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COUNTERFACTUAL REASONING IN SURROGATE DECISION MAKING – ANOTHER LOOKEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Incompetent patients need to have someone else make decisions on their behalf. According to the Substituted Judgment Standard the surrogate decision maker ought to make the decision that the patient would have made, had he or she been competent. Objections have been raised against this traditional construal of the standard on the grounds that it involves flawed counterfactual reasoning, and amendments have been suggested within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper shows that while this approach may circumvent the alleged problem, the way it has so far been elaborated reflects insufficient understanding of ...
Source: Bioethics - October 29, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MATS JOHANSSON, LINUS BROSTRÖM Source Type: journals

The dead donor rule, voluntary active euthanasia, and capital punishmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We argue that the dead donor rule, which states that multiple vital organs should only be taken from dead patients, is justified neither in principle nor in practice. We use a thought experiment and a guiding assumption in the literature about the justification of moral principles to undermine the theoretical justification for the rule. We then offer two real world analogues to this thought experiment, voluntary active euthanasia and capital punishment, and argue that the moral permissibility of terminating any patient through the removal of vital organs cannot turn on whether or not the practice violates the dead donor ru...
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CHRISTIAN COONS, NOAH LEVIN Source Type: journals

Current functions of italian ethics committees: a cross-sectional studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: A common European model should be developed, defining EC functions, member selection modalities, necessary member competences, decision-making criteria and measures for work verification. In the absence of sound empirical evidence, it would be interesting to study the effectiveness and efficiency of the different existing models. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CATERINA CAMINITI, FRANCESCA DIODATI, ARIANNA GATTI, SAVERIO SANTACHIARA, SANDRO SPINSANTI Source Type: journals

Deeper problems for noonan's probability argument against abortion: on a charitable reading of noonan's conception criterion of humanityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 'An Almost Absolute Value in History' John T. Noonan criticizes several attempts to provide a criterion for when an entity deserves rights. These criteria, he argues are either arbitrary or lead to absurd consequence. Noonan proposes human conception as the criterion of rights, and justifies it by appeal to the sharp shift in probability, at conception, of becoming a being possessed of human reason. Conception, then, is when abortion becomes immoral. The article has an historical and a philosophical goal. The historical goal is to carefully present the probability argument in a charitable manner. The philosophical goal ...
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ALAN CLUNE Source Type: journals

Racist appearance standards and the enhancements that love them: norman daniels and skin-lightening cosmeticsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines whether medical interventions of this sort should be permitted, subsidized, or restricted, using Norman Daniels's framework for determining what justice requires in terms of protecting health. I argue that Daniels's expansive view of the requirements of justice in meeting health needs offers some support for recognizing a societal obligation to provide this kind of 'enhancement,' in light of the strong connections between skin tone and health outcomes. On balance, however, Daniels's framework offers compelling reasons to reject insurance coverage for skin-lightening medical interventions, including th...
Source: Bioethics - September 10, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MATT LAMKIN Source Type: journals

Balancing liberation and protection: a moderate approach to adolescent health care decision-makingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper I examine the debate between 'protectionists' and 'liberationists' concerning the appropriate role of minors in decision-making about their health care, focusing particularly on disagreements between the two sides regarding adolescents. Protectionists advocate a more traditional, paternalistic approach in which minors have relatively little input into the healthcare decision-making process, and decisions are made for them by parents or other adults, guided by a commitment to the patient's best interests. Liberationists, on the other hand, argue in favour of expanded participation by minors in treatment decisi...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ANDY PIKER Source Type: journals

Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials – By Jill A. Fisher When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects – By Adriana PetrynaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SERGIO SISMONDO Source Type: journals

