Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Legal And Ethical Responsibilities, Denise Jordan

Denise M Jordan

No abstract provided.

The Three Rs: The Way Forward, Michael Balls, Alan M. Goldberg, Julia H. Fentem, Caren L. Broadhead, Rex L. Burch, Michael F.W. Festing, John M. Frazier, Coenraad F.M. Hendriksen, Margaret Jennings, Margot D.O. Van Der Kamp, David B. Morton, Andrew N. Rowan, Claire Russell, William M.S. Russell, Horst Spielmann, Martin Stephens, William S. Stokes, Donald W. Straughan, James D. Yager, Joanne Zurlo, Bert F.M. Van Zutphen

Andrew N. Rowan, DPhil

This is the report of the eleventh of a series of workshops organised by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), which was established in 1991 by the European Commission. ECVAM's main goal, as defined in 1993 by its Scientific Advisory Committee, is to promote the scientific and regulatory acceptance of alternative methods which are of importance to the biosciences and which reduce, refine or replace the use of laboratory animals. One of the first priorities set by ECVAM was the implementation of procedures which would enable it to become well-informed about the state-of-the-art of non-animal test …

The Green Staff Of Asclepius: Envisioning Sustainable Medicine, Jason Lee Fishel

Doctoral Dissertations

To make society sustainable our institutions must also become sustainable. As an institution, health care contributes to environmental degradation. While unsurprising, contributions to environmental degradation increase risk factors for disease and illness, effectively frustrating the goals of medicine. To find ways to make health care sustainable I begin by reviewing the literature on sustainability from within environmental ethics and two previous attempts at envisioning sustainable health care in order to learn what to include in a vision of sustainable health care. Then I examine problems specific to making medicine sustainable by investigating how sustainability might affect the principles of medicine. …

On The Symbolism Of The White Coat, David A. Nash

Oral Health Science Faculty Publications

The white coat ceremony has become an academic ritual in the health professions: a ceremony that signals a transformation of status from ordinary student to that of one studying to become a health professional. While donning the white coat is a sign of a changed role, the white coat is also a powerful symbol of transformation. White is a symbol of purity, and the white coat symbolizes the purity of purpose being affirmed in becoming a health professional. Dentistry is afforded the status of a learned profession as a result of the power dentists possess over patients seeking care; this …

The Ethics Of Animal Research: A Survey Of Pediatric Health Care Workers, Ari Joffe, Meredith Bara, Natalie Anton, Nathan Nobis

Experimentation Collection

Introduction: 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 support (or not) of AR convincing.

Design: After development and validation, an e-mail survey was sent to all pediatricians and pediatric intensive care unit nurses and respiratory therapists (RTs) affiliated with a Canadian University. We presented questions about demographics, support for AR, and common arguments (with their counterarguments) to justify the moral permissibility (or not) of AR. Responses are reported using standard tabulations. Responses of pediatricians and nurses/RTs were …

End Of Life Ethics: Hospice And Advance Directives, Thomas Kehr

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

It has been said, “Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact” (Handler, 2000, p.28). Perhaps this is the reason so few adults have advanced directives. Even after the 2005 public debate over the Terry Schiavo case, it has been calculated that two-thirds of Americans adults have not completed advance directives (Morhaim & Pollack, 2013).

Americans are united in desiring that their wishes be honored. Sister Nancy, a senior Catholic Nun, had completed her living will. After a medical episode and hospitalization she was furious that hospital emergency physicians had not honored her advanced …

Ethical Duties In Ectopic Pregnancy, Josephine Hein

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Ectopic pregnancy is occurring at an increasing frequency in the United States due to a rise in sexually transmitted disease, fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization, smoking, stress, and drug use. An ectopic pregnancy (EP), from Latin roots meaning “out of place,” is a pregnancy that does not correctly implant into its normal location in the endometrium of the uterus. Instead, the developing embryo implants in the fallopian tube, the cervix, the ovaries, or the abdominal or pelvic cavity. EPs today constitute about 2% of all pregnancies, of which 97% implant in the fallopian tube. A ruptured EP can …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2014

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Scientific Method Of Preparing Homoeopathic Nosodes, Rajesh Shah

Indian Journal of Research in Homoeopathy

Introduction: Nosodes are homoeopathic preparations sourced from biological materials such as diseased tissues, organisms, cultures (bacteria, fungi, and viruses), or parasites, or from decomposed products from humans or animals. More than forty-five major nosodes have been in use since 1830 but no clear guidelines regarding their preparation are available. Objective : To standardize the method of preparation of nosodes using modern technology and lay down clear guidelines for the same. Materials and Methods : Biological material identification such as culture of organism, separation of required pure fraction, quantification, standardization, dilutions, potentisation method, and safe use of nosodes were documented in …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

An Efficient Standardized Method Of Maintaining Quality Assurance In Therapeutic Treatment Record Keeping, Kelsey Michael Bradshaw

