By David Hunter I recently finished reading Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger a medical historian and ethicist (although she may deny the title) and since I found it both thought provoking, terrifying and inspiring I thought I would share a few thoughts and hopefully convince you to read it, since I think some of […]
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How do Medical Students Learn Ethics?
Guest Post by Carolyn Johnston How interested are medical students in learning ethics and law? I have met students who have a genuine interest in the issues, who are engaged in teaching sessions and may go on to intercalate in ethics and law. On the other hand some consider that ethics is “just common sense”. […]
Brocher Foundation – a review
By David Hunter For the last month I have been staying with 14 other academics on the shores of lake Geneva in Switzerland, free of charge thanks to the Brocher Foundation. I thought a review of the stay would potentially be of interest to others working in the field of medical ethics generally as it […]
“Our lives are not actually our own”
Long-term readers of this blog will know that, every now and then, I have a look at the CMF’s blog. This is largely because of my interest in the ethics of assisted dying, and the blog is actually a pretty good way into developments on the other side of the lines. There is rarely, if […]
On the other hand…
… the phenomenon of apologising for the wrong thing comes alongside people taking umbrage at the wrong thing. Last week, the BMJ ran a head-to-head feature on the “question” of whether doctors should recommend homeopathy. This was the latest in a series of articles in which a question is posed, apparently strictly on the understanding that it’ll accommodate […]
Making the Jump to a Medico-Legal Career
Guest Post by Daniel Sokol On a number of occasions, I have been asked by early career ethicists about the move from ethics to law, or the wisdom of seeking a legal qualification to supplement their ethical knowledge. In the UK, this can be achieved remarkably quickly. This blog post is an answer to those […]
Apologising for the Wrong Thing
A little addendum to yesterday’s monster post. Ivan Oransky reports that, before deleting her Twitter account, Hope Amantine had apparently also said in a tweet that the story was “not meant to offend”. I’ve noticed that a lot recently: a person does something wrong, is publicly called out for it, and apologises for any offence […]
Bad Surgeons and Good Faith
This is a bit of a strange post, not least because it involves citing sources – a blog post, and a whole blog -that have since been taken down from the net, for reasons that will become clear. It’s also going to involve a pair of fairly hefty quotations, largely because it’s the absence of […]
How to be a good (consequentialist) bioethicist…
By David Hunter There has recently been a pattern of papers (and I am not going to identify which ones) which I take as being slightly embarrassing to academic bioethicists because they portray us in a less than flattering light because of the naive mistakes they seem to make, or the outlandish poorly argued claims […]
Eating Disorders and Ramadan
One of those things that’d simply never occurred to me before was highlighted a few days ago in a story on Buzzfeed: how do you reconcile Ramadan fasting with recovery from an eating disorder? Indeed: can you reconcile them at all? “Food is obviously a big part of the holy month,” Sofia says. “Usually after […]