Applying the four-principle approachEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The four-principle approach to biomedical ethics is used worldwide by practitioners and researchers alike but it is rather unclear what exactly people do when they apply this approach. Ranking, specification, and balancing vary greatly among different people regarding a particular case. Thus, a sound and coherent applicability of principlism seems somewhat mysterious. What are principlists doing? The article examines the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the applicability of this approach. The most important result is that a sound and comprehensible application of the four principles is additionally ensured by mak...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JOHN-STEWART GORDON, OLIVER RAUPRICH, JOCHEN VOLLMANN Source Type: journals

The virtue ethics approach to bioethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper discusses the viability of a virtue-based approach to bioethics. Virtue ethics is clearly appropriate to addressing issues of professional character and conduct. But another major remit of bioethics is to evaluate the ethics of biomedical procedures in order to recommend regulatory policy. How appropriate is the virtue ethics approach to fulfilling this remit? The first part of this paper characterizes the methodology problem in bioethics in terms of diversity, and shows that virtue ethics does not simply restate this problem in its own terms. However, fatal objections to the way the virtue ethics approach is ty...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: STEPHEN HOLLAND Source Type: journals

Commentary on psychiatry in a battle zoneEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - August 5, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: STEVEN H. MILES Source Type: journals

Authorizing psychiatric research: principles, practices and problemsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Psychiatric research is advancing rapidly, with studies revealing new investigative tools and technologies that are aimed at improving the treatment and care of patients with psychiatric disorders. However, the ethical framework in which such research is conducted is not as well developed as we might expect. In this paper we argue that more thought needs to be given to the principles that underpin research in psychiatry and to the problems associated with putting those principles into practice. In particular, we comment on some of the difficulties posed by the twin imperatives of ensuring that we respect the autonomy and i...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SIOW ANN CHONG, RICHARD HUXTABLE, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL Source Type: journals

Psychiatry in a battle zoneEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. 1 CommentDiscuss or comment on this article.
The authors describe the arrival and treatment of 164 severe chronic psychiatric patients who were displaced from the Serbian army-controlled Jakes psychiatric hospital and off-loaded on the afternoon of 28th of May, 1992 at the gates of the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla. Through analysis of their incomplete medical records, which arrived with the patients in Tuzla, and analysis of their activities during and after the war, they found that 83 of the patients (50%) were males and 147 (89.6%) were admitted to the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla. Of the patients, 86 (58.5%) were found to be Serbs. The majority of them were incapable ...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IZET PAJEVIĆ, MEVLUDIN HASANOVIĆ, ALINA KOPRIĆ Source Type: journals

Going from principles to rules in research ethics1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In research ethics there is a canon regarding what ethical rules ought to be followed by investigators vis-à-vis their treatment of subjects and a canon regarding what fundamental ethical principles apply to the endeavor. What I aim to demonstrate here is that several of the rules find no support in the principles. This leaves anyone who would insist that we not abandon those rules in the difficult position of needing to establish that we are nevertheless justified in believing in the validity of the rules. I conclude by arguing that this is not likely to be accomplished. The rules I call into question are the rules requi...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: BENJAMIN SACHS Source Type: journals

Inductive risk and justice in kidney allocationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
How should UNOS deal with the presence of scientific controversies on the risk factors for organ rejection when designing its allocation policies? The answer I defend in this paper is that the more undesirable the consequences of making a mistake in accepting a scientific hypothesis, the higher the degree of confirmation required for its acceptance. I argue that the application of this principle should lead to the rejection of the hypothesis that 'less than perfect' Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) matches are an important determinant of kidney graft survival. The scientific community has been divided all along on the signifi...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ANDREA SCARANTINO Source Type: journals

'early terminal sedation' is a distinct entityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There has been much discussion regarding the acceptable use of sedation for palliation. A particularly contentious practice concerns deep, continuous sedation given to patients who are not imminently dying and given without provision of hydration or nutrition, with the end result that death is hastened. This has been called 'early terminal sedation'. Early terminal sedation is a practice composed of two legally and ethically accepted treatment options. Under certain conditions, patients have the right to reject hydration and nutrition, even if these are life-sustaining. Patients are also entitled to sedation as palliation ...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: VICTOR CELLARIUS Source Type: journals

