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 […]
Category: Thinking Aloud
Torture and Fitness to Practise
I’m running a bit late with this, but the BMJ reported last week that Mohammed Al-Byati had been suspended from the medical register for 12 months for complicity in torture. So far, the decision hasn’t been uploaded to the list of Fitness to Practise decisions, but the outline of the case is available here, on the […]
Gay Conversion “Therapy”: Might the CMF have a point?
Spoiler alert: Almost certainly not. But hear me out for a bit. The Christian Medical Fellowship blog had an article posted yesterday about what it praised as a balanced documentary concerning “sexual orientation change efforts” – gay conversion therapy to you and me – on Radio 4 on Sunday. Actually, it wasn’t a documentary – it was […]
Cochlear Implants and Minority Cultures
A bit more on the cochlear implant thing that I’ve been mentioning off and on for the past couple of months. William Mager posted a link to something a little while ago on why some members of the deaf community are against CIs. This attitude had always puzzled me. Anyway, this, by Christina Hartmann, is the […]
Crime and the Less-Polluted City Solution
People who listen to Today may have heard an article in the prime 8:10 slot on the 9th about the correlation between a drop in the use of leaded petrol, and a drop in violent crime rates. (Mother Jones actually beat the BBC, having published a piece on the same research last week: I meant to post something […]
Cochlear Implant: On!
A few weeks ago, I linked to a post on William Mager’s blog in which he said (a) that he was about to have a cochlear implant fitted, and (b) that he’d write about the experience as it progressed. I don’t know how many readers of this blog followed the link or subscribed; for those […]
We Read the Mail, so You Don’t Have To
There’s a couple of things that’ve been playing on my mind since the post about the Daily Mail‘s coverage of the Liverpool Care Pathway a couple of weeks ago. One of them is the letter that Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, sent to Paul Dacre, editor of the Mail. It points out to him […]
Double Effect in the Halappanavar Case
In the wake of Savita Halappanavar’s death, a statement was issued by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The whole thing is available here. However, I think that a couple of paragraphs is particularly worth picking out: Where a seriously ill pregnant woman needs medical treatment which may put the life of her baby at risk, such […]
Enhancing the ill: The therapy-enhancement…
This post is in effect a gauntlet, a challenge for those who are significantly bothered by enhancements, such that they think that enhancing would be unethical or at least that there is a significant ethical difference between the two, largely because I can’t really work out what the fuss is and would like someone to […]
Passive Euthanasia: A Cri de Cœur
Don’t worry: this isn’t another instance of me yammering on about the right to die or the right to induce death. I’ve recently received a parcel; it contained a copy of this book by Leanne Bell, which happened to fall open at p 204. On that page, you’ll find this passage: Active euthanasia involves a deliberate act […]