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A challenge in human genome research is how to describe the populations being studied. The use of improper and/or imprecise terms has the potential to both generate and reinforce prejudices and to diminish the...
In May 2013 a new Assisted Dying Bill was tabled in the House of Lords and is currently scheduled for a second reading in May 2014. The Bill was informed by the report of the Commission on Assisted Dying which...
Libertarian paternalism is a concept derived from cognitive psychology and behavioural science. It is behind policies that frame information in such a way as to encourage individuals to make choices which are ...
Clinical ethics support, in particular Moral Case Deliberation, aims to support health care providers to manage ethically difficult situations. However, there is a lack of evaluation instruments regarding outc...
From an epidemiological perspective, the practice of universal vaccination of girls and young women in order to prevent human papilloma virus (HPV) infection and potential development of cervical cancer is wid...
Providing individuals with the information necessary to make informed decisions is now considered an ethical standard for health systems and general practitioners.
Public health aims to provide universal safety and progressive opportunities to populations to realise their highest level of health through prevention of disease, its progression or transmission. Screening as...
In Australian end-of-life care, practicing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is illegal. Despite this, death hastening practices are common across medical settings. Practices can be clandestine or overt...
Misconduct in research tarnishes the reputation, credibility and integrity of research institutions. Studies on research or scientific misconduct are still novel in developing countries. In this study, we repo...
Peaceful protests and strikes are a basic human right as stated in the United Nations’ universal declaration on human rights. But for doctors, their proximity to life and death and the social contract between ...
Academic performance enhancement or cognitive enhancement (CE) via stimulant drug use has received increasing attention. The question remains, however, whether CE solely represents the use of drugs for achievi...
In order to involve children in the decision-making process about participation in medical research it is widely recommended that the child’s assent be sought in addition to parental consent. However, the conc...
Most studies have examined the outcomes of patients supported by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation as a life-sustaining treatment. It is unclear whether significant social events are associated with the use ...
The use of medical stimulants to sustain attention, augment memory and enhance intellectual capacity is increasing in society. The use of Methylphenidate for cognitive enhancement is a subject that has receive...
Healthcare professionals must make decisions for patients based on ethical considerations. However, they rely on clinical ethics consultations (CEC) to review ethical justifications of their decisions. CEC con...
When a patient with a serious mental illness expresses a desire for children, mental health professionals are faced with an ethical dilemma. To date, little research has been conducted into their strategies fo...
Research in the field of Empirical Ethics (EE) uses a broad variety of empirical methodologies, such as surveys, interviews and observation, developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psycholog...
Disease-specific stem cell therapies, created from induced pluripotent stem cell lines containing the genetic defects responsible for a particular disease, have the potential to revolutionize the treatment of ...
Conscientious objection has spurred impassioned debate in many Western countries. Some Norwegian general practitioners (GPs) refuse to refer for abortion. Little is know about how the GPs carry out their refus...
Continuous sedation is increasingly used as a way to relieve symptoms at the end of life. Current research indicates that some physicians, nurses, and relatives involved in this practice experience emotional a...
Healthcare user fees present an important barrier for accessing services for the poorest (indigents) in Burkina Faso and selective removal of fees has been incorporated in national healthcare planning. However, e...
Community engagement is increasingly promoted as a marker of good, ethical practice in the context of international collaborative research in low-income countries. There is, however, no widely agreed definitio...
In this manuscript, we argue that within the context of phase IV, physician-researchers retain their fiduciary obligation to treat the patient-participants.
Approximately one-fourth of all the inhabitants on earth are Muslims. Due to unprecedented migration, physicians are often confronted with cultures other than their own that adhere to different pdigms.
Very few researchers have reported on procedures of recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating participants in health research in the Arabian Gulf Region. Empirical research can inform the debate...
Since Japan adopted the concept of informed consent from the West, its inappropriate acquisition from patients in the Japanese clinical setting has continued, due in part to cultural aspects. Here, we discuss ...
The increased use of human biological material for cell-based research and clinical interventions poses risks to the privacy of patients and donors, including the possibility of re-identification of individual...
The Editors of BMC Medical Ethics would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 13 (2013).
The preventative paradigm of preconception care is receiving increasing attention, yet its boundaries remain vague in three respects: temporally; agentially; and instrumentally. Crucially, it remains unclear j...
The use of biological samples in research raises a number of ethical issues in relation to consent, storage, export, benefit sharing and re-use of samples. Participant perspectives have been explored in North ...
The current doctrine of informed consent for clinical care has been developed in cultures characterized by low-context communication and monitoring-style coping. There are scarce empirical data on patients’ no...
Although informed consent is an integral part of clinical practice, its current doctrine remains mostly a matter of law and mainstream ethics rather than empirical research. There are scarce empirical data on ...
The growing prevalence of health care ethics consultation (HCEC) services in the U.S. has been accompanied by an increase in calls for accountability and quality assurance, and for the debates surrounding why ...
Recently, individualized or personalized medicine (PM) has become a buzz word in the academic as well as public debate surrounding health care. However, PM lacks a clear definition and is open to interpretatio...
Information and communication technologies are becoming an integral part of medical practice, research and administration and their use will grow as telemedicine and electronic medical record use become part o...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
Every year, research specimens are shipped from one institution to another as well as across national boundaries. A significant proportion of specimens move from poor to rich countries. Concerns are always rai...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
The issue of stigma is very important in the battle against HIV/AIDS in Africa since it may affect patient attendance at healthcare centres for obtaining antiretroviral (ARV) medications and regular medical ch...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
Doctor and healthcare worker (HCW) strikes are a global phenomenon with the potential to negatively impact on the quality of healthcare services and the doctor-patient relationship. Strikes are a legitimate de...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
Controversies still exists within the research fraternity on the form and level of incentives, compensation and reimbursement to study participants in resource-constrained settings. While most research activit...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
Informed consent is a legal and ethical doctrine derived from the principle of respect for autonomy. Generally two rights derived from autonomy are accorded legal protection. The constitutional right to bodily...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
This paper addresses the past, present and future aspects of African leadership and organizational ethics that have, are and will be key for any organization to sustain its systems and structures. Organization...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
The 3rd Pan-African Ethics Human Rights and Medical Law (3rd EHRML) conference was held in Johannesburg on July 7, 2013, as part of the Africa Health Congress. The conference brought together bioethicists, resear...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 14 Supplement 1
Psychiatric disorders can pose problems in the assessment of decision-making capacity (DMC). This is so particularly where psychopathology is seen as the extreme end of a dimension that includes normality. Dep...
In clinical research scientific, legal as well as ethical aspects are important. It is well known that clinical investigators at university hospitals have to undertake their PhD-studies alongside their daily w...
Little is known about the views of mothers when their children are invited to participate in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) investigating medicines and/or invasive procedures. Our goal was to understand mot...
In Japan, people are negative towards life-prolonging treatments. Laws that regulate withholding or discontinuing life-prolonging treatments and advance directives do not exist. Physicians, however, view disco...
Dealing with errors in psychotherapy is challenging, both ethically and practically. There is almost no empirical research on this topic. We aimed (1) to explore psychotherapists’ self-reported ways of dealing...
Psychiatric staff members have the power to decide the options that frame encounters with patients. Intentional as well as unintentional framing can have a crucial impact on patients’ opportunities to be heard...
Implants and drugs with animal and human derived content are widely used in medicine and surgery, but information regarding ingredients is rarely obtainable by health practitioners. A religious perspective con...
In studies publishing identifying personal information, obtaining consent is regarded as necessary, as it is impossible to ensure complete anonymity. However, current journal practices around specific points t...
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