Why moral philosophers are not and should not be moral expertsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the a...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DAVID ARCHARD Source Type: journals

Reconsidering the value of consent in biobank researchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Biobanks for long-term research pose challenges to the legal and ethical validity of consent to participate. Different models of consent have been proposed to answer some of these challenges. This paper contributes to this discussion by considering the meaning and value of consent to participants in biobanks. Empirical data from a qualitative study is used to provide a participant view of the consent process and to demonstrate that, despite limited understanding of the research, consent provides the research participants with some level of control and a form of self determination that they value. Participation is framed as...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JUDY ALLEN, BEVERLEY MCNAMARA Source Type: journals

Equality and the treatment-enhancement distinctionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In From Chance to Choice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler propose a new way of defending the moral significance of the distinction between genetic treatments and enhancements. They develop what they call a 'normal function model' of equality of opportunity and argue that it offers a 'limited' defence of this distinction. In this article, I critically assess their model and the support it (allegedly) provides for the treatment-enhancement distinction. First, I argue that there is a troubling tension in the normal function model. Secondly, I argue that neither of the rationales invoked by Buchanan...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: NILS HOLTUG Source Type: journals

A reply to karey harwoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: UTA BITTNER Source Type: journals

In defence of priority review vouchersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Infectious and parasitic diseases cause enormous health problems in the developing world whereas they leave the developed one relatively unscathed. Research and development (R&D) of drugs for diseases that mainly affect people in developing countries is limited. The problem that relatively few drugs are available for diseases that cause an enormous burden of disease in the developing world is called the 'availability problem'. In recent years, the availability problem has received quite a bit of attention. A number of proposals have been fielded as to how this problem might be minimized. Wild-card patent extensions, advanc...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JORN SONDERHOLM Source Type: journals

On the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafnessEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper demonstrates that accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness is not as simple or obvious as the widespread negative response from the hearing community would suggest. The central questions addressed by the paper are whether our moral disquiet with regard to selecting for deafness can be adequately defended, and if so, what this might entail. The paper considers several different strategies for accounting for the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness and concludes that the deaf case cannot be treated in isolation. Accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness necessarily entails mor...
Source: Bioethics - July 19, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MELISSA SEYMOUR FAHMY Source Type: journals

Post-trial access to antiretrovirals: who owes what to whom?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Many recent articles argue that participants who seroconvert during HIV prevention trials deserve treatment when they develop AIDS, and there is a general consensus that the participants in HIV/AIDS treatment trials should have continuing post-trial access. As a result, the primary concern of many ethicists and activists has shifted from justifying an obligation to treat trial participants, to working out mechanisms through which treatment could be provided. In this paper I argue that this shift frequently conceals an important assumption: that if there is an obligation to supply treatment, then any party who could provide...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JOSEPH MILLUM Source Type: journals

Human dignity in international policy documents: a useful criterion for public policy?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Current developments in biomedicine are presenting us with difficult ethical decisions and raising complex policy questions about how to regulate these new developments. Particularly vexing for governments have been issues related to human embryo experimentation. Because some of the most promising biomedical developments, such as stem cell research and nuclear somatic transfer, involve such experimentation, several international bodies have drafted documents aimed to provide guidance to governments when developing biomedical science policy. Here I focus on two such documents: the Council of Europe's Convention for the Prot...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: INMACULADA DE MELO-MARTÍN Source Type: journals

Moral fictions and medical ethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices is based on a series of moral fictions [ndash] m...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: FRANKLIN G. MILLER, ROBERT D. TRUOG, DAN W. BROCK Source Type: journals

Post-abortion syndrome: creating an afflictionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The contention that abortion harms women constitutes a new strategy employed by the pro-life movement to supplement arguments about fetal rights. David C. Reardon is a prominent promoter of this strategy. Post-abortion syndrome purports to establish that abortion psychologically harms women and, indeed, can harm persons associated with women who have abortions. Thus, harms that abortion is alleged to produce are multiplied. Claims of repression are employed to complicate efforts to disprove the existence of psychological harm and causal antecedents of trauma are only selectively investigated. We argue that there is no such...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: E.M. DADLEZ, WILLIAM L. ANDREWS Source Type: journals

