From “Ought” to “Is”: Surfacing Values in Patient and Family Advocacy in Rare Diseases
by Meghan C. Halley Note: The following editorial was recently published in the American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 12 (2021). In this issue, Lynch and colleagues (2021) discuss lessons learned from the “Operation Warp Speed” response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States—both about what to do and what not to do for non-pandemic diseases. In outlining these lessons, the authors provide a cogent and well-reasoned set of recommendations for advocates and policymakers seeking to advance biomedical research in a particular disease area.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - December 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Disability Featured Posts Health Policy & Insurance Patient Advocacy rare diseases Source Type: blogs

In Memoriam: Kathy Powderly
by Craig Klugman, PhD Kathleen (Kathy) Ellen Powderly was a medical educator, clinical ethicist, medical historian, nurse-midwife, avid knitter, cat mom to Casey, mentor, and friend.  She was an Associate Professor and Director of the John Conley Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, where she began working in 1989. She held cross appointments in the College of Medicine and the College of Nursing as well as serving as clinical ethics consultant at University Hospital of Brooklyn and Kings Cou...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 29, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Craig Klugman Tags: Featured Posts In Memoriam Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

What Does it Cost to be a Black Bioethicist?
by Keisha Ray, PhD and Faith E. Fletcher, PhD, MA  Recently Leah Pierson wrote the essay “Becoming a Bioethicist is Expensive. That’s a Problem.” This essay rightly pointed out the hefty financial costs associated with becoming a bioethicist. Although Pierson’s remarks were spot on, they noted that the commentary was not unique to bioethics. For example, Pierson, pointed out the enormous costs of tuition. Outrageous tuition bills, however, can be an obstacle to anyone who is not wealthy or who does not receive full scholarships. Still, as… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 22, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Keisha Ray Tags: Cultural Diversity Ethics Featured Posts #blackbioethics Source Type: blogs

Book Review Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict
by Martin CM Bricknell CB OStJ PhD DM MBA MA MedSci Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict: Mobilizing Medicine in the Pursuit of Just War. by Michael L Gross. Oxford University Press. 2021 Military Medical Ethics has been a subject of significant academic debate over the first two decades of the twenty-first century covering topics such as medical rules of eligibility for care in military field hospitals, the duty of health professionals in the care of prisoners of war or detainees, and the ethics of human performance enhancement for military purposes.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 16, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Military Source Type: blogs

Book Review – Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict
by Martin CM Bricknell CB OStJ PhD DM MBA MA MedSci Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict: Mobilizing Medicine in the Pursuit of Just War. by Michael L Gross. Oxford University Press. 2021  Military Medical Ethics has been a subject of significant academic debate over the first two decades of the twenty-first century covering topics such as medical rules of eligibility for care in military field hospitals, the duty of health professionals in the care of prisoners of war or detainees, and the ethics of human performance enhancement for military purposes.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 16, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Military Source Type: blogs

The Folly of Apolitical Science
By Johnathan Flowers, PhD A persistent myth in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Medicine) fields argues that science exists beyond politics and outside culture and society. As a philosopher of science, specifically a Black philosopher of science with a disability, I challenge students – many of whom are future scientists – to reconsider this glamorized view. Students often react violently: “How can science be political?” they demand. “What do you mean that science is racist?” they clamor. Their development in a culture that presents science, or scientific fact, as unfettered by culture is partially t...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 15, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Cultural Education Featured Posts Humanities Medical Humanities Philosophy & Ethics Race Science Social Justice black bioethics Consent / Research history of science Source Type: blogs

Where is Dentistry in Health Humanities?
by Deborah Franklin, DDS, MA, LPC and Nathan Carlin, PhD  What is health humanities? Why is it important? How is it different from medical humanities? And where does dentistry fit in health humanities? In this blog post, we will attempt to offer brief answers to these questions.   The term “health humanities” is usually meant to be an alternative to “medical humanities.” Health humanities is intended to be inclusive of all health professions (nursing, dentistry, public health, etc.), and it relativizes the importance of medicine such that medicine is not dominant...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 11, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Nathan Carlin Tags: Dentistry Featured Posts Humanities Medical Humanities Source Type: blogs

The #MedTwitter War: How a Tweet About Advocacy Pitted One Specialty Against Another
by Erin King-Mullins, MD, FACS, FASCRS I decided to tweet about my daughter’s trip to the ER to highlight disparities in access to certain treatments and the importance of patient/parent advocacy. The response was quite unexpected and turned into an all-out #MedTwitter war!  Recently my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter fell at school, hitting her head. I got a call that she was injured and she should be taken to the ER. My fortunate circumstances include the childcare center being on the hospital’s campus, a children’s hospital is located just a couple blocks away, and my training as a colorectal surg...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 3, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Decision making Featured Posts Pediatrics Race Source Type: blogs

