Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Guidelines For Physician-Assisted Suicide, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This paper proposes a set of guidelines for physician-assisted suicide (PAS). This set of guidelines integrates pertinent guidelines that were adopted in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, in the Netherlands and Belgium where euthanasia is legal, in Switzerland where assisted suicide is practiced, and in the Northern Territory of Australia, where physician-assisted suicide was legal for a short period of time.

Guidelines For Physician-Assisted Suicide, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This paper proposes a set of guidelines for physician-assisted suicide (PAS). This set of guidelines integrates pertinent guidelines that were adopted in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, in the Netherlands and Belgium where euthanasia is legal, in Switzerland where assisted suicide is practiced, and in the Northern Territory of Australia, where physician-assisted suicide was legal for a short period of time.

Magic Bullet, Karen Haydock

The STEAM Journal

Two of the most powerful types of corporations in the world today are those that produce pharmaceuticals and weapons. While the corporations are concerned with increasing their profits, we wonder if their products have any magical powers.

[India ink on rag paper]

This poster explores the military-industrial complex. The weapons industry profits through imperialism. The pharmaceutical industry profits through by taking advantage of people’s illnesses.

The poster has multiple interpretations, hopefully encouraging the viewer to participate by asking relevant questions, such as:

“What is that person drinking?”

”Are they pills or bombs?”

“Medicines cure us - how can a pill …

Vulnerability, Preventability, And Responsibility: Exploring Some Normative Implications Of The Human Condition, Daniel E. Wueste

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented March 17, 2015. Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University.

Infertility And Moral Luck: The Politics Of Women Blaming Themselves For Infertility, Carolyn Mcleod, Julie Ponesse

Julie E Ponesse

Infertility can be an agonizing experience, especially for women. And, much of the agony has to do with luck: with how unlucky one is in being infertile, and in how much luck is involved in determining whether one can weather the storm of infertility and perhaps have a child in the end. We argue that bad luck associated with being infertile is often bad moral luck for women. The infertile woman often blames herself or is blamed by others for what is happening to her, even when she cannot control or prevent what is happening to her. She has simply …

Does The Iranian Model Of Kidney Donation Compensation Work As An Ethical Global Model?, Jordan Potter

Journal of Health Ethics

Throughout the world, there is a massive global shortage of viable organs available for transplantation, and systems of cadaveric organ donation have thus far been unable to address this shortage. One potential remedy to this problem is to incentive live organ donation via cash incentives and other benefits, i.e. an organ sale, and this is the type of system Iran has used to effectively eliminate its national kidney waiting list since the late 1990s. In this article, the Iranian model of kidney donation compensation will be analyzed for its ability and effectiveness as an ethical global model, and this is …

Family Planning And Population Control In Developing Countries: Ethical And Sociocultural Dilemmas., Edward A. Komu M.D, Salome N. N. Ethelberg

Journal of Health Ethics

Do governments have the right to restrict individual freedom and right to have fewer or more children? Is it justifiable to control population in order to benefit society as a whole? Most of family planning and population control policies and programs in developing countries face resistant from the same people it aims to help. This can be mainly due to some ethical, socio-cultural beliefs, and moral values held by individuals and society as a whole. The challenges call for a need of family planning and population control programs to invest in examining ethical and socio-cultural dilemmas pertaining to these programs …

Csr Activity Of Tobacco Companies In Indonesia: Is It A Genuine Social Responsibility?, Harsman Tandilittin, Christoph Luetge

Journal of Health Ethics

The adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs in the tobacco industry has sparked a contentious debate in the international community. Tobacco industry’s CSR activities are honored by the government and Indonesian community with CSR awards due to their positive contributions. To assess the CSR activities of the tobacco companies and whether they are genuine forms of social responsibility or business motivation, we have collected the CSR activities and compared them with the negative impact of the tobacco industry in Indonesia. The CSR activities are in no way related to the negative impacts of tobacco in Indonesia. Therefore, CSR programs …

Ethical Documentation At The End Of Life, James T. Pathoulas

Lindmark Fellowship in Ethics

Patient autonomy is a basic tenet of ethical decision making in medicine. Individuals who are unable to participate in decision making at the end of life present a unique challenge to delivering ethical patient-­centered care. To ensure patient autonomy is upheld, providers are encouraged to use healthcare directives to guide clinical decision-­making. Healthcare directives are designed to uphold patient autonomy by indicating the desired scope of care at the end of life. While a particular type of healthcare directive, the advance care directive, is widely accepted, there are two common issues concerning its use: interpretation and accessibility. Issues with advance …