A precautionary principle for dual use research in the life sciencesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines whether the principle, so far mainly used in environmental and public health issues, is applicable and suitable to the field of dual-use life science research. Four central elements of the principle are examined: threat, uncertainty, prescription and action. Although charges against the principle exist [ndash] for example that it stifles scientific development, lacks practical applicability and is poorly defined and vague [ndash] the analysis concludes that a Precautionary Principle is applicable to the field. Certain factors such as credibility of the threat, availability of information, clear prescr...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: FRIDA KUHLAU, ANNA T. HÖGLUND, KATHINKA EVERS, STEFAN ERIKSSON Source Type: journals

Defending the duty to research?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 2005, John Harris published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics in which he claimed that there was a duty to support scientific research. With Sarah Chan, he defended his claims against criticisms in this journal in 2008. In this paper I examine the defence, and claim that it is not powerful. Although he has established a slightly stronger position, it is not clear that the defence is sufficiently strong to show that there is a duty to support scientific research. Important questions about fairness, about rescue, and about the relationship between reasons and obligations to act can still be raised; and these questi...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IAIN BRASSINGTON Source Type: journals

Rehabilitating human natureEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I review the main models of disability and introduce a line of reasoning that has been neglected in the debate concerning disability and disadvantage. My reasoning suggests that while disablism can and should be combated, success will require more challenging transformations than those featured in the literature. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CHRISOULA ANDREOU Source Type: journals

Virtue ethics and the selection of children with impairments: a reply to rosalind mcdougallEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 'Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions' Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In 'Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,' she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairme...
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CARLA SAENZ Source Type: journals

Paternalism and self-interest: a rejoinderEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: THOMAS SCHRAMME Source Type: journals

An inquiry into the principles of needs-based allocation of health careEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The concept of need is often proposed as providing an additional or alternative criterion to cost-effectiveness in making allocation decisions in health care. If it is to be of practical value it must be sufficiently precisely characterized to be useful to decision makers. This will require both an account of how degree of need for an intervention is to be determined and a prioritization rule that clarifies how degree of need and the cost of the intervention interact in determining the relative priority of the intervention. Three common features of health care interventions must be accommodated in a comprehensive theory of...
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: TONY HOPE, LARS PETER ØSTERDAL, ANDREAS HASMAN Source Type: journals

Privacy, the individual and genetic information: a buddhist perspectiveEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Bioinformatics is a new field of study whose ethical implications involve a combination of bioethics, computer ethics and information ethics. This paper is an attempt to view some of these implications from the perspective of Buddhism. Privacy is a central concern in both computer/information ethics and bioethics, and with information technology being increasingly utilized to process biological and genetic data, the issue has become even more pronounced. Traditionally, privacy presupposes the individual self but as Buddhism does away with the ultimate conception of an individual self, it has to find a way to analyse and ju...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SORAJ HONGLADAROM Source Type: journals

Exploitation in payments to research subjectsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method but there is significant debate about whether and in what amount such payments are appropriate. This paper is concerned with exploitation and whether there should be a lower limit on the amount researchers can pay their subjects. When subjects participate in research as a way to make money, fairness requires that researchers pay them a fair wage. This call for the establishment of a lower limit meets resistance in two places: (1) denial that the payments offered by researchers are wages for participation; and (2) concern about undue inducement. This ...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: TRISHA PHILLIPS Source Type: journals

The insignificance of personal identity for bioethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
It has long been thought that certain key bioethical views depend heavily on work in personal identity theory, regarding questions of either our essence or the conditions of our numerical identity across time. In this paper I argue to the contrary, that personal identity is actually not significant at all in this arena. Specifically, I explore three topics where considerations of identity are thought to be essential [ndash] abortion, definition of death, and advance directives [ndash] and I show in each case that the significant work is being done by a relation other than identity. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DAVID SHOEMAKER Source Type: journals

