Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

To Conceive Or Not Conceive: A Christian Perspective On Family Planning, Elise Newcomer

CedarEthics Online

The issue of birth control has been a constant source of dissent between the Catholic Church and the secular world for much of history. However, the past year has seen an even more divisive conflict erupt over family planning in the United States, since the Affordable Care Act mandates that employers supply insurance coverage for birth control (Reuters, 2013). By contrast, China’s government continues to dictate how many children each family can have. The current political and social climate of the world has seriously called into question what should be proper family planning. For the Christian, this is extremely important, …

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

CedarEthics Online

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.

Applying The Principle Of Double Effect, Andria E. Quirindongo

CedarEthics Online

When ethical conflicts arise in clinical cases, physicians may need specific guidelines to help justify the decisions they make for the best interest of their patients. One such guideline is the principle of double effect (PDE), employed in terminally ill patients. Palliative care physicians look to the PDE when a single action for a terminal patient has two known effects: a desired and intended result and an unintended, yet foreseeable one (Schwartz, 2004).

Genetic Engineering And The Pursuit Of Human Perfection, K. C. Pugh

CedarEthics Online

The idea of perfection has always captivated the attention of people across the ages. Whether in the form of gods, nature, or role models, people have always looked towards some form of the purest ideal. Perfection is not a novel idea by any means; however, it is only in recent years that human beings have actually sought to achieve it.

Genetic Engineering And The Pursuit Of Human Perfection, K. C. Pugh

Student Papers

The idea of perfection has always captivated the attention of people across the ages. Whether in the form of gods, nature, or role models, people have always looked towards some form of the purest ideal. Perfection is not a novel idea by any means; however, it is only in recent years that human beings have actually sought to achieve it.

End Of Life And Saving Souls: Should A Desire For Converts Influence End-Of-Life Ethics?, Michelle E. Frazer

Student Papers

In 1 Timothy 2:3, Paul states “God our Savior… wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (NIV). In keeping with God’s desire for the salvation of all, Christians should work towards that goal. From an evangelical Christian perspective, upon death, the status of one’s soul is fixed, bound either for heaven or hell.

This perspective should deeply influence our interactions with unbelievers, not only encouraging us to share the gospel, but also giving us an incentive to delay their physical death. Indeed, according to 2 Peter 3:9, the reason God is delaying …

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

Student Papers

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.

Ethical Challenges In Rheumatology: A Survey Of The American College Of Rheumatology Membership, Michele Meltzer

Michele Meltzer

Abstract Objective Despite the frequency of ethical issues arising in patient care, ethical discourse in the rheumatology literature is negligible. To better understand the scope of ethical problems occurring in our specialty, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Committee on Ethics and Conflict of Interest surveyed ACR members. Specific objectives of the survey were 1) to learn the perceived frequency of ethical issues in rheumatology, 2) to identify activities that pose ethical problems in rheumatologic practice, 3) to determine the extent of education on, and self-perceived knowledge about, ethics among ACR members, and 4) to determine member interest in, and …

Physician Incentives: Managed Care And Ethics, Douglas A. Mains, Alberto Coustasse, Kristine Lykens

Alberto Coustasse, DrPH, MD, MBA, MPH

The authors review the principle features of the managed care system in an effort to understand the ethical assumptions inherent in managed care. The interrelationships among physician incentives, responsibilities of patients and the physician-patient relationship are examined in light of the ethical concerns identified in the managed care system. The managed care system creates ethical tensions for those who influence the allocation of scare resources. Managed care's administrative controls have increasingly changed the doctor-patient relationship to the businessperson-consumer relationship. Managed care goals of quality and access demand that physicians be both patient advocate and organizational advocate, even though these roles …

Night Doctors: Exhuming The Truth, Dawn Danella

Open Books -- Open Minds: All Submissions

No abstract provided.

Variance In Patient Access To Support Persons By Race/Ethnicity And Language Preference: An Analysis Of Patient Survey Data, Andrew J. Jager, Matthew K. Wynia

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Regulatory and accreditation organizations have advocated open visitation policies and allowance of support persons of patients’ choosing, but it is unknown if support is allowed equitably. Data from hospitalized patients were analyzed to determine access to support persons, stratified by patient-reported race/ethnicity, language, sex, age, and education. A multivariate regression model was constructed using race and language, controlling for site and patient sex, education and age. Additionally, sites’ policies explicitly allowing support persons were correlated to reports of allowance of support persons. Among 1,196 respondents, 17% reported not being allowed a support person or being unsure. African American patients had …

Expanding Disease Definitions In Guidelines And Expert Panel Ties To Industry: A Cross-Sectional Study Of Common Conditions In The United State, Ray Moynihan, Georga Cooke, Jenny Doust, Lisa Bero, Suzanne Hill, Paul Glasziou

Jenny Doust

Financial ties between health professionals and industry may unduly influence professional judgments and some researchers have suggested that widening disease definitions may be one driver of over-diagnosis, bringing potentially unnecessary labeling and harm. We aimed to identify guidelines in which disease definitions were changed, to assess whether any proposed changes would increase the numbers of individuals considered to have the disease, whether potential harms of expanding disease definitions were investigated, and the extent of members' industry ties.

