Articles

The concept of vulnerability in medical ethics and philosophy

Healthcare is permeated by phenomena of vulnerability and their ethical significance. Nonetheless, application of this concept in healthcare ethics today is largely confined to clinical research. Approaches th...

Authors: Joachim Boldt

Utilitarianism and the ethical foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis in resource allocation for global health

Efficiency as quantified and promoted by cost-effectiveness analysis sometimes conflicts with equity and other ethical values, such as the “rule of rescue” or rights-based ethical values. We describe the utili...

Authors: Elliot Marseille and James G. Kahn

Potential use of clinical polygenic risk scores in psychiatry – ethical implications and communicating high polygenic risk

Psychiatric disorders present distinct clinical challenges which are partly attributable to their multifactorial aetiology and the absence of laboratory tests that can be used to confirm diagnosis or predict r...

Authors: A. C. Palk, S. Dalvie, J. de Vries, A. R. Martin and D. J. Stein

An empirical and philosophical exploration of clinical practice

Previous empirical work among physicians has led us to propose that clinical practice is experienced by clinicians as an engagement-in-the-clinical-situation. In this study, we pursue our exploration of clinic...

Authors: Michael Saraga, Donald Boudreau and Abraham Fuks

Commentary: patient well-being and individual outcomes in the medical practice: impulses from philosophy

In an everyday private practice setting, regularly also existential topics will emerge from doctor-patient encounters. These are often questions of coping with life and lifestyle. To enable a thorough discussi...

Authors: Gernot Rüter and Thomas Fröhlich

The orphan child: humanities in modern medical education

Use of humanities content in American medical education has been debated for well over 60 years. While many respected scholars and medical educators have purported the value of humanities content in medical tr...

Authors: Mary E. Kollmer Horton

What is the place for philosophy within the field of medicine? A review of contemporary issues in medical ethics

This extended essay seeks to unpack some of the key aspects of philosophy which are applicable to medical thought and practice. It proceeds via an analytical discussion of the contemporary debate in three key ...

Authors: Richard Fenton

The 10th Oxbridge varsity medical ethics debate-should we fear the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing?

In an increasingly data-driven age of medicine, do companies that offer genetic testing directly to patients represent an important part of personalising care, or a dangerous threat to privacy? Should we celeb...

Authors: Christian Michael Armstrong Holland, Edward Harry Arbe-Barnes, Euan Joseph McGivern and Ruairidh Mungo Connor Forgan

Muller’s nobel prize research and peer review

This paper assesses possible reasons why Hermann J. Muller avoided peer-review of data that became the basis of his Nobel Prize award for producing gene mutations in male Drosophila by X-rays.

Authors: Edward J Calabrese

Patients and agents – or why we need a different narrative: a philosophical analysis

The success of medicine in the treatment of patients brings with it new challenges. More people live on to suffer from functional, chronic or multifactorial diseases, and this has led to calls for more complex...

Authors: Harald Walach and Michael Loughlin

Varsity medical ethics debate 2018: constant health monitoring - the advance of technology into healthcare

The 2018 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that the constant monitoring of our health does more harm than good”. This annual debate between students from the Universi...

Authors: Chris Gilmartin, Edward H. Arbe-Barnes, Michael Diamond, Sasha Fretwell, Euan McGivern, Myrto Vlazaki and Limeng Zhu

A proposal for teaching bioethics in high schools using appropriate visual education tools

Teaching bioethics with visual education tools, such as movies and comics, is a unique way of explaining the history and progress of human research and the art and science of medicine to high school students. ...

Authors: Chiedozie G. Ike and Nancy Anderson

Body –to-head transplant; a "caputal" crime? Examining the corpus of ethical and legal issues

Neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero proposed the HEAVEN procedure – i.e. head anastomosis venture – several years ago, and has recently received approval from the relevant regulatory bodies to perform this body-head tra...

Authors: Zaev D. Suskin and James J. Giordano

Recta Ratio Agibilium in a medical context: the role of virtue in the physician-patient relationship

Acting for the good of the patient is the most fundamental and universally acknowledged principle of medical ethics. However, given the complexity of modern medicine as well as the moral fragmentation of conte...

Authors: Helena M. Olivieri

Renewing Medicine’s basic concepts: on ambiguity

Edmund Pellegrino lamented that the cultural climate of the industrialized West had called the fundamental means and ends of medicine into question, leading him to propose a renewed reflection on medicine’s ba...

Authors: Joel Michael Reynolds

“Violence” in medicine: necessary and unnecessary, intentional and unintentional

We are more used to thinking of medicine in relation to the ways that it alleviates the effects of violence. Yet an important thread in the academic literature acknowledges that medicine can also be responsibl...

Authors: Johanna Shapiro

Was Muller’s 1946 Nobel Prize research for radiation-induced gene mutations peer-reviewed?

This historical analysis indicates that it is highly unlikely that the Nobel Prize winning research of Hermann J. Muller was peer-reviewed. The published paper of Muller lacked a research methods section, cite...

