By Connor Brenna and Sunit Das. Are we doing the best we can for our patients? At face-value, this seems to be a straightforward (albeit broad) question. In this piece, we dive deeper into the ethics of trainee medicine to find that the answer is really contingent on how one interprets who it is that […]
Latest articles
Privacy and health data: How can we protect information after it’s been shared?
By T.J. Kasperbauer. We have already lost significant control of our health data. To some, that means we’ve also lost our privacy. But there are many ways of protecting health data even after it has been shared. When health data are widely shared, we must develop strategies for protecting health data regardless of who can […]
The errant ways we talk about brain death
By Jordan Potter and Jason Lesandrini On November 4, 2019, newspapers across the USA reported on the tragic and untimely death of Mr. Nebane Abienwi – a 37-year-old asylum-seeking migrant from Cameroon who died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after suffering a brain hemorrhage. Per an ICE report, physicians at Sharp […]
Caring for each other through the ethical challenges of MAiD in Canada
By Mary Kathleen Deutscher Heilman and Tracy J. Trothen Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) generates strong emotions among Canadians. What has been striking to us is the fact that while academics have been engaged in an epic battle about who has a right to what protections under the law, the average person seems to want […]
Conscientious objection and professional interpreters working in healthcare settings
By Nathan Emmerich and Christine Phillips. If one knows anything about the recent literature on conscientious objection in healthcare it is that there is a lot of it. Indeed, in the past few months two different journals have published special issues on the topic. Whilst this coverage is to be welcomed, and this complex topic […]
Unpacking freedom of conscience in light of obligatory referrals in Canadian healthcare
By Christina Lamb. The recent defeat of a freedom of conscience bill, Bill 207, in Alberta, Canada, highlights the ethical problem of effective referrals elsewhere in the country. Particularly in the jurisdiction of Ontario where in the past year, physicians have been mandated by their regulatory College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) and the Ontario […]
Unnatural experiments
By Charles Weijer and Monica Taljaard. When government health programmes are studied in cluster randomized trials, should the health programme itself be considered “routine government care” and not part of the research, or is it a research intervention to be scrutinized by the research ethics committee? Watson and colleagues argue for the former position; we […]
Risks, Benefits, and Taking Participants’ Values Seriously: The Case of HIV Cure Research
By Robert Steel The introduction and refinement of highly effective antiretroviral treatments has transformed HIV into a manageable chronic condition. Nonetheless, treatment is lifelong, burdening people living with HIV and health systems. So there is interest in a cure. But cure trials can be risky and the medical benefit of potentially being cured is limited […]
Euthanasia, palliative opioid use and palliative sedation: A rejoinder
By Thomas David Riisfeldt. One of my recent essays has generated a considerable amount of critique which I was fortunate to be able to explore in my essay ‘A response to critics: Weakening the ethical distinction between euthanasia, palliative opioid use and palliative sedation’. I will briefly comment on some of these points here. I […]
The option of assisted dying is good for you even if you don’t want to die
By Ben Colburn I am an academic philosopher. In recent years I have been working with end of life practitioners, using my ideas about the importance of individual autonomy to address some tough questions about the predicaments we face as we approach our deaths. We’ve been trying to work out how to support people’s autonomy […]