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Quality assurance (QA) within the field of mental health is the practice of monitoring and reviewing services to ensure adherence to specified standards of care. Agents within State governments and various organizations influence record keeping procedures through ethical guidelines and law. For instance, client records must be maintained for all clients receiving mental health services, including informed consent, releases of information, treatment plans, and progress notes. Accurate and timely record keeping procedures assure quality mental health services. However, professionals sometimes err in the maintenance of client records, which can have a negative impact on services, clients, and practitioners. To assist …

Is Food Marketing Making Us Fat? Fat Cats Vs Dogmatists., Stephen S. Holden

Stephen S Holden

For many, it seems obvious that food marketing is making us fat. The anger and outrage that was once evoked by tobacco companies is now being repackaged and aimed at ‘Big Food’ (Hennessy, 2014). But is it justified, is food marketing the cause of obesity? And in any case, does outrage and dogmatism help solve the problem? This paper suggests that blaming the marketers, both Big Food and "lazy leisure", is a disputable claim, and dangerously shifts responsibility from individuals to external agents.

Public Health Marketing: Is It Good And Is It Good For Everyone?, Stephen Holden, Damian Cox

Damian Cox

We define public health marketing broadly as the use of marketing tools (segmentation, targeting, position­ing, and the four Ps) to encourage behaviour change that will deliver the social good defined as public health. We explore the ethical challenges and risks that confront public health and social marketers. In particular, we note that public health marketers with a self-defined goal of delivering a social good face two major ethical challenges: the first is establishing the ethicality of the social good itself; the second is distributing the social good in an ethically defensible way. In particular, we draw attention to the central …

Review Of "Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense Of Limits ", James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Review of "Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits" by Nicholas Agar.

Marx V. Flanigan: A Discussion On Abortion, James Fallin

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Dr. Richard Flanigan looked up from the magazine he had been perusing. Several cancellations at the women’s center that afternoon left him with some free time before his next appointment. Flanigan felt disgust for the young women who had called that morning to say they had a change of heart about the procedure. Oh well! So what if a few easily swayed teens fell for the pro-life rhetoric? With the free time, he sat down at the receptionist’s desk, preparing to while away the hour with some light reading. An older man, with a bushy beard and dressed in old …

Defending Unborn Orphans: Embryo Adoption, Krisitn Colman

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

When parents have a baby, they are required by law and social precedent to care for the baby and provide it with a good home; unless their baby is an excess embryo produced from in vitro fertilization (IVF). Then the embryo can be abandoned to indefinite freezing. However, some families are choosing to adopt these embryos fixed in cryogenic limbo. In this article, I will look at the history and legality of embryo adoption, explain what is involved in embryo adoption, and finally expound on the ethical ramifications of choosing embryo adoption.

Realizing Potential: A Pragmatic Look At Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Mark Bentley

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

In the United States, there are over 400,000 cryogenically frozen embryos (Hoffman, et al., 2003). These frozen embryos are almost exclusively produced from in vitro fertilization (IVF) and related treatments. Much debate centers on the fate of these embryos. Among the current options available to the parents of leftover embryos are embryo adoption, keeping the embryos frozen for future use, destroying them, faux-implantations to let the embryos „naturally‟ die (Grady, 2008), and donating them for human embryonic stem cell (hES cell) research. While not all of the embryos are destroyed, many are, and it is wasteful for those embryos to …

Altered Nuclear Transfer Violates Natural Law Ethics, Thomas Bertagnoli

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Medical researchers have promised that embryonic stem cells (ES cells) hold the secret to discovering cures for Parkinson’s disease, neurological damage, and other unsolved medical problems, yet President George W. Bush blocked government funding for embryo destructive research, claiming that such research is unethical. Many people hold that human embryos are living human persons, so they gladly accepted a decision they believe protects the lives of the unborn. President Obama overturned the former president’s decision and granted National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to ES cell research, supporting those who see this as a cure for many debilitating diseases. This …

Safeguarding Genetic Privacy, Anna-Marie Struble, Emily Valji, Jennifer Lilly

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Since the completion in 2003 of the Human Genome Project’s initial goal to map all the genes and discover the complete nucleotide sequence in the human genome, opportunities for many significant medical advances have opened up to us, including gene therapies for various genetically-linked medical disorders, the ability to create “custom-made” drugs, and early, reliable diagnosis of genetic predispositions to disease. Genetic testing, the inspection of a person’s DNA to identify mutated sequences, is medically relevant for individuals. However, along with the undeniable benefits this knowledge brings, serious questions have arisen concerning how this knowledge should be handled to protect …

The Nazi Research Data: Should We Use It?, Sarah Wilson

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

White rats in labs often give their lives to test drugs and diseases so that humans may live. Sadly, during the Holocaust era, the white rats were Jewish people. Many Nazi doctors conducted experiments on Jews so that others, especially Nazi forces fighting in the war, would have more information on dangers such as high altitude and hypothermia. The Nazi doctors infected Jewish children with different diseases to watch the progression of the disease on the human body (Kor, 1992). The Nazi experiments produced valuable data that could save lives today, but the ethical questions associated with using the data …