Authors: Edward J. Calabrese

Reconsidering the role of language in medicine

Despite an expansive literature on communication in medicine, the role of language is dealt with mostly indirectly. Recently, narrative medicine has emerged as a strategy to improve doctor-patient communicatio...

Authors: Berkeley Franz and John W. Murphy

Revisiting the need for virtue in medical practice: a reflection upon the teaching of Edmund Pellegrino

Edmund Pellegrino considered medicine as a skill, art, and perhaps most importantly, a moral enterprise. In this essay, I attempt to exemplify how the legacy and contributions of Edmund Pellegrino, as a teache...

Authors: Luchuo Engelbert Bain

“The Notion of Neutrality in Clinical Ethics Consultation”

Clinical ethics consultation (CEC), as an activity that may be provided by clinical ethics committees and consultants, is nowadays a well-established practice in North America. Although it has been increasingl...

Authors: Alessandra Gasparetto, Ralf J. Jox and Mario Picozzi

Expertise in evidence-based medicine: a tale of three models

Expertise has been a contentious concept in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Especially in the early days of the movement, expertise was taken to be exactly what EBM was rebelling against—the authoritarian prono...

Authors: Sarah Wieten

Biotechnologies that empower transgender persons to self-actualize as individuals, partners, spouses, and parents are defining new ways to conceive a child: psychological considerations and ethical issues

Today, thanks to biomedical technologies advances, some persons with fertility issues can conceive. Transgender persons benefit also from these advances and can not only actualize their self-identified sexual ...

Authors: Agnès Condat, Nicolas Mendes, Véronique Drouineaud, Nouria Gründler, Chrystelle Lagrange, Colette Chiland, Jean-Philippe Wolf, François Ansermet and David Cohen

The ethical relevance of the unconscious

Ethical analyses of disorders of consciousness traditionally focus on residual awareness. Going one step further, this paper explores the potential ethical relevance of the unawareness retained by patients wit...

Authors: Michele Farisco and Kathinka Evers

Social inequality, scientific inequality, and the future of mental illness

Despite five decades of increasingly elegant studies aimed at advancing the pathophysiology and treatment of mental illness, the results have not met expectations. Diagnoses are still based on observation, the...

Authors: Charles E. Dean

A meta-science for a global bioethics and biomedicine

As suggested by Shook and Giordano, understanding and therefore addressing the urgent international governance issues around globalizing bio-medical/technology research and applications is limited by the perce...

Authors: David S. Basser

A glance into how the cold war and governmental loyalty investigations came to affect a leading U.S. radiation geneticist: Lewis J. Stadler’s nightmare

This paper describes an episode in the life of the prominent plant radiation geneticist, Lewis J. Stadler (1897–1954) during which he became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning loy...

Authors: Edward J. Calabrese

Conceptualizing suffering and pain

This article aims to contribute to a better conceptualization of pain and suffering by providing non-essential and non-naturalistic definitions of both phenomena. Contributions of classical evidence-based medi...

Authors: Noelia Bueno-Gómez

Do health professionals have a prototype concept of disease? The answer is no

Health and disease are core concepts in health care and have attracted substantial interest and controversy. In recent and interesting contributions to the debate it has been argued that the challenges with th...

Authors: Bjørn Hofmann

Context and scale: Distinctions for improving debates about physician “rationing”

Important discussions about limiting care based on professional judgment often devolve into heated debates over the place of physicians in bedside rationing. Politics, loaded rhetoric, and ideological caricatu...

Authors: Jon C. Tilburt and Daniel P. Sulmasy

Developing an informational tool for ethical engagement in medical tourism

Medical tourism, the practice of persons intentionally travelling across international boundaries to access medical care, has drawn increasing attention from researchers, particularly in relation to potential ...

Authors: Krystyna Adams, Jeremy Snyder, Valorie A. Crooks and Rory Johnston

Ethical, legal and societal considerations on Zika virus epidemics complications in scaling-up prevention and control strategies

Much of the fear and uncertainty around Zika epidemics stem from potential association between Zika virus (ZIKV) complications on infected pregnant women and risk of their babies being born with

Authors: Ernest Tambo, Ghislaine Madjou, Christopher Khayeka-Wandabwa, Oluwasogo A. Olalubi, Chryseis F. Chengho and Emad I.M. Khater

Erratum to: A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neuroscience

Authors: Kira Becker, John R. Shook, Martina Darragh and James Giordano

A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neuroscience

As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research (inclusive of studies of putative neurobiological processes involved in moral and ethical cogn...

Authors: Kira Becker, John R. Shook, Martina Darragh and James Giordano

Informed consent for the diagnosis of brain death: a conceptual argument

This essay provides an ethical and conceptual argument for the use of informed consent prior to the diagnosis of brain death. It is meant to enable the family to make critical end-of-life decisions, particular...

