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Empirical-ethical research constitutes a relatively new field which integrates socio-empirical research and normative analysis. As direct inferences from descriptive data to normative conclusions are problemat...
Federal regulations in the United States have shaped Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to focus on protecting individual human subjects. Health services research studies focusing on healthcare institutions su...
In 2008, researchers reported that Timothy Brown (the ‘Berlin Patient’), a man with HIV infection and leukemia, received a stem-cell transplant that removed HIV from his body as far as can be detected. In 2013...
Conscientious objection (CO) to participating in induced abortion is not present in the Finnish health care system or legislation unlike in many other European countries.
The importance of the hidden curriculum is recognised as a practical training ground for the absorption of medical ethics by healthcare professionals. Pakistan’s healthcare sector is hampered by the exclusion ...
Despite the increased prevalence of bioethics research that seeks to use empirical data to answer normative research questions, there is no consensus as to what an appropriate methodology for this would be. Th...
Many publicly-funded health systems apply cost-benefit frameworks in response to the moral dilemma of how best to allocate scarce healthcare resources. However, implementation of recommendations based on costs...
In Australia research projects proposing the use of linked data require approval by a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). A sound evaluation of the ethical issues involved requires understanding of the bas...
Alzheimer’s disease is a very common, progressive and still incurable disease. Future possibilities for its cure lie in the promotion of research that will increase our knowledge of the disorder’s causes and l...
In our time there is growing interest in developing a systematic approach to oncologic patients and end-of-life care. An important goal within this domain is to identify the values and ethical norms that guide...
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is one of the world’s leading humanitarian medical organizations. The increased emphasis in MSF on research led to the creation of an ethics review board (ERB) in 2001. The ERB h...
There have been few empirical studies into what non-medical factors influence physicians and nurses when deciding about admission and discharge of ICU patients. Information about the attitudes of healthcare pr...
The editors of BMC Medical Ethics would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 15 (2014).
The Dutch law states that a physician may perform euthanasia according to a written advance euthanasia directive (AED) when a patient is incompetent as long as all legal criteria of due care are met. This may ...
Medical tourism is international travel with the intention of receiving medical care. Medical tourists travel for many reasons, including cost savings, limited domestic access to specific treatments, and inter...
Euthanasia remains controversial in Canada and an issue of debate among physicians. Most studies have explored the opinion of health professionals regarding its legalization, but have not investigated their in...
Little is known about how health care professionals deal with ethical challenges in mental health care, especially when not making use of a formal ethics support service. Understanding this is important in ord...
South Africa has made great progress in the development of HIV/AIDS testing, treatment and prevention campaigns. Yet, it is clear that prevention and treatment campaigns alone are not enough to bring this epid...
Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) involve procedures such as randomisation, blinding, and placebo use, which are not part of standard medical care. Patients asked to participate in RCTs often experience diffic...
For decades, the discussion on children’s competence to consent to medical issues has concentrated around normative concerns, with little progress in clinical practices. Decision-making competence is an import...
Benefit sharing in health research has been the focus of international debates for many years, particularly in developing countries. Whilst increasing attention is being given to frameworks that can guide rese...
Hymen reconstruction is a controversial measure performed to help young females under threat of honour-related violence. Official guidelines often reject offering hymen reconstructions. On the other hand, extr...
This article outlines procedures for the feedback of individual research data to participants. This feedback framework was developed in the context of a personalized medicine research project in Canada. Resear...
Policymaking is both an art and a science. It is a long process of research, debate and consensus (where possible). The elaboration of the Framework for Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Health-Related Data serv...
This study tests how various kinds of trust impact attitudes toward euthanasia among the general public. The indication that trust might have an impact on euthanasia attitudes is based on the slippery slope ar...
Medical students(MS) will face ethical issues throughout their lives as doctors. The present study aims to investigate medical students’ opinions on controversial ethical issues and factors associated with the...
Biomedical research is increasingly globalized with ever more research conducted in low and middle-income countries. This trend raises a host of ethical concerns and critiques. While community engagement (CE) ...
Submission of study protocols to research ethics committees (RECs) constitutes one of the earliest stages at which planned trials are documented in detail. Previous studies have investigated the amendments req...
In recent years, the attention on the use of coercion in mental health care has increased. The use of coercion is common and controversial, and involves many complex ethical challenges. The research question i...
The creation of biobanks depends upon people’s willingness to donate their samples for research purposes and to agree to sample storage. Moreover, biobanks are a public good that requires active participation ...
In order to ensure an adequate and ongoing protection of individuals participating in scientific research, the impacts of new biomedical technologies, such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), need to be asses...
China has become a global player in the field of biosamples research and analysis of genetic data. The Beijing Genomics Institute is a genetics factory where enormous amounts of biosamples/data from all over t...
Placebo-controlled surgical trials can provide important information about the efficacy of surgical interventions. However, they are ethically contentious as placebo surgery entails the risk of harms to recipi...
It has been reported by some studies that the desire to be involved in decisions concerning one’s healthcare especially with regard to obtaining informed consent is related to educational status. The purpose o...
For many decades, access to human biological samples, such as cells, tissues, organs, blood, and sub-cellular materials such as DNA, for use in biomedical research, has been central in understanding the nature...
The pursuit of unproven stem cell-based interventions (“stem cell tourism”) is an emerging issue that raises various concerns. Physicians play different roles in this market, many of which engage their legal, ...
The Groningen Protocol aims at providing guidance in end-of-life decision-making for severely impaired newborns. Since its publication in 2005 many bioethicists and health care professionals have written artic...
Teaching ethics in public health programmes is not routine everywhere – at least not in most schools of public health in the European region. Yet empirical evidence shows that schools of public health are more...
Paediatric genomic research raises particularly challenging questions on whether and under what circumstances to return research results. In the paediatric context, decision-making is guided by the best intere...
Translational research in medicine requires researchers to identify the steps to transfer basic scientific discoveries from laboratory benches to bedside decision-making, and eventually into clinical practice....
Involving children in research studies requires obtaining parental permission. A school-based intervention to delay/prevent waterpipe use for 7th and 8th graders in Qatar was developed, and parental permission...
The systematic review of reasons is a new way to obtain comprehensive information about specific ethical topics. One such review was carried out for the question of why post-trial access to trial drugs should ...
Approximately 20% of adult cancer patients are eligible to participate in a clinical trial, but only 2.5-9% do so. Accrual is even less for minority and medically underserved populations. As a result, critical...
The debate on the ethical aspects of moral bioenhancement focuses on the desirability of using biomedical as opposed to traditional means to achieve moral betterment. The aim of this paper is to systematically...
International documents on ethical conduct in clinical research have in common the principle that potential harms to research participants must be proportional to anticipated benefits. The anticipated benefits...
More involvement of sub-Saharan African countries in biomedical studies, specifically in genetic research, is needed to advance individualized medicine that will benefit non-European populations. Missing infra...
Breast cancer is a major public health challenge. Organized mammography screening (OS) is considered one way to reduce breast cancer mortality. EU recommendations prone mass deployment of OS, and back in 2004,...
Financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest in medicine and surgery are troubling because they have the capacity to skew decision making in ways that might be detrimental to patient care and well-being. T...
The practice of making datasets publicly available for use by the wider scientific community has become firmly integrated in genomic science. One significant gap in literature around data sharing concerns how ...
The generation of evidence is integral to the work of public health and health service providers. Traditionally, ethics has been addressed differently in research projects, compared with other forms of evidenc...
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