Articles

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

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

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

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

Explaining and responding to the Ebola epidemic

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is not merely a biomedical problem that can be seen in isolation and dealt with only through emergency medical rescue processes. The ethical dilemmas surfaced by this epidemic...

Authors: Solomon Benatar

Luria revisited: cognitive research in schizophrenia, past implications and future challenges

Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biological rationale of mental diseases. Although mental disorders comprise mostly functional abnormalities, there is a...

Authors: Yuliya Zaytseva, Raymond CK Chan, Ernst Pöppel and Andreas Heinz

Erasing traumatic memories: when context and social interests can outweigh personal autonomy

Neuroscientific research on the removal of unpleasant and traumatic memories is still at a very early stage, but is making rapid progress and has stirred a significant philosophical and neuroethical debate. Ev...

Authors: Andrea Lavazza

A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: part 2 – neuroscientific studies of morality and ethics

Moral philosophy and psychology have sought to define the nature of right and wrong, and good and evil. The industrial turn of the twentieth century fostered increasingly technological approaches that conjoine...

Authors: Martina Darragh, Liana Buniak and James Giordano

The right to health, health systems development and public health policy challenges in Chad

There is increasing consensus that the right to health can provide ethical, policy and practical groundings for health systems development. The goals of the right to health are congruent with those of health s...

Authors: Jacquineau Azétsop and Michael Ochieng

The ethics of animal research: a survey of pediatric health care workers

Pediatric health care workers (HCW) often perform, promote, and advocate use of public funds for animal research (AR). We aim to determine whether HCW consider common arguments (and counterarguments) in suppor...

Authors: Ari R Joffe, Meredith Bara, Natalie Anton and Nathan Nobis