Brain –Computer Interfaces, Completely Locked-In State in Neurodegenerative Diseases, and End-of-Life Decisions
This article raises ethical issues with acting through BCIs in the context of these decisions, specifically self-administration requirements within assisted suicide policies. We argue that enabling patients to end their life even once they have entered completely locked-in state might, paradoxically, prolong and uphold their quality of life. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 19, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy: An Islamic Perspective
AbstractMitochondrial replacement technology (MRT) is an emerging and complex bioethical issue. This treatment aims to eliminate maternal inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) disorders. For Muslims, its introduction affects every aspect of human life, especially the five essential interests of human beings —namely, religion, life, lineage, intellect, and property. Thus, this technology must be assessed using a comprehensive and holistic approach addressing these human essential interests. Consequently, this article analyses and assesses tri-parent baby technology from the perspective of Maqasidic bi oethics—that is, Isl...
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 13, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Data Sharing During Pandemics: Reciprocity, Solidarity, and Limits to Obligations
AbstractSouth Africa shared with the world the warning of a new strain of SARS-CoV2, Omicron, in November 2021. As a result, many high-income countries (HICs) instituted complete travel bans on persons leaving South Africa and other neighbouring countries. These bans were unnecessary from a scientific standpoint, and they ran counter to the International Health Regulations. In short, South Africa was penalized for sharing data. Data sharing during pandemics is commonly justified by appeals to solidarity. In this paper, we argue that solidarity is, at best, an aspirational ideal to work toward but that it cannot ground an o...
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 13, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Far From the Madding Crowd: Health Service Expectations in the “Country”
(Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 13, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Recent Amendments to the Australian Privacy Act
This article reviews the recent amendments to thePrivacy Act and explains their effect. It comments upon the relevance of the amendments for health and medical data and other data collected in the context of healthcare, and refers to the Attorney-General ’s Department’s review of thePrivacy Act regarding other proposals relating to enforcement which have not as yet been put into effect in legislation. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 11, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
COVID, Vulnerability, and the Death of Solidarity: “Who Do We Not Save?”
AbstractSolidarity between more and less vulnerable groups is fundamental to an effective public health response to a global pandemic. Yet in the case of COVID-19, a focus on deciding who can and who cannot be protected from harm has shaped the pandemic experience and continues to determine the post-pandemic trajectory of life with SARS-CoV-2. In this paper I discuss how this has affected our understanding and acceptance of solidarity. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 11, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
COVID-19 and Climate Change: Re-thinking Human and Non-Human in Western Philosophy
AbstractThe pre-conditions and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are inter-connected with those of climate change, prompting reflection on how to re-think the relations between human and non-human on a changing planet. This essay considers that issue with reference to the contrasts between the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza, who offered radically different approaches to the conceptualization of human presence in Nature. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 11, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Institutional Objection to Voluntary Assisted Dying in Victoria, Australia: An Analysis of Publicly Available Policies
ConclusionThis study demonstrates that despite having clear governance pathways developed by centralized bodies (namely, the Victorian government and Catholic Health Australia), many institutions ’ public-facing policies do not reflect this guidance. Since VAD is contentious, laws governing institutional objection could provide greater clarity and regulatory force than policies alone to better balance the interests of patients and non-participating institutions. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 10, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Inclination of Nursing Students Towards Ethical Values and The Effects of Ethical Values on Their Care Behaviours
This study showed that the ethical values of the students positively affected their care behaviours. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - July 4, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Uterus Transplantation as a Surgical Innovation
AbstractUterus transplantation (UTx) research has been introduced in several countries, with trials in Sweden and the United States producing successful outcomes. The growing interest in developing UTx trials in other countries, such as Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and Australia, raises important questions regarding the ethics of surgical innovation research in the field of UTx. This paper examines the current state of UTx in the context of the surgical innovation paradigm and IDEAL framework and discusses the ethical challenges faced by those considering the introduction of new trials. We argue that UTx remains an exper...
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 29, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
While Icarus Falls: Conditions for Pandemic Ethics
AbstractThis symposium contribution presents three vignettes of resistance to COVID-19 public health measures in Alberta, Canada, where I live. These show resolutely individualistic attitudes towardhealth and a desire to understand the pandemic as a one-off aberration. I then suggest four ways that the work of bioethics needs to change. These begin with situating the pandemic within the context of global climate emergency and end with how a new polarization diminishes possibilities for the rational dialogue that bioethics has here-to-fore assumed people would engage in. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 29, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Epistemic Injustice and Nonmaleficence
AbstractEpistemic injustice has undergone a steady growth in the medical ethics literature throughout the last decade as many ethicists have found it to be a powerful tool for describing and assessing morally problematic situations in healthcare. However, surprisingly scarce attention has been devoted to how epistemic injustice relates to physicians ’ professional duties on a conceptual level. I argue that epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial, collides with physicians’ duty of nonmaleficence and should thus be actively fought against in healthcare encounters on the ground of professional conduct. I do so by fl...
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 28, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Declining to Provide or Continue Requested Life-Sustaining Treatment: Experience With a Hospital Resolving Conflict Policy
We report our experience with a resolving conflict procedure. This was a retrospective, single-centre cohort study of ethics consultations involving intractable conflict over LST. The resolving conflict process was initiated eleven times for ten patients over 2,015 ethics consultations from 2000 to 2020. In all cases, the ethics committee recommended withdrawal of the contested LST. In seven cases, the patient died or was transferred or a legal injunction was obtained before completion of the process. In the four cases in which LST was withdrawn, the time from ethics consultation to withdrawal of LST was 24.8 ± 12.2 days....
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 28, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Abortion, Brain Death, and Coercion
AbstractA “universalist” policy on brain death holds that brain death is death, and neurologic criteria for death determination are rightly applied to all, without exemptions or opt outs. This essay argues that advocates of a universalist brain death policy defend the same sort of coercive control of end- of-life decision-making as “pro-life” advocates seek to achieve for reproductive decision-making, and both are grounded in an illiberal political philosophy. Those who recognize the serious flaws of this kind of public policy with respect to abortion must apply the same logic to brain death. (Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry)
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 28, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Impairment Argument and Future-Like-Ours: A Problematic Dependence
AbstractIn response to criticism of the impairment argument for the immorality of abortion, Bruce Blackshaw and Perry Hendricks appeal to Don Marquis ’s future-like-ours (FLO) account of the wrongness of killing to explain why knowingly causing fetal impairments is wrong. I argue that wedding the success of the impairment argument to FLO undermines all claims that the impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is novel. Moreover, I argu e that relying on FLO when there are alternative explanations for the wrongness of causing FAS begs the question. I conclude, therefore, that the impairment argument remains unsuc...
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - June 6, 2023 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
