Guest post by Morten Magelssen, Reidar Pedersen, and Reidun Førde Read the full paper here. A difficult case involving a patient in an intensive care unit is brought to a clinical ethics consultant. The ethics consultant argues that intensive care is futile and should be withdrawn. The clinicians are grateful for the advice, and, with […]
Category: JME
Safety First? How the Current Drug Approval System Lets Some Patients Down
Post by Julian Savulescu Cross-posted from the Practical Ethics blog, and relating to this paper in the JME. Andrew Culliford, whose story is featured in the Daily Mail, is one of the estimated 7 in 100,000 people living with Motor Neuron disease, a progressive degenerative disease which attacks muscles, leaving those affected eventually unable even to […]
The Value of Role Reversal
Guest Post by Rebecca Dresser, Washington University in St. Louis Not so long ago, medical researchers had a habit of using themselves as guinea pigs. Many scientists saw self-experimentation as the most ethical way to try out their ideas. By going first, researchers could test their hypotheses and see how novel interventions affected human beings. Today […]
JME Special Edition on Infanticide and “After-Birth Abortion”
It’s going to be a little while before regular blogging resumes here – I’m aiming to get back up to speed in the next 10 days or so – but, in the meantime, the special edition of the JME devoted to The Paper Of Which We Do Not Speak is now out and available here. […]
A bit more on Circumcision
Maybe he should have been invited to contribute to the special edition: Somegreybloke seems to have the debate wrapped up perfectly… […]
Are Biomedical Ethics Journals Institutionally Racist?
So there’s this letter published in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry that moots the idea that the top biomedical ethics journals might be institutionally racist. In it, Subrata Chattopadhyay, Catherine Myser and Raymond De Vries point out that the editorial boards of a good number of journals are dominated by members who are located in the global North – countries officially listed as […]
Male Circumcision and the Enhancement Debate: Harm Reduction, Not Prohibition
Guest Post by Julian Savulescu Around one third of men worldwide are circumcised. It is probably the most commonly performed surgical procedure. Circumcision is also one of the oldest forms of attempted human enhancement. It is and has been done for religious, social, aesthetic and health reasons. Circumcision has a variety of benefits and risks, […]
Journal of Medical Ethics – Special Issue on Circumcision
Guest Post by Brian Earp The Journal of Medical Ethics is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a special issue – “The Ethics of Male Circumcision” – to be published in full in the coming days. Selected papers have already been posted Online First and can be seen by clicking here. Contributions cover a […]
Is Medical Equipment Halal? Kosher?
A recent intercalating student of mine got in touch with this query the other day: Total parenteral nutrition is given as a replacement for nutrition where the patient cannot or should not be digesting food: it is given intravenously so bypasses digestion. Two patients have asked my current educational supervisor if the TPN solution is […]
Kelly Hills, Data Miner
Kelly Hills has been data-mining – collecting and collating information about the frequency with which certain terms appear in paper titles in three journals: the JME, Bioethics, and the AJoB. I was going to say that the charts are not much use, but that they are pretty and quite cool; and I was going to […]