PHI111 - Ethics for Scientists

The case involves a person she calls "Ray," who generally acts normally but who has been "involuntarily committed to a mental institution as the result of bizarre self-destructive behavior (pulling out an eye and cutting off a hand) [because of] his unusual religious beliefs."

The article discusses the definition and conception of moral distress based on the context of social reflective equilibrium with reference to the article "A Broader Understanding of Moral Distress" by Stephen M. Campbell, Connie M. Ulrich, and Christine Grady in the same issue. Topics covered include the fundamental description of reflective equilibrium, the process of social reflective equilibrium in clinical bioethics, and the traditional definition and broader definition of moral distress.

History's judgment on the success of bioethics will not depend solely on the conceptual creativity and innovation in the field at the level of ethical and political theory, but this intellectual work is not insignificant. One important new development is what I shall refer to as the relational turn in bioethics. This development represents a renewed emphasis on the ideographic approach, which interprets the meaning of right and wrong in human actions as they are inscribed in social and cultural practices and in structures of lived meaning and interdependence; in an ideographic approach, the task of bioethics is to bring practice into theory, not the other way around.

Science has become a defining activity within our society. For some, scientific progress has even come to be an integral part of a new faith. This new faith is based on the belief that human progress in all spheres will be promoted, in some unspecified and mysterious way, by advances on the scientific frontier. For these “believers,” what was once a faith in the divine unfolding of history and/or salvation has been replaced by a faith in the capacity of scientific progress to find a better balance among ultimate objectives such as justice, equality, excellence, autonomy, social cohesion, and peace. In this essay I address a more modest topic, namely, the underlying characteristics of a particular set of ethical challenges and tensions that always accompany forward movement of the scientific frontier.

A quiet revolution is occurring in the field of transplantation. Traditionally, transplants have involved solid organs such as the kidney, heart and liver which are transplanted to prevent recipients from dying. Now transplants are being done of the face, hand, uterus, penis and larynx that aim at improving a recipient's quality of life. The shift away from saving lives to seeking to make them better requires a shift in the ethical thinking that has long formed the foundation of organ transplantation.

Biobanks are an extraordinary tool for research and scientific progress. Since their origin, the debate on the main technical, regulatory and ethical aspects has not stopped. The future of biobanks should take into account many factors: the need to improve the technical standards of collection, conservation and use of the sample, the usefulness of achieving forms of harmonization and common governance, the improvement of biobank networks, including through public–private partnerships and improving the sustainability of these infrastructures.

Human uterus transplantation (UTx) is currently under investigation as a treatment for uterine infertility. Without a uterus transplant, the options available to women with uterine infertility are adoption or surrogacy; only the latter has the potential for a genetically related child. UTx will offer recipients the chance of having their own pregnancy. This procedure occurs at the intersection of two ethically contentious areas: assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and organ transplantation. In relation to organ transplantation, UTx lies with composite tissue transplants such as face and limb grafts, and shares some of the ethical concerns raised by these non‐life saving procedures.

Prior to 1968, death in the United States was defined as cessation of all vital functions including respiration and heartbeat. In 1968, the Dean of Harvard Medical School, Robert Ebert, formed an ad hoc committee to examine the definition of brain death.

Diane was feeling tired and had a rash. A common scenario, though there was something subliminally worrisome that prompted me to check her blood count. Her hematocrit was 22, and the white-cell count was 4.3 with some metamyelocytes and unusual white cells. I wanted it to be viral, trying to deny what was staring me in the face.

The aim of this paper is to provide a panoramic view of laws and policies on abortion around the world, giving a range of country-based examples. It shows that the plethora of convoluted laws and restrictions surrounding abortion do not make any legal or public health sense. What makes abortion safe is simple and irrefutable--when it is available on the woman's request and is universally affordable and accessible.

T he ethics of human cloning has been on the public agenda since the birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep. Cloning techniques make possible both the creation of genetically identical human beings and of tissues, organs or cell lines (a homogeneous group of cells derived from a single sample of cells from a tissue or organ) that are genetically the same as the donor.

There has been considerable recent debate on the ethics of human enhancement. A number of prominent authors have been concerned about or critical of the use of technology to alter or enhance human beings. I want to argue that far from being merely permissible, we have a moral obligation or moral reason to enhance ourselves and our children. Indeed, we have the same kind of obligation as we have to treat and prevent disease. Not only can we enhance, we should enhance.

The article shares the story of Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who exposed a medical research scandal in the U.S. in 1972, that is, the U.S. Public Health Service's deception and exploitation of poor African American men with syphilis near Tuskegee, Alabama. Information is provided about the job of Buxtun as venereal disease tracker and his discoveries about the Tuskegee study. It discusses whistleblowers' fear of retribution or a sense of futility in the context of medical research.

Contemporary biomedical ethics and environmental ethics share a common ancestry in Aldo Leopold's and Van Rensselaer Potter's initial broad visions of a connected biosphere. Over the past five decades, the two fields have become strangers. Public health ethics, a new subfield of bioethics, emerged from the belly of contemporary biomedical ethics and has evolved over the past 25 years. It has moved from its traditional concern with the tension between individual autonomy and community health to a wider focus on social justice and solidarity. Public health has a broad focus that includes individual, community, and environmental health.