Articles

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

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

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

Seeking an ethical and legal way of procuring transplantable organs from the dying without further attempts to redefine human death

Because complex organs taken from unequivocally dead people are not suitable for transplantation, human death has been redefined so that it can be certified at some earlier stage in the dying process and there...

Authors: David Wainwright Evans

The disease-subject as a subject of literature

Based on the distinction between living body and lived body, we describe the disease-subject as representing the impact of disease on the existential life-project of the subject. Traditionally, an individual's...

Authors: Andrea R Kottow and Michael H Kottow

The new philosophy of psychiatry: its (recent) past, present and future: a review of the Oxford University Press series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry

There has been a recent growth in philosophy of psychiatry that draws heavily (although not exclusively) on analytic philosophy with the aim of a better understanding of psychiatry through an analysis of some ...

Authors: Natalie F Banner and Tim Thornton

Recovery of transplantable organs after cardiac or circulatory death: Transforming the paradigm for the ethics of organ donation

Organ donation after cardiac or circulatory death (DCD) has been introduced to increase the supply of transplantable organs. In this paper, we argue that the recovery of viable organs useful for transplantatio...

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

Revisiting the argument from fetal potential

One of the most famous, and most derided, arguments against the morality of abortion is the argument from potential, which maintains that the fetus' potential to become a person and enjoy the valuable life com...

Authors: Bertha Alvarez Manninen

Care and the self: biotechnology, reproduction, and the good life

This paper explores a novel philosophy of ethical care in the face of burgeoning biomedical technologies. I respond to a serious challenge facing traditional bioethics with its roots in analytic philosophy. Th...

Authors: Stuart J Murray

Ethical analysis of the new proposed mental health legislation in England and Wales

This paper ethically analyses arising out the proposed changes to the Mental Health Act for England and Wales. It looks in particular at thea shift in philosophy that the author claims has occurred with the pr...

Authors: Peter Lepping

Evolution and medicine: the long reach of "Dr. Darwin"

In this review we consider the new science of Darwinian medicine. While it has often been said that evolutionary theory is the glue that holds the disparate branches of biological inquiry together and gives th...

Authors: Niall Shanks and Rebecca A Pyles

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: Boon Chin Heng

Healthcare access as a right, not a privilege: a construct of Western thought

Over 45 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status. Employment, education, income, and race are important factors in a person's ability to acquire ...

Authors: Thomas J Papadimos

Ethics and AIDS in Africa: The Challenge to our Thinking Edited by: Anton A van Niekerk, Loretta M Kopelman. South Africa: David Philips Publishers

Authors: Stephanie A Nixon and Nkosinathi Ngcobo

Medical science, culture, and truth

There is a fairly closed circle between culture, language, meaning, and truth such that the world of a given culture is a world understood in terms of the meanings produced in that culture. Medicine is, in fac...

Authors: Grant Gillett

Governing therapy choices: Power/Knowledge in the treatment of progressive renal failure

This article outlines the struggle between the power of the health care professional and the rights of the individual to choose freely a modality of treatment. Nurses are instrumental in assisting patients in ...

Authors: Dave Holmes, Amélie M Perron and Marc Savoie

Report on the conference on 'Men, Women, and Medicine: A New View of the Biology of Sex/Gender Differences and Aging' held in Berlin, 24–26th February 2006

The first world wide symposium on the topic of gender-specific medicine provided the latest research on differences in sex and/or gender in medicine and medical care. The presentations ranged beyond the topic ...

Authors: Antje Kampf

Resident-generated versus instructor-generated cases in ethics and professionalism training

The emphasis on ethics and professionalism in medical education continues to increase. Indeed, in the United States the ACGME will require residency programs to include professionalism training in all curricul...

Authors: Alexander A Kon

Genetic modification and genetic determinism

In this article we examine four objections to the genetic modification of human beings: the freedom argument, the giftedness argument, the authenticity argument, and the uniqueness argument. We then demonstrat...

Authors: David B Resnik and Daniel B Vorhaus

"The physician as poet" review of: Pereira, Peter Saying the World

Peter Pereira is a family physician and a poet. I weave excerpts from Dr. Pereira's poems into a brief history of medicine's mythological and historical roots, beginning with the Egyptian god Thoth, and the Gr...

Authors: Joel Weishaus

The rhetorician's craft, distinctions in science, and political morality

In his response to Szasz' Secular Humanism and Scientific Psychiatry, the author considers the use of rhetorical devices in Szasz' work, Szasz' avoidance of acknowledging psychiatry's scientific distinctions, ...

Authors: John Z Sadler

What's the problem? A response to "secular humanism and scientific psychiatry"

Notwithstanding the interest and importance of Szasz's position, it neglects the phenomena, the real problems which take people to the clinic seeking treatment, and the conditionality of the notion of individu...

Authors: Derek Bolton

Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry"

The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperat...

Authors: Thomas Szasz

Cultural context in medical ethics: lessons from Japan

This paper examines two topics in Japanese medical ethics: non-disclosure of medical information by Japanese physicians, and the history of human rights abuses by Japanese physicians during World War II. These...

Authors: Tia Powell