What 'empirical turn in bioethics'?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines three different ways in which we could understand 'empirical turn'. Using real facts in normative reasoning is trivial and would not represent a 'turn'. Becoming an empirical discipline through a shift to the social and neurosciences would be a turn away from normative thinking, which we should not take. Conducting empirical research to inform normative reasoning is the usual meaning given to the term 'empirical turn'. In this sense, however, the turn is incomplete. Bioethics has imported methodological tools from empirical disciplines, but too often it has not imported the standards to which research...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SAMIA HURST Source Type: journals

Reflective equilibrium and empirical data: third person moral experiences in empirical medical ethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In ethics, the use of empirical data has become more and more popular, leading to a distinct form of applied ethics, namely empirical ethics. This 'empirical turn' is especially visible in bioethics. There are various ways of combining empirical research and ethical reflection. In this paper we discuss the use of empirical data in a special form of Reflective Equilibrium (RE), namely the Network Model with Third Person Moral Experiences. In this model, the empirical data consist of the moral experiences of people in a practice. Although inclusion of these moral experiences in this specific model of RE can be well defended,...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MARTINE DE VRIES, EVERT VAN LEEUWEN Source Type: journals

When speed truly matters, openness is the answerEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper I analyse the ethical implications of the two main competing methodologies in genomic research. I do not aim to provide another contribution from the mainstream legal and public policy perspective; rather I offer a novel approach in which I analyse and describe the patent-and-publish regime (the proprietary regime) led by biologist J. Craig Venter and the 'open-source' methodologies led by biotechnology Nobel laureate John Sulston. The 'open-source methodologies' arose in biotechnology as an alternative to the patent-and-publish regime in the wake of the explosion in computer technology. Indeed, the tremendou...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ANTONIO MARTURANO Source Type: journals

SUPERIOR TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY COMMITTEES – ARE WE DOING THE RIGHT THING?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - April 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ASAF TOKER Source Type: journals

Should we select people randomly?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - February 17, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IWAO HIROSE Source Type: journals

Enhancing evolution and enhancing evolutionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
It has been claimed in several places that the new genetic technologies allow humanity to achieve in a generation or two what might take natural selection hundreds of millennia in respect of the elimination of certain diseases and an increase in traits such as intelligence. More radically, it has been suggested that those same technologies could be used to instil characteristics that we might reasonably expect never to appear due to natural selection alone. John Harris, a proponent of this genomic optimism, claims in his book Enhancing Evolution that we not only have it in our power to enhance evolution, but that we also h...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IAIN BRASSINGTON Source Type: journals

Risk detection in individual health care: any limits?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Discussion: It is not likely that interpreting 'important' as 'severe' will help in differentiating meaningful from meaningless risk knowledge. A more fundamental change in our ways of dealing with risk may be called for. We discuss existing literature on resilience as an alternative way to deal with risk. Balancing prevention and risk reduction with resilience could be a fruitful direction. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: GER PALMBOOM, DICK WILLEMS Source Type: journals

Publication ethics and the ghost management of medical publicationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article aims to reinforce and expand publication ethics as an important area of concern for bioethics. Since ghost-managed research is primarily undertaken in the interests of marketing, large quantities of medical research violate not just publication norms but also research ethics. Much of this research involves human subjects, and yet is performed not primarily to increase knowledge for broad human benefit, but to disseminate results in the service of profits. Those who sponsor, manage, conduct, and publish such research therefore behave unethically, since they put patients at risk without justification. This leads...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SERGIO SISMONDO, MATHIEU DOUCET Source Type: journals

