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Bioethics

The Dangers Of Deferring To Doctors

By Charles Foster

(Image: tctmd.com)

There is a dizzying circularity in much medical law. Judges make legal decisions based on the judgments of rightly directed clinicians, and rightly directed clinicians make their judgments based on what they think the judges expect of them. This is intellectually unfortunate. It can also be dangerous.

There are two causes: Judges’ reluctance to interfere with the decisions of clinicians, and doctors’ fear of falling foul of the law.

In some ways judicial deference to the judgment of professionals in a discipline very different from their own is appropriate. Judges cannot be doctors. The deference is best illustrated by the famous and ubiquitous Bolam test, which is the touchstone for liability in professional negligence cases.1 A doctor will not be negligent if their action or inaction would be endorsed by a responsible body of professional opinion in the relevant specialty.

In the realm of civil litigation for alleged negligence this deference is justified. The problem arises when the deference is exported to legal arenas where it should have no place. The classic example relates to determinations of the ‘best interests’ of incapacitous patients. Something done in relation to an incapacitous patient will only be lawful if it is in that patient’s best interests.Read More »The Dangers Of Deferring To Doctors

Treating the Dead Well

Written by Stephen Rainey

What happens after we die? This might be taken as an eschatological question, seeking some explanation or reassurance around the destiny of an immortal soul or some such vital element of our very being. But there is another sense that has at least as much importance. What should we do with dead bodies?

According to a Yougov survey from 2016, a majority of UK residents prefer cremation over burial, with their ashes scattered in some meaningful place. This could be good news, given the apparent dwindling of burial space globally. In the face of this sort of constraint, the re-use of graves becomes necessary, which can cause distress to the families of even the long dead.

Less commonly, dead bodies can be donated to medical science and put to use for purposes of research and medical training. Research suggests the rate is low owing to ‘non-cognitive factors’ such as ‘the desire to maintain bodily integrity, worries that signing a donor card might ‘jinx’ a person, and medical mistrust.’

Maybe we should think again about how we treat dead bodies. There could come a time when cremation and burial might be considered a waste of resources, given the uses to which cadavers can be put. One body can be used to train many surgeons in complex procedures by being pared into relevant sections – individual limbs, organ systems, brains. Nevertheless, whilst a corpse is indeed a valuable object, it was also previously a subject. The nature of bodies as post-persons does seem to deserve some special consideration. If we can account for this, we might be in a position to recommend very generally why we ought to respect the bodies of the dead.Read More »Treating the Dead Well

Gene-Editing Mosquitoes at The European Youth Event 2018

By Jonathan Pugh

 

The below is a slightly extended version of my two 5min presentations at the European Youth Event 2018, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. I was asked to present on the following questions:

 

  1. What are the ethical issues surrounding gene-editing, particularly with respect to eradicating mosquitoes?

 

  1. Should the EU legislate on gene-editing mosquitoes?

 

Read More »Gene-Editing Mosquitoes at The European Youth Event 2018

Utilitarian Supervillains, Moral Enhancement, and Enforced Vegetarianism

By Hazem Zohny

 

Bad utilitarians make for great supervillains.

Take Thanos, the purple CGI nemesis the Avengers have to face this year in what feels like the gazillionth Marvel movie. In his sincere desire to reduce suffering, Thanos is trying to kill half of all life in the universe.

Like all utilitarian-type supervillains, he has presumably gotten his welfare-maximizing calculus very wrong. But it made me wonder what such a supervillain might look like if their calculus wasn’t so comically dim-witted. To that end, I’m going to discuss a character we can call Vegetarian Thanos.

Read More »Utilitarian Supervillains, Moral Enhancement, and Enforced Vegetarianism

Illness and Attitude – Richard Holton’s 3rd Uehiro Lecture

By Jonathan Pugh

 

In the final lecture of the 2018 Uehiro lecture series, Richard Holton concluded his reflections on the theme of ‘illness and the social self’ by turning to questions about how attitudes can play a role in the onset of medical disorders, with a particular focus on psycho-somatic disorders.

 

You can find a recording of the lecture here

 

Read More »Illness and Attitude – Richard Holton’s 3rd Uehiro Lecture

Should Abortion be a Matter of Referendum?

Alberto Giubilini
Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

I am writing this post on the 25th of May, as the Irish abortion referendum is taking place. However, you will probably be reading it once the results are already known. I am not going to write in support of either side of the debate here anyway. I want to write about the appropriateness (from an ethical point of view) of this referendum itself. I want to suggest that a referendum is not the appropriate way to solve the dispute at stake.

Irish people have been asked whether they wanted to repeal the Eight Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which gives foetuses and pregnant women an “equal right to life”. It is commonly assumed that the Eight Amendment was preventing the Irish Government from legalizing abortion, except in extreme and very rare circumstances in which abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman. If the majority of Irish people votes “yes”, abortion can become legal in the country. If the majority votes “no”, abortion will remain a crime in the country, with the exception of a few extreme and very rare circumstances. More specifically, voting “no” means voting in favour of the idea that in Ireland a foetus does have a right to life equal to the right to life of the woman. Voting “yes” means voting in favour of the idea that in Ireland the foetus does not have a right to life comparable to the right to life of a woman; in other words, that it can be considered merely as part of the woman’s body for the purpose of attributing it a right to life (though not necessarily for other purposes), and therefore something that a woman can permissibly decide not to keep alive as a matter of bodily autonomy or, in many cases, and depending on what definition of “health” we adopt, as a matter of basic healthcare.

Read More »Should Abortion be a Matter of Referendum?

Addiction, Desire, and The Polluted Environment – Richard Holton’s 2nd Uehiro Lecture

By Jonathan Pugh

 

In the second of his three Uehiro lectures on the theme of ‘illness and the social self’, Richard Holton turned to the moral questions raised by addiction. In the first half of the lecture, he outlined an account of addictive behaviour according to which addictive substances disrupt the link between wanting and liking. In the second half of the lecture, he discusses the implications of this account for the moral significance of preferences, and for how we might structure environments to avoid triggering addictive desires.

 

You can find a recording of the lecture here

 

Read More »Addiction, Desire, and The Polluted Environment – Richard Holton’s 2nd Uehiro Lecture

Coffee with Colleagues: Caffeine is a “Social” Enhancer

By Nadira Faber

The coffee you are having with your colleagues at a business meeting does more than keep you awake. Many of us know that caffeine can help with alertness and working memory – the first systematic study on caffeine and performance, sponsored by Coca-Cola, was published over 100 years ago. But did you know caffeine can also have “social” effects?

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Dementia and the Social Scaffold of Memory

By Jonathan Pugh

 

The number of individuals suffering with dementia is steadily increasing; as such, the moral issues raised by the neurodegenerative diseases that bring about the symptoms typifying dementia are of pressing practical concern. In this context, Richard Holton’s topic for the first of his three 2018 Uehiro lectures (on the theme “Illness and the Social Self”) is a timely one: What are the ethical implications of the progressive and pervasive loss of memory that is a central feature of dementia?

I shall be blogging a synopsis of each lecture in the series on the Practical Ethics blog – You can find a recording of the lecture here

Read More »Dementia and the Social Scaffold of Memory