The Hippocratic Myth: Why Doctors Are Under Pressure To Ration Care, Practice Politics, And Compromise Their Promise To Heal, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Not many policymakers or scholars can write with the authority of Gregg Bloche. Bloche is not only a law professor, but a physician, who knows his way around a hospital. Throughout The Hippocratic Myth, Bloche cements his authority in the mind of the reader by relating stories of his experience as a clinician. In each of these stories, his humane and insightful approach as psychiatrist shines through. I do not say this to imply that Bloche uses his book to brag about his own abilities. Rather, these fluently-written passages strike one as the work of one of those rare practitioners …

Judy Savageau On The Irb Process In Human Subject Research, Judith A. Savageau

Judith A. Savageau

Blog post to AEA365, a blog sponsored by the American Evaluation Association (AEA) dedicated to highlighting Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources, and Lessons Learned for evaluators. The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of program evaluation, personnel evaluation, technology, and many other forms of evaluation. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products, and organizations to improve their effectiveness.

Health Care Organization Managers Beware-Understand Your Ethical Constraints, Ashish Chandra, Andrew Sikula Sr.

Andrew Sikula, Sr.

Review of the book Business Ethics in Healthcare: Beyond Compliance.(2001). Leonard J. Weber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 196 pp.

The Unseen And Untold Issues Of Clinical Trials And Research Ethics In Pakistan., Shahan Waheed, Emaduddin Siddiqui

Department of Emergency Medicine

No abstract provided.

Ethical Questions In Emergency Medical Services: Controversies And Recommendations, Torben K. Becker, Marianne Gausche-Hill, Andrew L. Aswegan, Eileen F. Baker, Kelly J. Bookman, Richard N. Bradley, Robert A. De Lorenzo, David J. Schoenwetter

Richard N Bradley

EMS providers face many ethical issues while providing prehospital care to children and adults. Although provider judgment plays a large role in the resolution of ethical questions at the scene, it is important to establish protocols and policies, when possible, to address these high risk and complex situations. This article describes some of the common situations with ethical underpinnings encountered by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel and managers including denying or delaying transport of patients with non-emergency conditions, use of lights and sirens for patient transport, determination of medical futility in the field, termination of resuscitation, restriction of EMS provider …

Are Changes To The Common Rule Necessary To Address Evolving Areas Of Research? A Case Study Focusing On The Human Microbiome Project, Diane Hoffmann, J. Fortenberry, Jacques Ravel

Diane Hoffmann

This article examines ways in which research conducted under the Human Microbiome Project, an effort to establish a “reference catalogue” of the micro-organisms present in the human body and determine how changes in those micro-organisms affect health and disease, raise challenging issues for regulation of human subject research. The article focuses on issues related to subject selection and recruitment, group stigma, and informational risks, and explores whether: (1) the Common Rule or proposed changes to the Rule adequately address these issues and (2) the Common Rule is the most appropriate vehicle to provide regulatory oversight and guidance on these topics.

Moral Gridlock: Conceptual Barriers To No-Fault Compensation For Injured Research Subjects, Leslie Henry

Leslie Meltzer Henry

The federal regulations that govern biomedical research, most notably those enshrined in the Common Rule, express a protectionist ethos aimed at safeguarding subjects of human experimentation from the potential harms of research participation. In at least one critical way, however, the regulations have always fallen short of this promise: if a subject suffers a research-related injury, then neither the investigator nor the sponsor has any legal obligation under the regulations to care for or compensate the subject. Because very few subjects with research-related injuries can meet the financial or evidentiary requirements associated with a successful legal claim to recover the …

Revising The Common Rule: Prospects And Challenges, Leslie Henry

Leslie Meltzer Henry

The annual Bioethics and Law Roundtable, jointly sponsored by the Law & Health Care Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, convened in April 2012 to address "Human Subjects Research Regulations: Proposals for Reform." This paper serves as the introduction to the seven papers presented at the symposium that discuss the prospects and challenges of revising the Common Rule.