A Review Of The Institute Of Medicine’S Analysis Of Using Chimpanzees In Biomedical Research, Robert C. Jones, Ray Greek

Biomedicine and Animal Models in Research Collection

We argue that the recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report, Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, are methodologically and ethically confused. We argue that a proper understanding of evolution and complexity theory in terms of the science and ethics of using chimpanzees in biomedical research would have had led the committee to recommend not merely limiting but eliminating the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. Specifically, we argue that a proper understanding of the difference between the gross level of examination of species and examinations on finer levels can shed light on important methodological …

Let Them Be Heroes, Christina Kinch

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Since 1978, there is now a population of unique human entities unlike the world has ever seen before. This group numbers at more than 500,000 individuals (Grabill, 2007). Some are brand new, created only days ago; others have been around for decades. Yet these entities, all comprised of human embryos, are all developmentally the same age. They are five to six days old, frozen in liquid nitrogen until their fate is decided.

And so a debate rages in our society. What should be done with all the frozen embryos? These are the excess or “left-over” embryos resulting from reproductive technologies, …

Ethics And The Use Of Coercion In The Treatment Of Psychiatric Patients, Jen Rushforth

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Involuntary psychiatric treatment occurs under such conditions as the medicating or placing in treatment facilities of patients without their consent. Such involuntary treatment has been litigated in the Supreme Court; however, the Court’s rulings have been applied to incarcerated persons, with the notable exception of the 1975 ruling in O’Connor v. Donaldson, a case argued as a civil rights violation. Using O’Connor v. Donaldson as a framework, this paper argues that forcing non- violent psychiatric patients to take medication, or be otherwise treated against their will, is an unethical practice and must be discontinued. This practice of forcible treatment violates …

Luther's Existential Imago Dei, The Deprivation Thesis, And Sanctity Of Life, Tyler M. John

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

On Ryan Peterson’s reading of Martin Luther, the imago Dei (iD) is a human’s capacity to experience God. Traditionally, Christians have understood the iD to be a property that a) qualitatively separates all human beings from all non-human animals and b) gives humans a greater moral worth than non-human animals. If Peterson’s Luther is right, humans made in the iD and no other material created things have the capacity to experience God, and this capacity makes them worth more, morally, than non-human animals.

I defend this conception of the distinctness of humans by demonstrating the following: For any human being …

Kantian Ethics: A Support For Euthanasia With Extreme Dementia, Joshua Beckler

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

Many believe that Immanuel Kant would oppose suicide in every circumstance. However, the intricacies of Kantian ethics may lead to the surprising conclusion that some individuals have the moral obligation to take their own lives. In this paper, I will employ Kantian reasoning to argue that patients approaching extreme dementia have the moral obligation to commit suicide before they lose their rationality and personhood. I will then argue that logically, it follows that physicians should administer euthanasia to patients with severe dementia who have lost their ability to freely choose suicide.

The Singer And The Violinist: When Pro-Abortion Ethicists Are Out Of Tune, Tyler M. John

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

In the fall of 1971, Philosophy & Public Affairs published an essay by feminist moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson that would have the entire nation talking. Her piece soon became one of the most widely cited and reprinted essays in the Western world, and one of the most influential essays on the issue of abortion. In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Thomson undertook the seemingly impossible task of explaining why, in her view, it is morally permissible to abort a human fetus even if the fetus is granted the status of personhood. The essay has received both support and …

Having Babies: Personhood Or Product?, Leanne N. Dykstra

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

One out of every six married couples experiences infertility at some point in their relationship. Most couples expect and desire to conceive children, and thus fulfill their “procreative duty.” However, this desire is interrupted by the pain of childlessness. Modern technology has responded through procedures such as artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization (IVF). If these technologies are successful, the result is procreation, and alleviation of human suffering. While this may appear wonderful on a surface level, it does raise questions of whether we have correctly defined procreation. Our culture and consumerist attitude has altered the God-intended views of procreation …

A Kantian Ethical Analysis Of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, Emily Delk

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

In an era where new genetic and reproductive technologies are increasing, ethical concerns continue to grow as well. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a technique used in addition to in vitro fertilization (IVF) to screen embryos for genetic abnormalities and either discard them or place them in the uterus. The emergence of new uses for PGD has made PGD a frequent target of ethical commentary and speculation about a future of greatly increased genetic selection and manipulation of offspring (Robertson, 2003). Although PGD is not currently widespread, its potential for abuse signifies a need for serious ethical analysis. Immanuel Kant …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2014

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Morality Of Contraceptives Based On When Personhood Begins, Joella R. Gerber

CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics

The use of contraceptives has been controversial in recent days, especially concerning the government mandate for insurance and health care companies to financially cover contraceptives for their policy holders. The term ‘contraceptive’ includes anything that deliberately prevents conception or impregnation, including condoms, birth control pills, intrauterine methods, and barrier methods (Merriam-Webster, 2013). The morality of contraception largely hinges on the belief of when personhood begins.