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454Bioethics met its COVID‐19 Waterloo: The doctor knows best againBioethics 35 (1): 3-5. 2020.The late Robert Veatch, one of the United States’ founders of bioethics, never tired of reminding us that the paradigm-shifting contribution that bioethics made to patient care was to liberate patients out of the hands of doctors, who were traditionally seen to know best, even when they decidedly did not know best. It seems to us that with the advent of COVID-19, health policy has come full-circle on this. COVID-19 gave rise to a large number of purportedly “ethical” guidance documents aiming to…Read more
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4Professionalism and the Ethics of Conscientious Objection Accommodation in MedicineIn David Boonin, Katrina L. Sifferd, Tyler K. Fagan, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Michael Huemer, Daniel Wodak, Derk Pereboom, Stephen J. Morse, Sarah Tyson, Mark Zelcer, Garrett VanPelt, Devin Casey, Philip E. Devine, David K. Chan, Maarten Boudry, Christopher Freiman, Hrishikesh Joshi, Shelley Wilcox, Jason Brennan, Eric Wiland, Ryan Muldoon, Mark Alfano, Philip Robichaud, Kevin Timpe, David Livingstone Smith, Francis J. Beckwith, Dan Hooley, Russell Blackford, John Corvino, Corey McCall, Dan Demetriou, Ajume Wingo, Michael Shermer, Ole Martin Moen, Aksel Braanen Sterri, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Jeppe von Platz, John Thrasher, Mary Hawkesworth, William MacAskill, Daniel Halliday, Janine O’Flynn, Yoaav Isaacs, Jason Iuliano, Claire Pickard, Arvin M. Gouw, Tina Rulli, Justin Caouette, Allen Habib, Brian D. Earp, Andrew Vierra, Subrena E. Smith, Danielle M. Wenner, Lisa Diependaele, Sigrid Sterckx, G. Owen Schaefer, Markus K. Labude, Harisan Unais Nasir, Udo Schuklenk, Benjamin Zolf & Woolwine (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Springer Verlag. pp. 609-621. 2018.Some health-care professionals refuse to perform certain services because doing so would violate their conscientiously held beliefs. Arguments for and against their accommodation claims continue both in the public square and in the courts, as well as in bioethics. This chapter introduces this debate by discussing jurisdictions in which accommodation is granted. We offer evidence of the detrimental effects it has on access to health-care services. An overview of influential ethical arguments for …Read more
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48What healthcare professionals owe us: why their duty to treat during a pandemic is contingent on personal protective equipment (PPE)Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (7): 432-435. 2020.Healthcare professionals’ capacity to protect themselves, while caring for infected patients during an infectious disease pandemic, depends on their ability to practise universal precautions. In turn, universal precautions rely on the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE). During the SARS-CoV2 outbreak many healthcare workers across the globe have been reluctant to provide patient care because crucial PPE components are in short supply. The lack of such equipment during the pandemi…Read more
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7The ethical challenges of the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic in the global south and the global north – same and differentDeveloping World Bioethics 20 (2): 62-64. 2020.Developing World Bioethics, Accepted Article.
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31COVID19: Why justice and transparency in hospital triage policies are paramountBioethics 34 (4): 325-327. 2020.Bioethics, EarlyView.
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2Undertaking ethical psychiatric research in the global south’s prayer camps – is that even possible?Developing World Bioethics 19 (4): 188-188. 2019.
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28Conscience-based refusal of patient care in medicine: a consequentialist analysisTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (6): 523-538. 2019.Conscience-based refusals by health care professionals to provide care to eligible patients are problematic, given the monopoly such professionals hold on the provision of such services. This article reviews standard ethical arguments in support of conscientious refuser accommodation and finds them wanting. It discusses proposed compromise solutions involving efforts aimed at testing the genuineness and reasonability of refusals and rejects those solutions too. A number of jurisdictions have int…Read more
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25Professionalism eliminates religion as a proper tool for doctors rendering advice to patientsJournal of Medical Ethics 45 (11): 713-713. 2019.Religious considerations and language do not typically belong in the professional advice rendered by a doctor to a patient. Among the rationales mounted by Greenblum and Hubbard in support of that conclusion is that religious considerations and language are incompatible with the role of doctors as public officials.1 Much as I agree with their conclusion, I take issue with this particular aspect of their analysis. It seems based on a mischaracterisation of what societal role doctors fulfil, qua d…Read more
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18How peer review is conducted at Developing World Bioethics, and why we do it the way we doDeveloping World Bioethics 19 (2): 62-63. 2019.
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23Certainty is not a morally defensible threshold to determine eligibility for assisted dyingBioethics 33 (2): 219-220. 2019.
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35Are Concerns About Irremediableness, Vulnerability, or Competence Sufficient to Justify Excluding All Psychiatric Patients from Medical Aid in Dying?Health Care Analysis 26 (4): 326-343. 2018.Some jurisdictions that have decriminalized assisted dying exclude psychiatric patients on the grounds that their condition cannot be determined to be irremediable, that they are vulnerable and in need of protection, or that they cannot be determined to be competent. We review each of these claims and find that none have been sufficiently well-supported to justify the differential treatment psychiatric patients experience with respect to assisted dying. We find bans on psychiatric patients’ acce…Read more
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82The distribution of medical resources, withholding medical treatment, drug trials,advance directives, euthanasia and other ethical issues: The Thandi case (II)Developing World Bioethics 1 (2). 2001.In the first part of this article, we considered how Thandi, a 15-year-old girl, was treated when taken by her mother to their GP, Dr Randera. Dr Randera notified them that Thandi was pregnant, HIV positive, and had syphilis and herpes. Dr Randera also informed them that there was a substantial risk that the baby would be born HIV positive. Both Thandi and her mother wanted an abortion. However, Dr Randera, who was morally opposed to abortions, refused to provide the service and did not refer Th…Read more
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76End-of-Life Decision-Making in Canada: The Report by the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision-MakingBioethics 25 (s1): 1-73. 2011.ABSTRACTThis report on end‐of‐life decision‐making in Canada was produced by an international expert panel and commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada. It consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 reviews what is known about end‐of‐life care and opinions about assisted dying in Canada.Chapter 2 reviews the legal status quo in Canada with regard to various forms of assisted death.Chapter 3 reviews ethical issues pertaining to assisted death. The analysis is grounded in core values central to Canada…Read more
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162Doctors Have no Right to Refuse Medical Assistance in Dying, Abortion or ContraceptionBioethics 30 (9): 162-170. 2017.In an article in this journal, Christopher Cowley argues that we have ‘misunderstood the special nature of medicine, and have misunderstood the motivations of the conscientious objectors’. We have not. It is Cowley who has misunderstood the role of personal values in the profession of medicine. We argue that there should be better protections for patients from doctors' personal values and there should be more severe restrictions on the right to conscientious objection, particularly in relation t…Read more
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8The politics of ethical consensus findingIn Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Bioethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 16--2. 2002.
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27Letter to the Editor Regarding the 5th Global Forum on Bioethics in ResearchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 4 (4). 2004.No abstract