Articles

The "spare parts person"? Conceptions of the human body and their implications for public attitudes towards organ donation and organ sale

The increasing debate on financial incentives for organ donation raises concerns about a "commodification of the human body". Philosophical-ethical stances on this development depend on assumptions concerning ...

Authors: Mark Schweda and Silke Schicktanz

Prolonging life and delaying death: The role of physicians in the context of limited intensive care resources

Critical care is in an emerging crisis of conflict between what individuals expect and the economic burden society and government are prepared to provide. The goal of critical care support is to prevent suffer...

Authors: Robert C McDermid and Sean M Bagshaw

Are animal models predictive for humans?

It is one of the central aims of the philosophy of science to elucidate the meanings of scientific terms and also to think critically about their application. The focus of this essay is the scientific term predic...

Authors: Niall Shanks, Ray Greek and Jean Greek

The end of the era of generosity? Global health amid economic crisis

In the past decade donor commitments to health have increased by 200 percent. Correspondingly, there has been a swell of new players in the global health landscape. The unprecedented, global response to a sing...

Authors: Kammerle Schneider and Laurie Garrett

Living apart together: reflections on bioethics, global inequality and social justice

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues ...

Authors: Stuart Rennie and Bavon Mupenda

The 'Brain Drain' of physicians: historical antecedents to an ethical debate, c. 1960–79

Many western industrialized countries are currently suffering from a crisis in health human resources, one that involves a debate over the recruitment and licensing of foreign-trained doctors and nurses. The i...

Authors: David Wright, Nathan Flis and Mona Gupta

The need to reform our assessment of evidence from clinical trials: A commentary

The ideology of evidence-base medicine (EBM) has dramatically altered the way we think, conceptualize, philosophize and practice medicine. One of its major pillars is the appraisal and classification of eviden...

Authors: Sean M Bagshaw and Rinaldo Bellomo

Human embryonic stem cell research, justice, and the problem of unequal biological access

In 2003, Ruth Faden and eighteen other colleagues argued that a "problem of unequal biological access" is likely to arise in access to therapies resulting from human embryonic stem cell research. They showed t...

Authors: Mark S Moller

"Enhanced" interrogation of detainees: do psychologists and psychiatrists participate?

After revelations of participation by psychiatrists and psychologists in interrogation of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and Central Intelligence Agency secret detention centers, the American Psychiatric Associat...

Authors: Abraham L Halpern, John H Halpern and Sean B Doherty

Ethical challenges with the left ventricular assist device as a destination therapy

The left ventricular assist device was originally designed to be surgically implanted as a bridge to transplantation for patients with chronic end-stage heart failure. On the basis of the REMATCH trial, the US...

Authors: Aaron G Rizzieri, Joseph L Verheijde, Mohamed Y Rady and Joan L McGregor

Internationalisation of information services for publishers' open access policies: the DINI multilingual integration layer

It is essential for the strategy of open access self-archiving that scientific authors are given comprehensive information on publisher copyright policies. DINI, the German Initiative for Networked Information...

Authors: Frank Scholze

Peter Stastny, Peter Lehmann: Alternatives beyond Psychiatry Peter Lehmann Publishing:431. IBSN-978-0-954428-1

Peter Stastny and Peter Lehmann's Alternatives beyond Psychiatry offers a comprehensive and up to date account of the alternatives to mainstream psychiatry that are being developed by service consumers and sur...

Authors: Paul Hammersley

The anatomy of sorrow: a spiritual, phenomenological, and neurological perspective

There is considerable controversy, both within and outside the field of psychiatry, regarding the boundaries of normal sadness and clinical depression. Furthermore, while there are frequent calls for a "plural...

Authors: Ronald Pies

Cueto Marcos: Cold War, Deadly Fevers: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 1955–1975 Washington, D.C., Woodrow Wilson Center Press (Co-published Johns Hopkins University Press); 2007:xv + 264. ISBN – 978-0-8018-8645-4

This review of Professor Marcos Cueto's Cold War Deadly Fevers: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 1955–1975 discusses some of the historical, sociological, political and parasitological topics included in Dr. Cueto'...

Authors: Filiberto Malagón

The beginning of the end for chimpanzee experiments?

The advanced sensory, psychological and social abilities of chimpanzees confer upon them a profound ability to suffer when born into unnatural captive environments, or captured from the wild – as many older re...

Authors: Andrew Knight

Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials?

Antidepressants, in particular newer agents, are among the most widely prescribed medications worldwide with annual sales of billions of dollars. The introduction of these agents in the market has passed throu...

