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The non-identity problem arises when our actions in the present could change which people will exist in the future, for better or worse. Is it morally better to improve the lives of specific future people, as ...
There is a need for empirically based research on social and ethical challenges related to informed consent processes, particularly in studies focusing on adolescent sexual and reproductive health. In a pilot ...
Despite existing international, regional and national guidance on how to obtain valid consent to health-related research, valid consent remains both a practical and normative challenge. This challenge persists...
Emerging genomic technologies promise more efficient infectious disease control. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is increasingly being used in tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis, surveillance, and epidemiology. However...
This paper explores ethical concerns arising in healthcare integration. We argue that integration is necessary imperative for meeting contemporary and future healthcare challenges, a far stronger evidence base...
International research guidance has shifted towards an increasingly proactive inclusion of children and adolescents in health research in recognition of the need for more evidence-based treatment. Strong calls...
Armed conflict in Darfur, west Sudan since 2003 has led to the influx of about 100 international humanitarian UN and non-governmental organizations to help the affected population. Many of their humanitarian i...
Ethical approval (EA) must be obtained before medical research can start. We describe the differences in EA for an pseudonymous, non-interventional, observational European study.
The exportation of unethical practices to low- and middle-income countries (“Ethics Dumping”) has been conceived as a prevalent practice which needs to be examined more closely. Such a practice might point tow...
Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is a major genetic disease with the greatest burden in sub-Saharan Africa. To try to help reduce this burden, some churches in Nigeria conduct premarital sickle cell hemoglobin screeni...
Organ donation is a life-saving process for patients suffering from an advanced organ failure.
Within contemporary health care, many of the decisions affecting the health and well-being of patients are not being made by the clinicians or health professionals, but by those involved in health care managem...
In Switzerland, people can be granted access to assisted suicide (AS) on condition that the person whose wish is to die performs the fatal act, that he has his decisional capacity and that the assisting person...
The work of general practitioners (GPs) is infused by norms from several movements, of which evidence based medicine, patient-centredness, and virtue ethics are some of the most influential. Their precepts are...
Paediatric research in low-income countries is essential to tackle high childhood mortality. As with all research, consent is an essential part of ethical practice for paediatric studies. Ethics guidelines rec...
Obtaining informed consent from patients is a moral and legal duty and, thus, a key legitimation for medical treatment. The pivotal prerequisite for valid informed consent is decision-making capacity of the pa...
During the set-up phase of an international study of genetic influences on outcomes from sepsis, we aimed to characterise potential differences in ethics approval processes and outcomes in participating Europe...
Ensuring that countries have adequate research capacities is essential for an effective and efficient response to infectious disease outbreaks. The need for ethical principles and values embodied in internatio...
Substituted judgment assumes adequate knowledge of patient’s mind-set. However, surrogates’ prediction of individual healthcare decisions is often inadequate and may be based on shared background rather than p...
There is unanimous agreement regarding the need to ethically conduct research for improving therapy for patients admitted to hospital with acute conditions, including in emergency obstetric care. We present a ...
Professional ethics is one of the important topics, which includes various rights such as respecting the patient’s right to choose (autonomy), being useful (beneficence), being harmless (non- maleficence), and...
Endeavors have been made to found and incorporate ethical values in most aspects of healthcare, including health technology assessment. Health technologies and their assessment are value-laden and could trigge...
It has come to our attention that in the original article [1] information regarding dates was omitted. The data in this study were obtained in Switzerland four years before the entering into force of the new S...
The original article was published in BMC Medical Ethics 2018 19:93
Family members do not have an official position in the practice of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (EAS) in the Netherlands according to statutory regulations and related guidelines. However, recent ...
Medical assistance in dying (MAID) was legalized in Canada in 2016. As of July 2017, approximately 2149 patients have accessed MAID. There remains no national-level data on the perspectives of future physician...
Large-scale linkage of international clinical datasets could lead to unique insights into disease aetiology and facilitate treatment evaluation and drug development. Hereto, multi-stakeholder consortia are cur...
