Last week I attended a conference for surgeons. In the hall, a poster described the case of a neurology patient who had, literally, inhaled a chicken sandwich. The surgeon, with great ingenuity, combined instruments to suction the mushy chicken embedded in the patient’s lungs. Next to the poster stood a timid medical student, one of […]
Category: Medical ethics
Jerome P Kassirer: A Canadian purge
Earlier this week the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) fired the editor in chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), citing slipping journal revenue and declining reputation as a cause. The journal’s oversight committee (JOC)—set up in 2006 to safeguard the journal’s editorial independence against political and economic transgressions—negotiated with both the CMA and the […]
Enes Hajdarbegovic and Deepak Balak: Science, spam, and scam
Hi there! Are you interested in making easy money? Go into scientific publishing with this easy three step programme: The first step is to get yourself a website. Get some server space from any of the super cheap providers and get your HTML magic going. Create a biomedical journal with a name that sounds a […]
Marika Davies: Virtual ethics—could 3D avatars help prepare doctors to deal with ethical dilemmas?
The news that virtual reality is making a comeback is likely to meet with a mixed reception in the world of medical education. Concerns were recently raised that simulation should be used less in medical education, and that medical schools “have vastly overused and abused the technologies of the unreal.” But the use of immersive […]
Ian Barker: Why we should all move to an opt-out system for organ donation
On 1 December 2015, Wales will be the first country in the UK to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation. This means that patients will need to actively opt out of organ and tissue donation—otherwise consent will be assumed. This change is significant and one to be welcomed. As an advocate of organ donation, […]
Marika Davies: Medical students and social media
Anyone who has taught medical students in recent years will be familiar with the sight of students appearing more interested in the screens of their laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. While they may, of course, be using their devices to take notes, there is always the suspicion that they are in fact sending text messages or […]
Marika Davies: Medical ethics and the criminal justice system
If a patient produced a machete during a consultation, reminding you of your duty of confidentiality as he calmly placed it in the sharps bin, what would you do? Professional dilemmas such as this and many others were explored at this year’s BMA forensic medicine conference on medical ethics and the criminal justice system. Aimed […]
Julia Pakpoor: Sir Terry Pratchett’s legacy to the right to die
The literary world is grieving the death of author Sir Terry Pratchett, who was knighted for his services to literature and who has sold more than 65 million books. The Alzheimer’s community is grieving the loss of a patron of Alzheimer’s Research UK and an important public figure in raising awareness of the disease. It is […]
Nasreen Jessani: The (conflicted) role of researchers as advocates
“You must lobby the parliament for your research to be considered! Rigorous evidence needs to be coupled with intense lobbying in order for political parties, who are steered by interest groups, to be willing to listen.” This was the advice of a Kenyan parliamentarian at the opening session of the ResUpMeetUp symposium in Nairobi, Kenya […]
Kate Adlington: Mitochondrial donation—the person at the centre of “three person IVF”
A vote was held yesterday in the House of Commons to decide whether to allow mitochondrial donation to be used in clinical practice. The vote marked the culmination of a decade of research and consultation into the science and ethics of so called “three person IVF”—a modified IVF technique proposed to prevent transmission of mitochondrial […]