Authors: John PA Ioannidis

Doukas David John, Reichel William: Planning for Uncertainty:Living Wills and Other Advance Directives for You and Your Family 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007:145. ISBN – 13:978-0-8018-8608-9

Advance directives are useful ways to express one's wishes about end of life care, but even now most people have not completed one of the documents. David Doukas and William Reichel strongly encourage planning...

Authors: Ellen W Bernal

Foucault's "fearless speech" and the transformation and mentoring of medical students

In his six 1983 lectures published under the title, Fearless Speech (2001), Michel Foucault developed the theme of free speech and its relation to frankness, truth-telling, criticism, and duty. Derived from the a...

Authors: Thomas J Papadimos and Stuart J Murray

DuBois JM: Ethics in Mental Health Research, Principles, Guidance and Cases Oxford: Oxford University Press. 256 pages, ISBN13 9780195179934

The burgeoning field of medical ethics raises complicated questions for mental health researchers. The critical issues of risk assessment, beneficence, and the moral duties researchers owe their patients are a...

Authors: Ronald Pies

Walking a mile in their patients' shoes: empathy and othering in medical students' education

One of the major tasks of medical educators is to help maintain and increase trainee empathy for patients. Yet research suggests that during the course of medical training, empathy in medical students and resi...

Authors: Johanna Shapiro

Barr Donald A: Introduction to U.S. Health Policy: The Organization, Financing and Delivery of Health Care in America 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007. xiv + 303 pages, ISBN – 13:978-0-8018-8574-7 (hardcover) and 13:978-0-8018-8574-4 (pbk)

Donald A. Barr's Introduction to U.S. Health Policy: The Organization, Financing, and Delivery of Health Care in America (second edition, 2007) offers a lucid and informative overview of the U.S. health system an...

Authors: Audrey R Chapman

Depression in an evolutionary context

Sadness and low levels of depression are adaptive since they lead the individual to try and make up a loss. By contrast, severe or clinical depression is not adaptive, but can be thought of as sadness having b...

Authors: Lewis Wolpert

Decade of the Mind

In the Fall of 2007, ten neuroscientists published a proposal for an interdisciplinary research initiative, the Decade of the Mind, that would focus on four "broad but intertwined areas": mental health, research ...

Authors: Manfred Spitzer

A darwinian perspective: right premises, questionable conclusion. A commentary on Niall Shanks and Rebecca Pyles' "Evolution and medicine: the long reach of "Dr. Darwin""

As Dobzhansky wrote, nothing in biology makes sense outside the context of the evolutionary theory, and this truth has not been sufficiently explored yet by medicine. We comment on Shanks and Pyles' recently p...

Authors: Paolo Vineis and Ronald Melnick

Death, organ transplantation and medical practice

A series of papers in Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine (PEHM) have recently disputed whether non-heart beating organ donors are alive and whether non-heart beating organ donation (NHBD) contravenes t...

Authors: Thomas S Huddle, Michael A Schwartz, FAmos Bailey and Michael A Bos

Are human embryos Kantian persons?: Kantian considerations in favor of embryonic stem cell research

One argument used by detractors of human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR) invokes Kant's formula of humanity, which proscribes treating persons solely as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselve...

Authors: Bertha Alvarez Manninen

The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association: A critique of policy and process

The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force was assembled by the American Psychological Association (APA) to guide policy on the role of psychologists in interrogations at foreign detentio...

Authors: Brad Olson, Stephen Soldz and Martha Davis

A funny thing happened on the way to the journal: a commentary on Foucault's ethics and Stuart Murray's "Care of the self"

Stuart Murray's 'Care and the self: biotechnology, reproduction, and the good life' utilizes Foucault's "care of the self" to examine health domains in its title. The present author discusses three important a...

Authors: Madeleine J Murtagh

Watkins ES: The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007:368. ISBN-978-0-8018-8602-7

The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America by Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is a thoroughly documented cautionary tale of the information and advice offered to women in the perimenopausal...

Authors: Carlos Sonnenschein

Does any aspect of mind survive brain damage that typically leads to a persistent vegetative state? Ethical considerations

Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evi...

Authors: Jaak Panksepp, Thomas Fuchs, Victor Abella Garcia and Adam Lesiak

Ethics of open access to biomedical research: Just a special case of ethics of open access to research

The ethical case for Open Access (OA) (free online access) to research findings is especially salient when it is public health that is being compromised by needless access restrictions. But the ethical imperat...

