Category: Ethics
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The Citadel and the Dilemma: Medicine corrupted
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Ethical behaviour of doctors is a timeless issue. A recent television investigation in Australia looked at legal but hardly ethical behaviour of doctors performing plastic surgery.1 Two books, a novel and a play written a century ago, remind us that problems with medical ethics are not new under the sun. A.J.…
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O Superman
John Rasko Carl Power Sydney, Australia Christopher Reeve comes to South Park to demonstrate all the hope and horror of embryonic stem cells. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, “Krazy Kripples,” South Park, season 7, episode 2 (2003). The creation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 sparked enormous excitement.1 The superpower that embryos possess—the…
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On beauty and medical ethics
John Brewer Eberly Jr. Anderson, South Carolina, United States Lydia S. Dugdale New York, United States Darian Goldin Stahl, “The Scan and the Mirror,” Stone lithography and silkscreen, 22″ x 28,” 2013. Private collection. www.dariangoldinstahl.com. Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing,…
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Learning the meaning of love
Charlotte EliopoulosGlen Arm, Maryland, United States In the summer before my senior year in high school, I spent my vacation as a candy striper. In the sixties, this was an opportunity for young girls interested in nursing to serve as hospital volunteers and gain some insight into their career of choice. Being young and naïve—and…
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Moral judgment in medicine: “sensibility of heart”
Jack Coulehan Stony Brook, New York, United States Clinicians in Intensive Care Unit. 2011. Photo by Calleamanecer. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 I want to reflect on the role of emotions, or “sensibility of heart,” in medical judgment. I take the term “judgment,” in general, to refer to the human capacity of assessing, analyzing,…
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Remembering Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, physician philosopher
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States “Get Wisdom.” – Proverbs 4:5 Photograph of the author (right) and Dr. Pellegrino (left). Courtesy of the author. One day in the spring of 1985, I remember jogging past the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, wondering what went on in there. It was a gorgeous…
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Eugenics: historic and contemporary
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Moral judgments, changing ethical criteria, and the broader concepts of good and evil are always controversial, and often dangerous. Prominent amongst such judgments are those relating to population control and the wider, ill-defined field of eugenics. Hidden, and often ignored or denied in these conversations, is the underlying…
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Advancing medical knowledge using nonhuman primate research
Zared O. United States Demonstrators at a university protesting for and against animal research. Courtesy of the UCLA Bruin, Alexis Chavarria. One of the most controversial areas in research is the use of nonhuman primates for experiments. Two decades ago, many animal rights activists thought that the use of nonhuman primates would become obsolete…