Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Reverse Innovation From The Least Of Our Neighbors, M. Therese Lysaught

M. Therese Lysaught

No abstract provided.

Fertility Preservation Technologies For Women: A Feminist Ethical Analysis, Angel Petropanagos

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation I examine ethical issues that concern fertility preservation (FP) technologies for women from a feminist perspective. FP technologies involve the removal, cryopreservation and subsequent storage of reproductive materials for future use. The aim of these technologies is to preserve the option of future genetic reproduction. FP technologies have been developed in the cancer context because infertility is one of the long-term side-effects of many cancers or cancer therapies. Many FP technologies are still experimental, but some technologies are becoming available to healthy women who wish to guard against age-related infertility. Although FP technologies are expanding women’s ...

Exploring Parental Experiences And Decision-Making Processes Following A Fetal Anomaly Diagnosis, Ramona L. Fernandez

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Often the first indication that something may be wrong in a seemingly normal pregnancy occurs during the first detailed ultrasound appointment between 16 and 20 weeks gestation. Even the most tentative suspicions of fetal anomalies is jarring. Parent’s default reality of a normal pregnancy and a ‘perfect child’ changes to one of risk factors and the possibility of an ‘unhealthy child’. This study begins with the realization of this first loss in a series of losses that follow for parents as they grapple with diagnostic information to be able to make informed medical decisions regarding their fetus and pregnancy ...

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2013

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Getting Nano Tattoos Right — A Checklist Of Legal Ethical Hurdles For An Emerging Nanomedical Technology, Michael G. Bennett, R. John Naranja Jr.

School of Law Faculty Publications

The nano tattoo represents a nascent technology designed to be implanted in the skin to provide continuous and reliable glucose detection for diabetics. Its potential benefits are compelling not only for its ability to prevent diabetic complications and decrease related social costs, but also for its ease of use and relative patient-user comfort. This Note aims to articulate a checklist of fundamental intellectual property, bioethical and system design issues that are appropriately considered in the pre-clinical, pre-commercialization phase of nano tattoo development. Early and regular consideration of these factors can increase the odds of a societally beneficial dissemination of this ...

Feminist Bio-Phenomenology, Christina Schües

Future Directions in Feminist Phenomenology

No abstract provided.

Hannah Arendt And Pregnancy In The Public Sphere, Katy Fulfer

Future Directions in Feminist Phenomenology

No abstract provided.

Addressing Conscientious Objection Of Rural Canadian Nurses And Physicians, Natasha T. Morton

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis considers how conscientious objection of a nurse or physician in a rural setting should be addressed when that objection is based on a centrally held value or belief, and considers whether current strategies are morally sufficient. Current literature fails to specifically consider the complexity and challenge facing health care professionals with limited support, time, and resources who encounter conscientious objection in the rural environment. Conscience and conscientious objection are explicitly defined based on a literature survey, and reflective equilibrium is used to assess evidence from law, policy, and published sources. The author concludes that current strategies fail to ...

Mandatory Flu Vaccines For Health Care Providers: A Step Too Far?, Asha Behdinan, Crystal Chan

The Meducator

No abstract provided.

Explaining The Supreme Court's Interest In Patent Law, Timothy R. Holbrook

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Emergency Contraceptive (Ec) Use In Indigent Populations, Ashley Benjamin, Kasandra Chambers, Melissa Mcnicol, Amy Roy, Kurtis Schultz, April Yoakam, Miriam A. Ansong, Pharm.D., Tracy R. Frame, Ph.D.

The Research and Scholarship Symposium

No abstract provided.

Synthesising The Outputs Of Deliberation: Extracting Meaningful Results From A Public Forum, Kieran C. O'Doherty

Journal of Public Deliberation

Recent years have seen an increase in empirical studies of public deliberation. This has led to important advances in thinking through issues such as who to include, how best to inform lay audiences about a particular topic, and how to maximise the perceived legitimacy of deliberation. An important issue that has not received much attention is how to define, identify, and report the results of deliberation. The conversations among individuals that occur over the course of a deliberation can be understood as a large and complex set of qualitative data. The deliberative discourse that is produced over the course of ...

Participatory And Deliberative Practices In Health: Meanings, Distinctions, And Implications For Health Equity, Erika Blacksher

Journal of Public Deliberation

This paper examines the meanings of and distinctions between public deliberation and a tradition of participation in health committed to community empowerment, collective action, and social justice and their implications for health equity. Although participation (as empowerment) and public deliberation share fundamental democratic ideals, these democratic practices differ in basic respects. Whereas participation in health typically seeks to engage marginalized and minority groups in planning, research, and action on the social determinants of health and wellbeing, deliberative processes seek to create the conditions for reasoned and respectful public dialogue that can lead to well considered collective judgments about important social ...