Gaps in the New Human Embryo Research Guidelines
by Kevin Wilger, MS             Earlier this year, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) released their updated Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation to keep up with several advancements in the fields of genome editing, stem cell, and embryonic research. Most notably, the updated guidelines softened the “14-day rule,” which prohibited researchers from growing human embryos past 14 days after fertilization. The guidelines argue that, if broad public support and local regulations permit, some studies of embryos grown past 14...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 3, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Clinical Ethics Featured Posts Stem Cells Source Type: blogs

Publication Pressures and Unique Challenges Faced by Underrepresented Scholars
At the 2021 meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the American Journal of Bioethics hosted a session on the unique challenges facing underrepresented scholars in bioethics, particularly when they try to publish their academic work. Watch the video here: link Hosted by Dr. John Lantos, panelists Dr. Patrick Smith, Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Dr. Barry DeCoster, and Dr. Nanibaa’ Garrison reflect on the challenges they faced and continue to face in academia as members of marginalized and underrepresented groups, including Black people, Native Americans, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ peopl...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 30, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Featured Posts Professionalism Webinar publishing underrepresented groups Source Type: blogs

Editorial: Disability, Aging, and the Importance of Recognizing Social Supports in Medical Decision Making
By Kevin Mintz, PhD and David Magnus, PhD Note: The following editorial was recently published in the American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 11 (2021). The two target articles in this issue draw an important connection between disability bioethics and geriatric bioethics. Dominic JC Wilkinson (2021) makes a pragmatic case for using frailty as a factor in the allocation of scarce resources in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), arguing that doing so avoids ableist and ageist objections. Meanwhile, Andrew Peterson, Jason Karlawish, and Emily Largent (2021) articulate a framework that places supported decision-mak...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 29, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: David Magnus Tags: Disability Editorial-AJOB Featured Posts Health Disparities Justice Social Justice decision making Source Type: blogs

Engaging Social Justice: An Expanded Vision for Neuroethics
by Nicole Martinez-Martin, JD, PhD; Laura Y. Cabrera, PhD and Timothy E. Brown, PhD The novelist Arundhati Roy wrote that, historically, pandemics force humans to break with the past — that this pandemic is a portal through which we could walk “ready to imagine another world.” The Covid-19 pandemic provides a moment of reckoning, starkly illuminating societal inequality and the enormous toll taken on marginalized groups, including racialized minorities, the elderly, LGBTQI+, women, and people with disabilities, from historical and ongoing social injustices.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 20, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Disability Diversity Featured Posts Global Ethics Neuroethics Race Social Justice conferences Source Type: blogs

Does ASBH Really Value Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
by Daphne O. Martschenko, PhD, Kevin T. Mintz, PhD, Holly K. Tabor, PhD The American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities (ASBH) annual meeting is this week. As an educational organization “whose purpose is to promote the exchange of ideas and foster multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, and inter-professional” research and communication in bioethics and the health-related humanities, one of ASBH’s strategic initiatives is to foster diversity, equity and inclusion in bioethics. However, despite the society’s rhetoric, ASBH as an organization makes its annual meeting inaccessible to non-academics, early c...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 13, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: ASBH Disability Education Featured Posts Social Justice academia conferences Source Type: blogs

Vaccinating the World: The Problem with Drop-in-the-Bucket Thinking
By  Govind Persad, JD, PhD The United States, after wasting over 15 million doses since March and with a stockpile of 150 million more in freezers, reportedly ordered 200 million more vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech for delivery starting in October. These orders may be motivated by the expectation of broad access to “booster” vaccines in the United States. The World Health Organization and many ethicists have criticized the broad provision of boosters on the basis that they exacerbate global vaccine scarcity. But other influential commentators defend using hundreds of milli...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 6, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Featured Posts Global Ethics Health Disparities Politics Public Health Social Justice Vaccines Vulnerable Populations Booster shots COVID-19 global health vaccination Source Type: blogs

Time to Stand Up For The Morality of Vaccine Mandates
Arthur Caplan, PhD ABPD Statement in Support of COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates For All Eligible Americans   The Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) represents the leadership of nearly 100 academic bioethics programs at medical centers and universities across North America.   In the face of the ongoing worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have been medically shown to greatly reduce rates of COVID-19 infection, transmission, severe disease, and death. With full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of one COVID-19 vaccine and others soon to follow, the clear benefits of vaccination when com...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 4, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Arthur Caplan Tags: Featured Posts Professionalism Public Health Vaccines Source Type: blogs