Guest Post by Adam Shriver Note: this post was originally published at the Practical Ethics Blog Kidney transplants result in improved quality of life and increased longevity compared to dialysis for patients with end-stage renal disease (Evans et al. 1985, Schnuelle et al. 1998, Wolfe et al 1999). In 2014, the national transplant list in […]
Tag: Bioethics
Unethical World Medical Association Standards for Placebo Trials?
Guest post by Jeremy Howick Trials show that drugs called ‘interferon alpha’ extend life in people with advanced skin cancer (by a bit). If we invented a new drug to treat advanced skin cancer, most patients would want to know whether the new drug was better than interferon alpha. It would be less useful […]
Surrogacy, Obstetric Risk and the Kardashian Wests
Guest post by Nathan Hodson Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West announced the birth of their third child, named Chicago, last month. Chicago West was born via surrogate. All the significant events of Kardashian West’s life have been documented season by season on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and naturally her surrogacy […]
Machine Learning and Medical Education: Impending Conflicts in Robotic Surgery
Guest Post by Nathan Hodson Research in robotics promises to revolutionize surgery. The Da Vinci system has already brought the first fruits of the revolution into the operating theater through remote controlled laparoscopic (or “keyhole”) surgery. New developments are going further, augmenting the human surgeon and moving toward a future with fully autonomous robotic […]
Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality
By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) * Please note: this piece was originally published in Quillette Magazine. Four members of the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam living in Detroit, Michigan have recently been indicted on charges of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is the first time the US government has prosecuted an “FGM” case since a federal law was passed in […]
How Different are Female, Male and Intersex Genital Cutting?
By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp), with Rebecca Steinfeld, Goldsmiths, University of London Three members of the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam were recently indicted on charges of “female genital mutilation” (FGM) in the US state of Michigan. In Norway, meanwhile, one of the major political parties has backed a measure to ban childhood male circumcision. Fearing that objections to […]
Treatment of Premature Ejaculation: Alleviating Sexual Dysfunction, Disease Mongering, or Both?
By Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp) An interesting new paper, “Distress, Disease, Desire: Perspectives on the Medicalization of Premature Ejaculation,” has just been published online at the Journal of Medical Ethics. According to the authors, Ylva Söderfeldt, Adam Droppe, and Tim Ohnhäuser, their aim is to “question the very concept of premature ejaculation and ask whether it […]
How to Keep HIV Cure-Related Trials Ethical: The Benefit/Risk Ratio Challenge
Guest Post by Nir Eyal Re: Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics on the ethics and challenges of an HIV cure For most patients with HIV who have access to antiretroviral treatment and use it properly, that treatment works well. But the holy grail of HIV research remains finding a cure. Sometimes that […]
Sex and Other Sins: Public Morality, Public Health, and Funding PrEP
Guest Post by Nathan Emmerich In the UK, a recent high-court decision[1] has reignited the debate about whether or not Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) should be provided to those who are deemed to be at high-risk of contracting HIV.[2] Despite the fact that NHS England is now appealing,[3] it was a fairly innocuous decision: having suggested […]
A World Without Bioethicists? On Sally Phillip’s “A World Without Down’s”
Guest Post by Nathan Emmerich, Queen’s University Belfast On Wednesday night, BBC2 broadcast a documentary entitled ‘A World Without Down’s Syndrome?’ Even if you did not see the programme itself, you may have heard about it on the radio, read some of the commentary published over the past week, or spotted it on Twitter under the […]