By Daniel Tigard. Healthcare professionals are only human—at least, for now. As such, they are prone to simple oversights, or even occasional acts of gross negligence. What makes errors in medical contexts especially concerning is, of course, that any failure can have devastating effects. Patients come to healthcare facilities needing attention for some ailment and […]
Latest articles
Ectogenesis as a Political Perspective
By Giulia Cavaliere I’m at that age. The age where close friends start talking about having babies, are having babies or are thinking about number two. Courtesy of these conversations, and YouTube ads being extremely concerned about my fertility, I too have begun pondering baby-related questions. As a certified nerd, the ‘pondering’ led me to […]
How I came to write “Why not Common Morality?”
By Rosamond Rhodes When I first began my work at Mount Sinai, I was the sole philosopher at the institution, and I certainly felt like a stranger among the hundreds of medical professionals. As the only bioethicist on campus, I was called upon by any department that wanted ethics education for their trainees and any […]
The Institute of Medical Ethics (IME) Annual Seminar Competition 2020
The Research Committee of the Institute of Medical Ethics (IME) is currently inviting submissions for the third round of its annual seminar competition (2019/2020). The closing date for applications is Monday 2nd December 2019. This scheme funds projects in the region of £2,500-£3,500, and it is expected that approximately 3-4 awards will be made. The […]
Birth and “Birth”: Why Human Subjects in Artificial Wombs Should be Treated as Neonates
By Nick Colgrove. Recently, I argued that human subjects in artificial wombs are newborns (or, at least, should be treated as newborns). This is because the subject of partial ectogenesis—which has been extracted from a pregnant woman’s body and placed in an artificial womb—is a newborn, full stop. The subject of complete ectogenesis—which is created […]
Are the Irreversibly Comatose Still Here?
By Lukas J. Meier Patients who do not emerge from coma are not dead – at least not in a biological sense. Their hearts are beating, their skin is warm, and many of them even breathe without external assistance. But are these patients also alive mentally, that is, is there anything going on in their […]
Halfway Home? Accessing Abortion in Northern Ireland
By Nathan Emmerich. On the 21st of October 2019 abortion was effectively decriminalized in Northern Ireland (NI). Prior to this abortion was illegal in NI, including in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities or when conception resulted from rape or incest. Furthermore, whether or not the risks posed to the mother of continuing a pregnancy justified […]
Medical ethics is far too important to leave to doctors
By Søren Holm. The rise of ‘professionalism’ as the panacea to all of the ills afflicting the medical profession has led to a resurgence of the idea that medical ethics should be professional ethics, and that the content of this professional ethics should be decided by the profession. In my comment “Roles, professions and ethics – […]
Is the “serious” factor in germline modification really relevant? A response to Kleiderman, Ravitsky and Knoppers
By Iñigo de Miguel Beriain Is the “serious” factor in germline modification relevant? This seems a relevant question in the germline gene editing debate. Of course, at first glance, one tends to choose an affirmative answer immediately. It seems common sense to think that sophisticated technology should be used only when we are faced with […]
Public Reason and Physicians’ Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse
By Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard We recently offered a reply to criticisms of our view that physicians should refrain from deliberating with their patients on religious grounds when helping them make medical decisions. Part of what prompted our research into this topic is recent work discussing appropriate ways of communicating with religious patients who […]