By Prabhpal Singh Does a fetus have the same moral status as a newborn baby? When we compare the two, we see that both lack traditional morally relevant features (a rational capacity, a certain sort of consciousness, a certain sort of first-person experience, autonomy required for personhood, etc.). Accordingly, some philosophers have thought fetuses and […]
Latest articles
Using Ulysses Contracts to prevent patients from spiralling into relapse
By Harriet Standing Many people have written about Ulysses contracts in relation to the treatment of patients with mental illnesses. However, previous discussions have not focused on the particular phenomenon known as ‘spiralling’. The inspiration for this paper came from a friend with bipolar disorder. Over the years, they had suffered the relapsing and remitting […]
Why we should still accommodate conscientious objection for abortion
By Bruce P. Blackshaw and Daniel Rodger. Over the last few years there has been a vigorous and fascinating debate about the use of conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare. CO is when doctors (and other healthcare professionals) opt-out of providing a medical service because they have serious moral objections—abortion is a widely cited example. If […]
Moral Enhancement: A Realistic Approach
By Greg Conan If you could take a pill to make yourself a better person, would you do it? Could you justifiably make someone else do it, even if they do not want to? When presented so simplistically, the idea might seem unrealistic or even impossible. The concepts of “taking a pill” and “becoming a […]
To the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983: Think again
By Harry Hudson The recent review of the Mental Health Act 1983, published in December 2018, focused on increasing choice and reducing compulsion. It highlighted dignity as the first casualty of compulsive powers; their use was identified as denying self-respect to patients. When discussing compulsion, it failed to properly challenge involuntary medication of patients with […]
Transwomen in elite women’s sport – clarifying the nuances of our approach
By Taryn Knox, Lynley Anderson, and Alison Heather Our paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled Transwomen in elite sport: scientific and ethical considerations, along with the related posts on the Journal of Medical Ethics and British Journal of Sports Medicine blogs, have generated widespread debate around New Zealand and the rest of the […]
Unrepresented Patients and Medical Error: Disclosure and Apology
By Arjun S. Byju and Kajsa A. Mayo What should a clinical team do when an error occurs in the care of a patient who lacks both capacity and a surrogate, to whom an expression of contrition could otherwise be offered? This vexing question served as the initial impetus for our paper. As medical students, […]
Moral exploitation and junior doctors
By Joshua Parker. Medicine’s power to affect human well-being explains why the nature of doctors’ practice is deeply moral. With almost every medical decision having some moral component, doctors’ work carries a number of moral burdens. Aside from the decision-making itself, which of course can be very difficult and the risk of error consequential, there […]
The Consequences of Doctors’ (Mis)trust
By Joshua Parker. Working as a junior doctor provides unique insights into other doctors’ reasoning. Being inexperienced and perhaps a little unconfident means junior doctors rely on their seniors for advice. Often I will see a patient and hit a dead end in terms of what to do next. This is where I approach a […]
The ethics of disposing of amputated limbs
By Esmée Hanna and Glenn Robert Whilst ethical issues relating to the disposal of body parts generally are increasingly discussed (largely prompted by high profile organ retention scandals), what happens in the specific case of amputated limbs has not received much attention. Amputation is however increasingly common, in part due to growing rates of diabetes […]