Should doctors strike? Is it ethical for doctors to go on strike, potentially putting their patients at risk of getting inadequate treatment? As the BBC reports, ministers and junior doctors are currently “locked in a dispute.” One possible outcome of this disagreement is a physicians’ strike, which raises a number of tricky ethical questions. […]
Latest articles
Journal of Medical Ethics Now Accepting Longer Papers
The Journal of Medical Ethics is pleased to announce the addition of a new article type – Extended Essays – that will allow authors up to 7,000 words to provide an in-depth analysis of their chosen topic. In an interview, Associate Editor Tom Douglas said the new category was created “in recognition of the […]
Stop What You’re Doing: This is Important.
I’d not realised it, but the latest iteration of the erstwhile Medical Innovation Bill – colloquially known as the Saatchi Bill – is up for debate in the Commons on Friday. This is it in its latest form: to all intents and purposes, though, it’s the same thing about which I’ve blogged before. In a […]
1 in 4 Women: How the Latest Sexual Assault Statistics Were Turned into Click Bait by the New York Times
by Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp) * Note: this article was originally published at the Huffington Post. Introduction As someone who has worked on college campuses to educate men and women about sexual assault and consent, I have seen the barriers to raising awareness and changing attitudes. Chief among them, in my experience, is a sense of skepticism–especially […]
Flibanserin and Regulatory Failure
Guest Post by Adriane Fugh-Berman On August 18th, 2015, the FDA approved flibanserin (brand name Addyi), a purported aphrodisiac that can drop blood pressure so precipitously that users sometimes pass out and require medical intervention to regain consciousness. The labelling for flibanserin indicates that it is for: the treatment of premenopausal women with acquired, generalized hypoactive […]
Assisted Dying’s Conscience Claws
Aaaaaaaand so the latest attempt to get assisted dying of some sort onto the statute books in the UK has bitten the dust. I can’t say I’m surprised. Watching the debate in the Commons – I didn’t watch it all, but I did watch a fair chunk of it – it was striking just how […]
Psychology Is not in Crisis? Depends on What You Mean by “Crisis”
By Brian D. Earp @briandavidearp *Note that this article was originally published at the Huffington Post. Introduction In the New York Times yesterday, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that “Psychology Is Not in Crisis.” She is responding to the results of a large-scale initiative called the Reproducibility Project, published in Science magazine, which appeared to […]
Putting a Price on Empathy
Guest Post by Sarah Carter My paper is another to add to the ever-increasing number of articles about moral (bio)enhancement – but why is this issue so important? To take a cynical view: if we had a pill or injection that could make people more moral, less prone to harming others, and so on, it […]
Galileo’s Middle Finger: Book Review
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 its content is […]
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”. […]