Compassionate Use Of Experimental Therapies: Who Should Decide?, Patricia J. Zettler

Faculty Publications By Year

In addition to being an example of unsubstantiated hype about regenerative medicine, the controversy around the Italy-based Stamina Foundation's unproven stem cell therapy represents another chapter in a continuing debate about how to balance patients' requests for early access to experimental medicines with requirements for demonstrating safety and effectiveness. Compassionate use of the Stamina therapy arguably should not have been permitted under Italy's laws, but public pressure was intense and judges ultimately granted access. One lesson from these events is that expert regulatory agencies may be the institutions most competent to make compassionate use decisions and that policies should include …

An Ethical Framework For End-Of-Life Discussions, Mark E. Lones

Bioethics in Faith and Practice

The primary goal of medical care is to assist patients to address medical issues which may threaten their health in order to preserve and restore the quality of the patients’ life. However, when a patient’s prognosis for meaningful survival is poor, there is a change in focus from restorative care to palliative care. The transition from “cure to comfort” is one of the most challenging and important medical care decisions the patient and family may encounter. The purpose of this article is to help give patients, families and care-givers an ethical framework to effectively discuss treatment options, values, and preferences …

The Abortion Decision: What About Dad?, Erica C. Graham

Bioethics in Faith and Practice

The modern utilitarian abortion debate focuses on how women are affected by abortion but has neglected the utilitarian concerns of men. Abortion is currently justified based on ethical claims that apply to both men and women equally. These ethical claims include empowerment in reproductive decisions, not desiring to become a parent, socioeconomic concerns, moral responsibility over children, pregnancy resulting from coercion, and autonomy. This paper reveals the equivalent ethical claims of men and women to these claims and argues for men having a legal say in deciding whether or not to abort.

A Call To Forward-Thinking Bioethics, Heather G. Kuruvilla

Bioethics in Faith and Practice

It is said that hindsight is always 20/20. However, a reasoned approach to practical bioethics requires an awareness of developing technologies and their potential applications to clinical practice.

Welcome To Bioethics In Faith And Practice, Dennis M. Sullivan

Bioethics in Faith and Practice

Welcome to Bioethics in Faith and Practice! Whether you are a healthcare professional, an academic, a member of the clergy, a student, or simply someone interested in these topics, we are glad you are here. This new enterprise is meant to bridge the gap between theory and practice, where moral philosophy and Christian faith are brought to bear on the everyday practice of medicine. It is important to understand why this new journal exists.

The Multifactorial Role Of The 3rs In Shifting The Harm-Benefit Analysis In Animal Models Of Disease, Melanie L. Graham, Mark J. Prescott

Biomedical Research and Alternative Methods Collection

Ethics on animal use in science in Western society is based on utilitarianism, weighing the harms and benefits to the animals involved against those of the intended human beneficiaries. The 3Rs concept (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) is both a robust framework for minimizing animal use and suffering (addressing the harms to animals) and a means of supporting high quality science and translation (addressing the benefits). The ambiguity of basic research performed early in the research continuum can sometimes make harm-benefit analysis more difficult since anticipated benefit is often an incremental contribution to a field of knowledge. On the other hand, benefit …

College Student Understanding Of Informed Consent Terminology, Kishore Garapati

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A good, understandable informed consent form (ICF) is key to ethical medical research, and the ICF is necessary according to United States federal regulation. Since they may be written in complex technical language, ICFs are often difficult for subjects to understand. The purpose of this research was to evaluate students' understanding of terminology commonly used in the ICF. An online research survey was sent to active students of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) during the winter 2015 semester. Questions were asked to evaluate the students' understanding of the correct meaning of the terms used in medical research. The majority of students …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2015

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Minding The Aging Brain: Are We Ready For Personalized Medicine?, Jason Karlawish, Robert C. Green

Robert A. Green

No abstract provided.

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …

Professionalism Under Fire: Conflict, War And Epidemics, Michelle Mclean, Vikram Jha, John Sandars

Michelle McLean

Today’s medical students (tomorrow’s doctors) will be entering a world of conflict, war and regular outbreaks of infectious diseases. Despite numerous international declarations and treaties protecting human rights, the last few decades has been fraught with reports of ‘‘lapses’’ in medical professionalism involving torture and force-feeding of detainees (e.g. captured during the War on Terror) and health care professionals refusing to treat infected patients (e.g. HIV and Ebola). This paper provides some historical background to the changing status of a physician’s duty to treat and how medical practitioners came to be involved in the inhumane treatment of detainees during the …