Skip to content

Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb

Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb

Professor Dominic Wilkinson, Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Oxford. Consultant Neonatologist

 

This morning, the High Court judgement around medical treatment for five-year old Tafida Raqeeb was published. Tafida sustained severe brain damage from bleeding in the brain eight months ago. Her parents wish to take her to a hospital in Italy to continue life support, while the doctors at the London hospital caring for her believe that it would be best to stop life support and allow Tafida to die.

 

Justice MacDonald concluded today that life sustaining treatment for Tafida must continue and her parents should be allowed to take her to Italy.Read More »Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb

Cross Post: Is Mandatory Vaccination the Best Way to Tackle Falling Rates of Childhood Immunisation?

  • by

Written by Dr Alberto Giubilini and Dr Samantha Vanderslott

This article was originally published on the Oxford Martin School website.

Following the publication of figures showing UK childhood vaccination rates have fallen for the fifth year in a row, researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease discuss possible responses.

Alberto Giubilini: Yes, “we need to be bold” and take drastic measures to increase vaccination uptake

In response to the dramatic fall in vaccination uptake in the UK, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that “we need to be bold” and that he “will not rule out action so that every child is properly protected”. This suggests that the Health Secretary is seriously considering some form of mandatory vaccination program or some form of penalty for non-vaccination, as is already the case in other countries, such as the US, Italy, France, or Australia. It is about time the UK takes action to ensure that individuals fulfil their social responsibility to protect not only their own children, but also other people, from infectious disease, and more generally to make their fair contribution to maintaining a good level of public health.Read More »Cross Post: Is Mandatory Vaccination the Best Way to Tackle Falling Rates of Childhood Immunisation?

The Doctor-Knows-Best NHS Foundation Trust: a Business Proposal for the Health Secretary

By Charles Foster

Informed consent, in practice, is a bad joke. It’s a notion created by lawyers, and like many such notions it bears little relationship to the concerns that real humans have when they’re left to themselves, but it creates many artificial, lucrative, and expensive concerns.

Of course there are a few clinical situations where it is important that the patient reflects deeply and independently on the risks and benefits of the possible options, and there are a few people (I hope never to meet them: they would be icily un-Falstaffian) whose sole ethical lodestone is their own neatly and indelibly drafted life-plan. But those situations and those people are fortunately rare.Read More »The Doctor-Knows-Best NHS Foundation Trust: a Business Proposal for the Health Secretary

Lies

Written by Stephen Rainey.

 

I’ve been thinking, lately, about lying. Not doing it, just puzzling over what it means.

We all know lying can be morally wrong. But sometimes it can also be a kindness, when the truth might serve no good. Within the constraints of a job, lying might be a professional obligation, morals aside. So I was thinking about the word, ‘lying’, and how maybe it labels a variety of acts that may have different moral implications.

There are some clear-cut cases of wrong that we can spot easily. If we saw a bully shoving someone around, we’d know straight away that was bad. Physically intervening on another person for sadistic kicks, and without their cooperation, is plainly egregious. But the inclusion of sadism and cooperation in the description points to other dimensions of physical intervention that aren’t clearly so bad.

Read More »Lies

Video Interview: Jesper Ryberg on Neurointerventions, Crime and Punishment

Should neurotechnologies that affect emotional regulation, empathy and moral judgment, be used to prevent offenders from reoffending? Is it morally acceptable to offer more lenient sentences to offenders in return for participation in neuroscientific treatment programs? Or would this amount too coercion? Is it possible to administer neurointerventions as a type of punishment? Is it… Read More »Video Interview: Jesper Ryberg on Neurointerventions, Crime and Punishment

Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb, International Disagreement and Controversial Decisions About Life Support

by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics

 

This week the legal case around medical treatment for five-year old Tafida Raqeeb has begun in the High Court. She sustained severe brain damage from bleeding in the brain seven months ago. Her parents wish to take her to a hospital in Italy for further treatment, while the doctors at the London hospital caring for her believe that it would be best to stop life support and allow Tafida to die.

 

In a previous press release, I addressed several common questions about the case:

  • This seems to be another case like that of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans. How common are cases of disagreement in the medical care of children?
  • Why do disagreements occur?
  • Why don’t parents have the final say about treatment?
  • Who is right in Tafida’s case, her parents, or the doctors?

 

There appear to be two central questions in her case –

  1. Is there any realistic chance of her condition improving if life-support continues?
  2. If Tafida’s condition does not improve, should treatment to keep her alive continue, or should it stop (particularly, if her parents do not give permission to withdraw treatment)?

Read More »Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb, International Disagreement and Controversial Decisions About Life Support

The Ethics of Social Prescribing: An Overview

Written by Rebecca Brown, Stephanie Tierney, Amadea Turk.

This post was originally published on the NIHR School for Primary Care Research website which can be accessed here. 

Health problems often co-occur with social and personal factors (e.g. isolation, debt, insecure housing, unemployment, relationship breakdown and bereavement). Such factors can be particularly important in the context of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), where they might contribute causally to disease, or reduce that capacity of patients to self-manage their conditions (leading to worse outcomes). This results in the suffering of individuals and a greater burden being placed on healthcare resources.

A potential point of intervention is at the level of addressing these upstream contributors to poor health. A suggested tool – gaining momentum amongst those involved in health policy – is the use of ‘social prescribing’. Social prescribing focuses on addressing people’s non-medical needs, which it is hoped will subsequently reduce their medical needs. In primary care, social prescribing can take a range of forms. For example, it may involve upskilling existing members of staff (e.g. receptionists) to signpost patients to relevant local assets (e.g. organisations, groups, charities) to address their non-medical needs. It is also becoming common for GPs to refer patients (or people may self-refer) to a link worker (sometimes called a care navigator) who can work with them to identify their broader social and personal needs. Together, they then develop a plan for how those needs could be met through engagement with activities, services or events in the local community. The resources that link workers direct people towards are often run by voluntary organisations and might include, among other things, sports groups, arts and crafts, drama, gardening, cookery, volunteering, housing advice, debt management, and welfare rights.

Supporting people to establish more stable and fulfilling social lives whilst at the same time reducing healthcare costs seems like a win-win. However, it is essential to evaluate the justifications for the introduction of social prescribing schemes, including their effectiveness. This raises a number of complicating factors, including some questions that require not just a consideration of empirical evidence, but a commitment to certain philosophical and ethical positions.

Read More »The Ethics of Social Prescribing: An Overview

Conscientious Objection, Professional Discretionary Space, and Good Medicine

By Doug McConnell

 

Some argue that good medicine depends on physicians having a wide discretionary space in which they can act on their consciences (Sulmasy, 2017). Interestingly, those who are against conscientious objection in medicine make the exact opposite claim – giving physicians the freedom to act on their consciences will undermine good medicine. So who is right here?

Read More »Conscientious Objection, Professional Discretionary Space, and Good Medicine

Planting Trees, Search Engines, and Climate Change

Written by César Palacios-González

The other day I went down an internet rabbit hole when researching about planting trees and climate change. I came out the other side concluding (among other things) that there were good reasons to change my search engine to Ecosia[1]. So I did, and, other things being equal, you should too. If you have never heard of Ecosia this is the main gist: it is a search engine that uses its profits from search ad revenue to help fund tree planting projects around the world. Now let me explain how I came to this conclusion. But before I begin, I think it’s important to clarify something. Climate change is a political problem that requires a political solution. But I think this is no way negates that individual actions matter in terms of fighting its effects.Read More »Planting Trees, Search Engines, and Climate Change