End-of-life disputes in Ontario are currently overwhelmingly assessed through the singular lens of patient autonomy. The current dispute resolution mechanism(s) does not adequately consider evidence-based medi...
The doctor-patient relationship has evolved to respect “the autonomy and patients’ rights”. One of the cornerstones in such autonomy is the opportunity for patients to draw living wills, also known as advance ...
The rapid expansion of research on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) is not only due to the promising solutions offered for persons with physical impairments. There is also a heightened need for understanding B...
In December 2017, Law 219/2017, ‘Provisions for informed consent and advance directives’, was approved in Italy. The law is the culmination of a year-long process and the subject of heated debate throughout It...
Even after several decades of human drug development, there remains an absence of published, substantial, comprehensive data to validate the use of animals in preclinical drug testing, and to point to their pr...
Physicians play a substantial role in facilitating communication regarding life-supporting treatment decision-making including do-not-resuscitate (DNR) in the intensive care units (ICU). Physician-related fact...
Animal-derived constituents are frequently used in anaesthesia and surgery, and patients are seldom informed of this. This is problematic for a growing minority of patients who may have religious or secular co...
Medicine has undergone substantial changes in the way medical dilemmas are being dealt with. Here we explore the attitude of Israeli physicians to two debatable dilemmas: disclosing the full truth to patients ...
In Victoria, Australia, the law regulating abortion was reformed in 2008, and a clause (‘Section 8’) was introduced requiring doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion to refer women to another provid...
The consent and community engagement process for research with Indigenous communities is rarely evaluated. Research protocols are not always collaborative, inclusive or culturally respectful. If participants d...
Animal models of human diseases are often used in biomedical research in place of human subjects. However, results obtained by animal models may fail to hold true for humans. One way of addressing this problem...
The red tape and delays around research ethics and governance approvals frequently frustrate researchers yet, as the lesser of two evils, are largely accepted as unavoidable. Here we quantify aspects of the re...
The Correspondence to this article has been published in BMC Medical Ethics 2019 20:100
The Correspondence to this article has been published in BMC Medical Ethics 2019 20:101
Consent processes for clinical trials involving HIV prevention research have generated considerable debate globally over the past three decades. HIV cure/eradication research is scientifically more complex and...
Obtaining adequate informed consent from trauma patients is challenging and time-consuming. Healthcare providers must communicate complicated medical information to enable patients to make informed decisions. ...
In 2017 Ploug and Holm argued that anonymizing individuals in the Danish circumcision registry was insufficient to protect these individuals from what they regard as the potential harms of being in the registr...
The original article was published in BMC Medical Ethics 2017 18:53
The concepts of disease, illness and sickness capture fundamentally different aspects of phenomena related to human ailments and healthcare. The philosophy and theory of medicine are making manifold efforts to...
Questions concerning the parent/ patient’s autonomy are seen as one of the most important reasons for requesting Ethics Consultations (ECs). Respecting parent/ patient’s autonomy also means respecting the pati...
Increasing adoption of electronic health records in hospitals provides new opportunities for patient data to support public health advances. Such learning healthcare models have generated ethical debate in hig...
The rapid increase of industry-sponsored clinical research towards developing countries has led to potentially complex ethical issues to assess. There is scarce evidence about the perception of these participa...
Informed consent (IC) is an essential step in helping patients be aware of consequences of their treatment decisions. With surgery, it is vitally important for patients to understand the risks and benefits of ...
A trend called ‘African bioethics’ is growing on the continent due to perceptions of existing bioethics, especially guidelines for international collaborative research, as ‘ethical imperialism’. As a potential...
Moral Case Deliberations (MCDs) are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support (CES), it also has limitations. 1. Lesso...
Genuine uncertainty on superiority of one intervention over the other is called equipoise. Physician-investigators in randomized controlled trials (RCT) need equipoise at least in studies with more than minima...
Emergency care providers regularly deal with ethical dilemmas that must be addressed. In comparison with in-hospital nurses, emergency medical service (EMS) personnel are faced with more problems such as dista...
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