Authors: Osamu Muramoto

Failed surrogate conceptions: social and ethical aspects of preconception disruptions during commercial surrogacy in India

During a commercial surrogacy arrangement, the event of embryo transfer can be seen as the formal starting point of the arrangement. However, it is common for surrogates to undergo a failed attempt at pregnanc...

Authors: Sayani Mitra and Silke Schicktanz

A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: part 3 – “second tradition neuroethics” – ethical issues in neuroscience

Neuroethics describes several interdisciplinary topics exploring the application and implications of engaging neuroscience in societal contexts. To explore this topic, we present Part 3 of a four-part bibliogr...

Authors: Amanda Martin, Kira Becker, Martina Darragh and James Giordano

Varsity Medical Ethics Debate 2015: should nootropic drugs be available under prescription on the NHS?

The 2015 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes nootropic drugs should be available under prescription”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxfor...

Authors: Emma Thorley, Isaac Kang, Stephanie D’Costa, Myrto Vlazaki, Olaoluwa Ayeko, Edward H. Arbe-Barnes and Casey B. Swerner

Programs of religious/spiritual support in hospitals - five “Whies” and five “Hows”

A contemporary orientation of the hospital experience model must encompass the clients’ religious-spiritual dimension. The objective of this paper is to share a previous experience, highlighting at least five ...

Authors: Marcelo Saad and Roberta de Medeiros

The wizard behind the curtain: programmers as providers

It is almost universally accepted that traditional provider-patient relationships should be governed, at least in part, by the ethical principles set forth by Beauchamp and Childress (Beauchamp and Childress, ...

Authors: Mark A. Graber and Olivia Bailey

Maternal participant experience in a South African birth cohort study enrolling healthy pregnant women and their infants

Critical to conducting high quality research is the ability to attract and retain participants, especially for longitudinal studies. Understanding participant experiences and motivators or barriers to particip...

Authors: Whitney Barnett, Kirsty Brittain, Katherine Sorsdahl, Heather J. Zar and Dan J. Stein

Establishing the first institutional animal care and use committee in Egypt

Although animal research ethics committees (AREC) are well established in Western countries, this field is weakly developed and its concept is poorly understood in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Authors: Sohair R. Fahmy and Khadiga Gaafar

Acknowledgement of manuscript reviewers 2015

The editors of Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 10 (2015).

Authors: Kevin G. Donovan and James Giordano

Doctor can I buy a new kidney? I've heard it isn't forbidden: what is the role of the nephrologist when dealing with a patient who wants to buy a kidney?

Organ trafficking is officially banned in several countries and by the main Nephrology Societies. However, this practice is widespread and is allowed or tolerated in many countries, hence, in the absence of a ...

Authors: Giorgina Barbara Piccoli, Laura Sacchetti, Laura Verzè and Franco Cavallo

A charter for biomedical research ethics in a progressive, caring society

Given that advances in research continuously raise new ethical issues, a multidisciplinary working group of investigators involved in biomedical research has gathered to discuss and compare ethical viewpoints ...

Authors: Sylvie Vandoolaeghe, Alessandra Blaizot, Danie Boudiguet, Valérie Bougault, Eduardo Dei Cas, Benoît Foligne, Anne Goffard, Hélène Lefranc, Bénédicte Oxombre, Thomas Trentesaux, Bernard Vandenbunder, Isabelle Wolowczuk and Laurence Delhaes

This house believes the NHS should be privatised — 1st southwest medical debate

The inaugural southwest medical debate, between Exeter and Plymouth medical schools and respective health services, was held on the 3rd December 2014. Plymouth proposed the motion “This house believes the NHS ...

Authors: K. Naguleswaran, T. Tribedi, J. Fenn and S.B. Patel

Medical professionalism: what the study of literature can contribute to the conversation

Medical school curricula, although traditionally and historically dominated by science, have generally accepted, appreciated, and welcomed the inclusion of literature over the past several decades. Recent conc...

Authors: Johanna Shapiro, Lois L. Nixon, Stephen E. Wear and David J. Doukas

‘Trust my doctor, trust my pancreas’: trust as an emergent quality of social practice

Growing attention is being paid to the importance of trust, and its corollaries such as mistrust and distrust, in health service and the central place they have in assessments of quality of care. Although init...

Authors: Simon Cohn

The 2014 Varsity Medical Ethics Debate: should we allow genetic information to be patented?

The 2014 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that genetic information should not be commoditised”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford a...

Authors: Kiloran H.M. Metcalfe, Calum A. Worsley, Casey B. Swerner, Devan Sinha, Ravi Solanki, Krithi Ravi and Raj S. Dattani

“Arm in arm with righteousness”

Authors: Iona Heath

An explanation and analysis of how world religions formulate their ethical decisions on withdrawing treatment and determining death

This paper explores definitions of death from the perspectives of several world and indigenous religions, with practical application for health care providers in relation to end of life decisions and organ and...

Authors: Susan M Setta and Sam D Shemie