by Professor Dominic Wilkinson, @Neonatalethics
Professor of Medical Ethics, Consultant Neonatologist
Our society has good reason to provide special treatment to people with severe brain injuries and their families.
But our current “special treatment” for a group of the most severely affected people with brain injuries leads to devastating, agonising, protracted and totally preventable suffering.
Doctors have values. These are sometimes described as their conscience. Those values can conflict with what has evolved to be medical practice. Where that practice is consistent with principles, concept and norms of medical ethics, their values should not compromise patient care. The place for doctors to express their values and seek to revise the practice of medicine is at the level of policy and law, not at the bedside. Because conscientious objection can compromise patient care, there should be no legal right to conscientious objection to medical practice that is consistent with medical ethics. Personal values (“conscience”) can be accommodated by employers under standard labour law as occurs in Sweden and Finland, or candidates selected for medical specialties who have values consistent with ethical medicine, or new professions developed to provide those services.
Doctors may have very defensible values. But just because their values are reasonable does not imply they should be accommodated by medicine. Consider the Conscientious Neonatologist.
The Conscientious Neonatologist
Peter is a thoughtful, reflective specialist caring for premature babies in intensive care. He is a vegetarian for 20 years. He became deeply concerned about the welfare of animals during his university years. He believes in “animal liberation”. Neither he nor his family consume meat or use animal products for clothing.
In his job, he must prescribe “surfactant” – a substance to help the lungs of premature babies function better. The standard, and most effective form is derived from the lungs of pigs. However there is a new artificial form. He considers this a more “ethical” product and considers using it in his medical practice. However, it is not currently used in the newborn intensive care unit because it is more expensive than standard treatment, and there is not clear evidence about its effectiveness.
Peter conscientiously objects to the use of animals in medicine and medical research. How should his personal values influence his professional practice?
We are pleased to announce the publication of David Edmonds’ Philosophers Take on the World, an edited collection of short essays, many of which are by our bloggers. Every day the news shows us provoking stories about what’s going on in the world, about events which raise moral questions and problems. In Philosophers Take On the… Read More »Philosophers Take on The World: David Edmonds
The author of the webcomic Left Over Soup proposed a sexual equivalent (or parody?) of Searle’s Chinese Room argument, posing some interesting questions about what it means to have sex, consent and relationships if there is technological mediation:
Smartphones are like spies in our pocket; we should cover the camera and microphone of our laptops; it is difficult to opt out of services like Facebook that track us on the internet; IMSI-catchers can ‘vacuum’ data from our smartphones; data brokers may sell our internet profile to criminals and/or future employees; and yes, we… Read More »Carissa Véliz on how our privacy is threatened when we use smartphones, computers, and the internet.
Written by Angeliki Kerasidou & Ruth Horn, The Ethox Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford
Recently, a number of media reports and personal testimonies have drawn attention to the intense physical and emotional stress to which doctors and nurses working in the NHS are exposed on a daily basis. Medical professionals are increasingly reporting feelings of exhaustion, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. Long working hours, decreasing numbers of staff, budget cuts and the lack of time to address patients’ needs are mentioned as some of the contributing factors (Campbell, 2015; The Guardian, 2016). Such factors have been linked with loss of empathy towards patients and, in some cases, with gross failures in their care (Francis, 2013).Read More »Invited Guest Post: Healthcare professionals need empathy too!
This article was originally published in The Conversation
Written by Julian Savulescu Sir Louis Matheson Distinguishing Visiting Professor at Monash University,
Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Connor Rochford Medical Student, Monash University
Daniel D’Hotman Medical Student, Monash University
At the Stereosonic festival last year, Sylvia Choi died after consuming a contaminated ecstasy tablet. Unfortunately Sylvia’s narrative is all too familiar – a bright future extinguished at a music festival that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
This summer, many young people will also choose to consume various illegal substances in pursuit of a good time. Regardless of their personal choice to break the law, most would agree that they should not have to die for it.Read More »Cross Post: We have a moral obligation to allow drug analysis at music festivals
By Charles Foster
English law has traditionally, for most purposes, regarded animals as mere chattels. There is now animal welfare legislation which seeks to prevent or limit animal suffering, but provided that legislation is complied with, and that no other relevant laws (eg those related to public health) are broken, you are free to do what you want with your animal.
Veterinary surgeons are in an interesting position. The UK regulatory body for veterinarians, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (‘RCVS’) publishes a Code of Professional Conduct. This provides, inter alia:
‘1.1 Veterinary surgeons must make animal health and welfare their first consideration when attending to animals.’
‘2.2 Veterinary surgeons must provide independent and impartial advice and inform a client of any conflict of interest.’
‘First consideration’ in 1.1 is a rather weasly formulation. Does it mean that it is the overriding consideration, trumping all others, however weighty those others might be? Or the one that veterinarians ought to consider first, before moving on to other criteria which might well prevail?Read More »Veterinarians and the best interests of animals
In a new post, published by Aeon, I argue that, even if there are moral reasons for and against intentionally delaying parenthood (including, amongst other things, the reduced opportunity for grandparental relationships as a reason against), older parents should not feel guilty if their late parenthood means that their child does not get to know his or her grandparents. Whilst the situation itself might be regrettable (i.e. there might be an understandable wish that things were different), the parent has not deprived their particular child in anyway. Correspondingly, the child has no legitimate complaint (on these grounds) against his or her parent. If the parent had been successful in conceiving earlier, that particular child would not have existed.
Republished in full below:Read More »Does late parenthood deprive children of grandparental love?
On the 7th, 8th, and 9th of June 2016 a group of philosophers and bioethicists gathered at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, to participate in a workshop on healthcare practitioners’ conscience and conscientious objection in healthcare. Conscientious objection is the refusal by a healthcare practitioner to provide a certain medical service, for example an abortion or medical assistance in dying, because it conflicts with the practitioner’s moral views. Aim of the workshop was to discuss the ethical and legal aspects of conscientious objection in healthcare, in view of proposing some guidelines for the regulation of conscientious objection in healthcare in the future.
At the end of the workshop, the participants formulated a consensus statement of 10 points, which are here proposed as ethical guidelines that should inform, at the level of legislations and institutional policies, the way conscientious objections in healthcare is regulated. The 10 points are the following:
Read More »CONSENSUS STATEMENT ON CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION IN HEALTHCARE
