By J. Y. Lee. Uterus transplantation (UTx) is an experimental surgery which can enable women with absolute uterine factor infertility (AUFI) to receive a healthy uterus and experience a pregnancy. Since the first successful live birth via UTx in 2014 (Gothenburg, Sweden), more than 40 live births via UTx have taken place. While UTx is […]
Latest articles
Consensual lethal organ harvesting: dissecting ‘double effect donation’
By Anthony McCarthy and Helen Watt. Imagine I am an altruistic person in good health who is struck by how many people my organs (heart, lungs etc) could save if I became a live donor. Perhaps my life is not going well, and I want to make a greater contribution to society than I have […]
The moral vulnerability of clinician teams
By Bernadette Wren. The authority of clinicians is underpinned by a responsibility to ensure that all treatment decisions are made at the intersection of evidence, law and ethics. We hear a lot in the public square about the science and practice of evidence-gathering, much of it unrealisable. And occasionally the law gets a look-in. But […]
Different emergency departments, different triage systems: when is it an ethical problem that two patients with the same condition are triaged with different criteria? And should the public know about it?
By Davide Battisti and Silvia Camporesi. It is likely that, like us, you will have had an experience in Emergency Departments (EDs), or that you can recall an experience of accompanying a relative or friend there. Let’s consider the scenario where the reason for you, your relative, or friend going to the ED was the […]
What place does kindness have in medicine?
By Katherine Cheung. Asking whether kindness should play a role in medicine, and if our physicians should be asked to be kind, looks like a redundant question – it seems as though any person should answer yes. However, Dr. Edwin Jesudason interestingly points out that in choosing to be kind, we might also have to […]
AI in healthcare: promise, peril, and professional responsibility
By Helen Smith, John Downer and Jonathan Ives. Everyone is excited about the idea of AI being brought to the bedside, and who wouldn’t be? We’re short of all staffing groups, daily stories of how everyone is overloaded, overworked, struggling; all help is heartily welcomed, no? But, at risk of being called a killjoy here, […]
Reflections on the misrepresentation of one’s work
By Richard B. Gibson. In 2020, I published an article called No Harm, No Foul? Body Integrity Identity Disorder and the Metaphysics of Grievous Bodily Harm. The piece highlights the lack of definitional clarity within English and Welsh criminal law regarding what harm is, arguing that the concept’s open to varying interpretations. It uses metaphysics […]
Should healthcare workers vote to strike?
By Ben Saunders. As I write, in August 2023, junior doctors in the UK are once again being balloted over strike action. While the ethics of strikes by healthcare workers has been hotly debated, less attention has been given to the balloting procedures. This is unfortunate, since the requirements imposed by the Trade Union Act […]
Consequences of Covid 19 risk over-estimation: Blaming the unvaccinated during the pandemic
By Maja Graso and Kevin Bardosh. Societies have long deployed creative tools of deviance control. People whose recklessness risked their collective’s well-being or threatened the dominant power structures were often sanctioned. So when C19 vaccines became widely available, many viewed those who remained unvaccinated as a threat worthy of blame, discrimination, and punishment. The dominant […]
Me, my cells and I: reflecting on the value of the genome in light of the Lacks family settlement
By Aileen Editha. “Not only were the HeLa cells derived from Henrietta Lacks – the HeLa cells are Henrietta Lacks” – Ben Crump, attorney for the Lacks family. (He)nrietta (La)cks Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer living in Baltimore, Maryland. She was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, one of the […]