Sustainable health care beyond the paradox of prevention

By Cristina Richie. High carbon health care has global environmental effects—population health is damaged by the carbon of health care industries. Many countries have medically underserved residents, and as such, it could be argued that there is an obligation on the part of health care systems to reduce carbon emissions through laws or policy. For […]

Read More…

Respecting and learning from the dead: Ethical research involving the recently deceased

By Brendan Parent, Mary Homan, Olivia Kates, Wadih Arap, Brian Childs, and Kathy Kinlaw. Our bodies can have value after our death. Organs can be donated to save multiple lives through transplantation. Preserved cadavers or body parts may contribute to medical education to prepare future physicians to practice medicine on the living. Dead bodies can […]

Read More…

Institutional Duty of Rescue: An obligation to vaccinate against seasonal influenza

By Abigail Harmer. Vaccines have always been a hotly debated subject, invoking incredibly strong opinions, whether this be for or against their use. This has particularly been the case in light of covid-19. Towards the end of 2020, when the first vaccines to protect against coronavirus were approved for use, vaccines were everywhere you looked; […]

Read More…

How state abortion policies are impacting future physicians

By Kellen Mermin-Bunnell and Ariana Traub. In June 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overruled the federal right to abortion. This decision has long-standing implications not just for reproductive healthcare but for all healthcare in the US. Since the decision, individual states have created their own laws protecting, limiting, or banning abortion. […]

Read More…

Letting the side down – should vaccination refusal influence healthcare resource allocation?

By Isaac Jarratt-Barnham. We live in an increasingly polarised, siloed and fractured world. The week in UK politics as I write shows this all too starkly – five days ago, 300,000 protesters marched through London for peace in Palestine, the far-right attempted to storm the cenotaph, and 145 were arrested for crimes including racially aggravated […]

Read More…

The delicate balance between aggressive treatments and palliative care

By Ilaria Bertini. In recent months the story of Indi Gregory has been brought to light by the media as another dreadful story of life and death involving a critically ill 8-month-old baby with no prospect of recovery. When Indi was born, she was admitted as a PICU patient at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham […]

Read More…

Reflections on a staff-student partnership: teachable moments in ethics

By Jennifer O’Neill. Context In early February 2022, my colleague and I embarked upon a programme of research examining our shared interest in patient healthcare involvement. As lecturers at the University of Glasgow School of Medicine, we identified a unique opportunity to establish a staff-student research partnership. The underlying rationale was that our student partners […]

Read More…