child’s anonymous egg donor to ask if they would provide […]
It is time the law stopped incentivising confidentiality: bringing duties of care more in line with professional guidance
By Michael Fay and Edward Dove ABC v St George’s Healthcare (2017) is an important legal decision, and its return to court in November 2019 will be no less significant for doctors’ duties of care. Currently, a doctor is subject to a duty of care to their patient. A doctor also has a corresponding duty […]
Privacy: Don’t Get Over It
By Elias Aboujaoude Account hacks. Revenge porn. Identity theft. Cyberstalking. Psychographic targeting. Facial recognition. Government surveillance. It’s enough to give up and agree with the devastatingly prescient remark from 1999 by the founder of Sun Microsystems: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” In a post-privacy world, victims of technology-enabled privacy violations look to […]
Limits of Informed Consent in United States Secondary Schools
By Nicholas Spangler & Zachary Winkelmann. The law for most US states require that individuals under the age of 18 must provide parental consent for medical services. For healthcare providers who work in secondary school settings, this would mean that every patient who walks in the door requesting services would need parental consent and child […]
Mandatory Reporting in Sports Medicine
By Amanda Szabo & Zachary Winkelmann. Athletic trainers (ATs) are sports medicine healthcare professional who are in continuous contact with patients, typically adolescents. While ATs are typically familiar with the legal obligations in the United States to provide the proper standard of care to their patients and are familiar with state practice acts regarding services […]