Public Deliberation In Health Policy And Bioethics: Mapping An Emerging, Interdisciplinary Field, Julia Abelson, Erika A. Blacksher, Kathy K. Li, Sarah E. Boesveld, Susan D. Goold

Journal of Public Deliberation

For over two decades, the "deliberative turn" has rooted itself in the fields of health policy and bioethics, producing a growing body of deliberation in action and associated academic scholarship. With this growing use and study of citizen deliberation processes in the health sector, we set out to map this dynamic field to highlight its diversity, interdisciplinarity, stated and implicit goals and early contributions. More specifically, we explored how public deliberation (PD) is being experimented with in real-world health settings, with a view to assessing how well it is meeting current definitions and common features of PD. Our review provides ...

The Ottawa Statement On The Ethical Design And Conduct Of Cluster Randomized Trials, Charles Weijer, Jeremy M. Grimshaw, Martin P. Eccles, Andrew D. Mcrae, Angela White, Jamie C. Brehaut, Monica Taljaard, Ottawa Ethics Of Cluster Randomized Trials Consensus Group, Catarina I. Kiefe

Quantitative Health Sciences Publications and Presentations

Summary points:

• In cluster randomized trials (CRTs), the units of allocation, intervention, and outcome measurement may differ within a single trial. As a result of the unique design of CRTs, the interpretation of existing research ethics guidelines is complicated.
• The Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials aims to provide researchers and research ethics committees (RECs) with detailed guidance on the ethical design, conduct, and review of CRTs.
• A five-year mixed methods research project explored the ethical challenges of CRTs. Empirical studies documented the reporting of ethical issues in published CRTs, interviewed experienced trialists, and ...

Language In Genetics Research Informed Consent: The Language Gap And Unrecognized Miscommunication, Justin Morgenstern

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Informed choice is fundamentally a process of communication, reliant entirely on the tools of language. However, the meanings and understandings of words change with time, setting, and context, threatening the basis of consent. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of Canadian genetics research documents, exploring the impacts of language on informed consent. Numerous language usages were noted as potential barriers to informed consent, including language that was vague, variable, and unusually defined. Unique combinations of words were observed to generate novel concepts without clear meanings and definitions were absent or unclear. However, the ambiguity of the language was concealed by ...

The Pluripotency Proposition: A Biological And Ethical Case For The Utilization Of Hipscs In Place Of Hescs, Drew Dickson

Senior Honors Papers

Human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has spurred ethical controversy ever since it became feasible in 1998. The reason for this is due to the fact that hESC research requires the destruction of a human embryo, thereby causing the cessation of life for that developing human. Despite this unavoidable consequence, many advocates of hESC research hold to the belief that the embryo is not actually a human person, and therefore deem the destruction of the embryo as justifiable. Many advocates of hESC research also have pointed to the unprecedented medical potential of hESCs to argue in favor of their case ...

Tobacco Endgame Strategies: Challenges In Ethics And Law, Bryan P. Thomas, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There are complex legal and ethical tradeoffs involved in using intensified regulation to bring smoking prevalence to near-zero levels. The authors explore these tradeoffs through a lens of health justice, paying particular attention to the potential impact on vulnerable populations. The ethical tradeoffs explored include the charge that heavy regulation is paternalistic; the potentially regressive impact of heavily taxing a product consumed disproportionately by the poor; the simple loss of enjoyment to heavily addicted smokers; the health risks posed by, for example, regulating nicotine content in cigarettes—where doing so leads to increased consumption. Turning to legalistic concerns, the authors ...

Finding Fault?: Exploring Legal Duties To Return Incidental Findings In Genomic Research, Elizabeth R. Pike, Karen H. Rothenberg, Benjamin E. Berkman

Faculty Scholarship

The use of whole genome sequencing in biomedical research is expected to produce dramatic advances in human health. The increasing use of this powerful, data-rich new technology in research, however, will inevitably give rise to incidental findings (IFs), findings with individual health or reproductive significance that are beyond the aims of the particular research, and the related questions of whether and to what extent researchers have an ethical obligation to return IFs. Many have concluded that researchers have an ethical obligation to return some findings in some circumstances, but have provided vague or context-dependent approaches to determining which IFs must ...

Compassion Fatigue Or Ethics Exhaustion?, Sonnya Dennis

International Veterinary Social Work Summit

Compassion Fatigue or Ethics Exhaustion?

In veterinary practice, the diagnosis is critical for proper treatment. Different diseases can cause the same symptoms, and while palliative treatment is sometimes necessary, ideally we want prevention or cure. In this talk, I will speak from the experiential perspective of companion animal general practice about the very real and common problem of compassion fatigue, and why it is different from, and can mask, what I call Ethics Exhaustion. In brief, I define Ethics Exhaustion as the feeling of being powerless to even try to do what you think that you ethically should do, because ...