Cast your mind back to this summer, and Christina Richie’s paper about the provision of ARTs. It attracted a fair bit of controversy because of the way it talked about gay people’s rights to access ARTs, and their “voluntary” infertility. For my money, that was the weakest part of the paper, and it should have been […]
Latest articles
Would Aristotle Vape?
As I surfaced the other day, there was a discussion on Today about the marketing of e-cigarattes between Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, and Lorien Jollye of the New Nicotine Alliance (now there‘s an organisation that wears its heart on its sleeve!). It’s available from about the 1:22 mark here. Having re-listened, it appears to me […]
Growing a Kidney Inside a Pig Using your own DNA: The Ethics of ‘Chimera Organs’
Guest post by David Shaw Imagine that you’re in dire need of a new kidney. You’re near the top of the waiting list, but time is running out and you might not be lucky enough to receive a new organ from a deceased or living donor. But another option is now available: scientists could take […]
Once More unto the Breach of Covenant?
The “Military Covenant” is in the news again: The government is failing to abide by its military covenant, medical experts who treat injured soldiers have said. Leading professors in psychology and orthopaedics say the healthcare system is not providing veterans with the service they have been promised. […] The moral obligation to treat veterans should […]
Saatchi Bill – Update
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. It turns out that the version of the Medical Innovation Bill about which I wrote this morning isn’t the most recent: the most recent version is available here. Naïvely, I’d assumed that the government would make sure the latest version was the easiest to find. Silly me. Here’s the updated version […]
An Innovation Too Far?
NB – Update/ erratum here. Ooops. One of the things I’ve been doing since I last posted here has involved me looking at the Medical Innovation Bill – the so-called “Saatchi Bill”, after its titular sponsor. Partly, I got interested out of necessity – Radio 4 invited me to go on to the Sunday programme to talk […]
Ebola in the US: Privacy, public interest and the ethics of media reporting
The first confirmed case of ebola has been found in the US, in Texas – unsurprisingly someone who had recently been to Africa. This has prompted an outbreak… of unethical media reporting about the case, with several breaches of privacy which seem unlikely to be in the public interest. Specifically the media has disclosed the […]
Paper Preview: Implementation of a Consent for Chart Review and Contact
Guest post by Irena Druce Our article “Implementation of a Consent for Chart Review and Contact and its Impact in one Clinical Centre” focuses on issues regarding patient health information privacy and recruitment for medical research studies. Research studies are an integral part of the advancement of medical therapies; however, recruitment into research studies can […]
The Ebola Outbreak in Western Africa: Ethical Obligations for Care
Guest post by Aminu Yakubu, Morenike Oluwatoyin Folayan, Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, Patrick Nguku, Kristin Peterson, and Brandon Brown In our article “The Ebola Outbreak in Western Africa: Ethical Obligations for Care” we focus on the health care system’s ability to combat the recent epidemic of Ebola in Western Africa. This is a timely and urgent issue. Many medical ethicists […]
Film Review: “Obvious Child”
We’ve not had a film review here before, have we? As far as I can tell, the ratio of talked-about-ness to actual screenings of Obvious Child is unusually high; it doesn’t seem to have got all that much time in mainstream cinemas, which meant that I had to schlep along to Manchester’s Cornerhouse to see it. (I […]