Guest Post: Nancy Jecker, Aaron Wightman, Abby Rosenberg, Doug Diekema Paper: From protection to entitlement: selecting research subjects for early phase clinical trials involving breakthrough therapies A breakthrough therapy to cure cancer in children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a dream for many families. New immunotherapies appear to make this dream a reality. Such […]
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The Moral Bioenhancement of Psychopaths
Guest Post: Elvio Baccarini and Luca Malatesti Paper: The Moral Bioenhancement of Psychopaths We argue that the prescription of mandatory moral bioenhancement (from now on MB) of psychopaths is justified because it satisfies the requirement of public reason as elaborated in political philosophy. This is the requirement that a moral or political prescription should be […]
Donald Trump’s Mental Health (again)
The speculation about Donald Trump’s mental health that was doing the rounds earlier in the year seems to have died down a bit. That’s to be expected; like it or not, his Presidency is now part of normal life. But I’ve been lagging in my blogging here, and so it’s only now that I’ve got […]
Law Changes and Slippery Slopes
Apparently, there was a TV programme in Australia the other day in which a there was a discussion of assisted dying. It got reported in The Guardian, largely on the basis that an 81-year-old audience member kept calling Margaret Somerville “darling” and then got mildly sweary. I’ve only seen those clips from the programme that […]
Individually-Randomized Controlled Trials of Vaccines Against the Next Outbreak
Guest Post: Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch Paper: Vaccine testing for emerging infections: the case for individual randomisation The humbling experience of international response to Ebola taught the world a thing or two on preparing for Zika and for other emerging infections. Some of those lessons pertain to vaccine development against emerging infections. One lesson was […]
The Deadly Business of an Unregulated Global Stem Cell Market
Guest Post: The deadly business of an unregulated global stem cell industry Tereza Hendl and Tamra Lysaght In our paper, we report on the case of a 75-year old Australian woman who died in December 2013 from complications of an autologous stem cell procedure. This case was tragic and worth reporting to the medical ethics community […]
Family Presence During Resuscitation: Extending Ethical Norms from Pediatrics to Adults
Guest Post: Christine Vincent and Zohar Lederman Paper: Family presence during resuscitation: extending ethical norms from paediatrics to adults Family Presence During Resuscitation is an important ethical issue for discussion within the medical community. Currently, family presence is more commonly accepted in paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) than adult CPR. However, we argue that this fact is not morally […]
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 […]
Conscientious Objection Accommodation in Healthcare – Clashing Perspectives
by Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp) On behalf of the Journal of Medical Ethics, I would like to draw your attention to the current issue, now available online, which is almost entirely dedicated to the vexing question of conscientious objection in healthcare. When, if ever, should a healthcare provider’s personal conviction about the wrongness of some intervention (be it […]
Aid-in-Dying Laws and the Physician’s Duty to Inform
Guest Post: Mara Buchbinder Paper: Aid-in-dying laws and the physician’s duty to inform Why do so many people assume that any clinical communication about aid-in-dying (AID, also known as assisted suicide), where it is legal, ought to be patient-initiated? Physician participants in my ongoing study tend to assume that physicians should wait for patients to initiate […]