Profits and plagiarism: the case of medical ghostwritingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper focuses on medical ghostwriting in the United States. I argue that medical ghostwriting often involves plagiarism and, in those cases, can be treated as an act of research misconduct by both the federal government and research institutions. I also propose several anti-ghostwriting measures, including: 1) journals should implement guarantor policies so that researchers may be better held accountable for their work; 2) research institutions and the federal government should explicitly prohibit medical ghostwriting and outline appropriate penalties; and 3) a publicly available database should be created to record r...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: TOBENNA D. ANEKWE Source Type: journals

A study of bioethical knowledge and perceptions in koreaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study assessed the knowledge and perception of human biological materials (HBM) and biorepositories among three study groups in South Korea. The relationship between the knowledge and the perception among different groups was also examined by using factor and regression analyses. In a self-reporting survey of 440 respondents, the expert group was found more likely to be knowledgeable and positively perceived than the others. Four factors emerged: Sale and Consent, Flexible Use, Self-Confidence, and Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Action restriction perception. The results indicate that those who are well aware of the e...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: YOUNG-JOON PARK, SUJIN KIM, AEREE KIM, SEUNG-YEON HA, YOUNG-MEE LEE, BONG-KYUNG SHIN, HYUN-JOO LEE, SOOJIN PARK, HAN-KYEOM KIM Source Type: journals

Retracing liberalism and remaking nature: designer children, research embryos, and featherless chickensEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Liberal theory seeks to achieve toleration, civil peace, and mutual respect in pluralistic societies by making public policy without reference to arguments arising from within formative ideals about what gives value to human life. Does it make sense to set aside such conceptions of the good when it comes to controversies about stem cell research and the genetic engineering of people or animals? Whether it is reasonable to bracket our worldviews in such cases depends on how we answer the moral questions that the use of these biotechnologies presuppose. I argue that the moral language of liberal justice [ndash] of rights and...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DOV FOX Source Type: journals

Living to the bitter end? a personalist approach to euthanasia in persons with severe dementiaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to avoid total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia ...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CHRIS GASTMANS, JAN DE LEPELEIRE Source Type: journals

Autonomy and ethical treatment in depressionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Antidepressant medication and evidence-based psychotherapy have largely equivalent efficacy in the management of the common, less severe grades of depression. As a result, several national guidelines recommend that either can be used in the treatment of this disorder. Psychotherapy, however, differs in that it assists insight into how the depressed person appraises and manages the stressors that frequently trigger depressive episodes. I argue that the self-knowledge achieved through psychotherapy has moral value in that it promotes the autonomy of stressor-related decisions. I further argue that such an effect comprises a ...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: PAUL BIEGLER Source Type: journals

Diagnostic self-testing: autonomous choices and relational responsibilitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Diagnostic self-testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point-of-care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self-testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping society improve health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of fu...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ALAN J. KEARNS, DÓNAL P. O'MATHÚNA, P. ANNE SCOTT Source Type: journals

Equality and the duty to retard human ageingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Where does the aspiration to retard human ageing fit in the 'big picture' of medical necessities and the requirements of just healthcare? Is there a duty to retard human ageing? And if so, how much should we invest in the basic science that studies the biology of ageing and could lead to interventions that modify the biological processes of human ageing? I consider two prominent accounts of equality and just healthcare [ndash] Norman Daniels's application of the principle of fair equality of opportunity and Ronald Dworkin's account of equality of resources [ndash] and conclude that, once suitably amended and revised, both ...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: COLIN FARRELLY Source Type: journals

On the morality of guinea-pig recruitmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Can it be wrong to conduct medical research on human subjects even with their informed consent and even when the transaction between the subjects and researchers is expected to be mutually beneficial? This question is especially pressing today in light of the rise of a semi-professional class of 'guinea pigs'[ndash] human research subjects that sell researchers a right of access to their bodies in exchange for money. Can these exchanges be morally problematic even when they are consensual and mutually beneficial? I argue that there are two general kinds of concern one can have about such transactions [ndash] concerns about...
Source: Bioethics - February 16, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MIKHAIL VALDMAN Source Type: journals