Authors: Stevan Harnad

Why the way we consider the body matters – Reflections on four bioethical perspectives on the human body

Within the context of applied bioethical reasoning, various conceptions of the human body are focused upon by the author in relation to normative notions of autonomy.

Authors: Silke Schicktanz

Seek first to understand

A recent study suggests that doctors often diminish effective time with patients by talking about themselves in a manner that does not improve the patient visit and is sometimes disruptive to it. Good care req...

Authors: Robert M Centor

The ethics of donation and transplantation: are definitions of death being distorted for organ transplantation?

A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation. I suggest that both these claims are f...

Authors: Ari R Joffe

Defining the vital condition for organ donation

The issue of organ donation and of how the donor pool can or should be increased is one with significant practical, ethical and logistic implications. Here we comment on an article advocating a paradigm change...

Authors: Rinaldo Bellomo and Nereo Zamperetti

The ethics of clinical innovation in psychopharmacology: Challenging traditional bioethics

To assess the scientific and ethical basis for clinical innovation in psychopharmacology.

Authors: S Nassir Ghaemi and Frederick K Goodwin

Framework for a new dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: is the combined neuro-psychoanalytic approach the missing link?

Freud's legacy deriving from his work The project for a scientific psychology (1895) could give a new impetus to the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences. A rapproachment phase is warrented. Based...

Authors: Grigoris Vaslamatzis

Book Review of Leprosy in Premodern Medicine. A Malady of the Whole Body by Luke Demaitre PhD

Luke Demaitre's Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body is a highly interesting study of the medical history of leprosy and the medical and social perceptions on leprosy that have been around fo...

Authors: Karin M Schmitt

Empirical investigation of the ethical reasoning of physicians and molecular biologists – the importance of the four principles of biomedical ethics

This study presents an empirical investigation of the ethical reasoning and ethical issues at stake in the daily work of physicians and molecular biologists in Denmark. The aim of this study was to test empiri...

Authors: Mette Ebbesen and Birthe D Pedersen

How new is the new philosophy of psychiatry?

In their recent paper, Natalie Banner and Tim Thornton evaluate seven volumes of the Oxford University Press series “International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry,” an international book series begun...

Authors: Damiaan Denys

On human self-domestication, psychiatry, and eugenics

The hypothesis that anatomically modern homo sapiens could have undergone changes akin to those observed in domesticated animals has been contemplated in the biological sciences for at least 150 years. The idea h...

Authors: Martin Brüne

Trotter G: The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007. 154 pages, ISBN-13 978-0-8018-8551-8

Public health ethics is neither taught widely in medical schools or schools of public health in the US or around the world. It is not surprising that health care professionals are particularly challenged when ...

Authors: Sonal Singh

The United States Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (2006): New challenges to balancing patient rights and physician responsibilities

Advance health care directives and informed consent remain the cornerstones of patients' right to self-determination regarding medical care and preferences at the end-of-life. However, the effectiveness and cl...

Authors: Joseph L Verheijde, Mohamed Y Rady and Joan L McGregor

Clarifying the paradigm for the ethics of donation and transplantation: Was 'dead' really so clear before organ donation?

Recent commentaries by Verheijde et al, Evans and Potts suggesting that donation after cardiac death practices routinely violate the dead donor rule are based on flawed presumptions. Cell biology, cardiopulmon...

Authors: Sam D Shemie

Truthfulness in transplantation: non-heart-beating organ donation

The current practice of organ transplantation has been criticized on several fronts. The philosophical and scientific foundations for brain death criteria have been crumbling. In addition, donation after cardi...

Authors: Michael Potts

England's new Mental Health Act represents law catching up with science: a commentary on Peter Lepping's ethical analysis of the new mental health legislation in England and Wales

Authors: Anthony Maden

Notice of redundant publication: Can the difference in medical fees for self and donor freeze-thaw embryo transfer cycle, be in fact a cover-up for the sale of donated human embryos?

Authors:

Review of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Authors: Stephanie A Nixon and Joel Baetz

The encounter with God in myth and madness

It is well known how often psychiatric patients report religious experiences. These are especially frequent in schizophrenic and epileptic patients as the subject of their delusions. The question we pose is: a...

Authors: Otto Doerr and Óscar Velásquez

Voltaire's Candide, medical students, and mentoring

In Voltaire's work, Candide, a young, naïve man, who has been taught that humans live in the best of all possible worlds, is thrust into the world only to find that this may not be so. He learns over time to bala...

Authors: Thomas J Papadimos