Category: Ethics
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Drs. William Brady and Alice Hamilton: Contrasts in public health reportage
Saty Satya-MurtiJoseph LockhartSanta Maria, California, United States Alice Hamilton (1869–1970) and William Brady (1880–1972) were well-recognized physicians of the early twentieth century. They were united by a common goal in the emerging and “untilled” field of public health in the 1920s.1 Their mission was to improve health awareness and safety among the public. Their writings had…
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Who owns a Nobel Prize? Honor, property, and ethics
Rao UppuBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States Every scientist harbors a quiet dream—whether openly admitted or privately held—of winning a Nobel Prize. Early in my career, I naïvely asked my late mentor, Professor William A. Pryor, a leading figure in free-radical research whose work helped shape modern oxidative biology, why he had never received one. His…
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Five ethics cartoons
Mitchell BataviaNew York, NY, United States 1. Harvest Questionable organ harvesting practices were recently publicized in the July 21, 2025 HHS report “Systematic Disregard for Sanctity of Life in Organ Transport Systems.” Are organ donors actually dead at the time of organ procurement? 2. Sensitive Medical Disclosure With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the…
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The Art of Medicine is the essence of medical professionalism
Patrick FiddesAustralia The art consists in three things—the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art.1 Among the 412 aphorisms in Francis Adam’s Genuine Works Of Hippocrates2 are three that employ the term “Art.” Two have achieved popular acclaim while the third, the “Art of Medicine,” has received fewer…
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Errare humanum est
Bob ScottScotland “Erring is human; not to, animal”– Robert Frost, The White-tailed Hornet Why is it so difficult to face up to our shortcomings? It is more than 300 years since Alexander Pope wrote1 that a defining characteristic of humankind was to err, while granting forgiveness was at the discretion of a god. Robert Frost’s…
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Ethical considerations in treating minors against the wishes of their parents
Vidushi SharmaDelhi, India When parents and medical professionals disagree on the treatment of minors (especially on vaccination), moral dilemmas arise. Such complex issues require careful ethical consideration in order to achieve a delicate balance between respect for parental autonomy and the wellbeing of the minor. This scenario raises fundamental questions about beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and…
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Self-regulation in peril
Yasmina Rebani-LeeNew York, New York, United States One day on my walk home, I began to tally up the number of vapor shops, or vape shops, I came across. To my dismay, I found that four of these shops had sprouted within a five-block radius, practically the equivalent of one on each block. I began…
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Blaming Tuskegee for present ills
Adil MenonChicago, Illinois, United States The USPHS Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male is United States medical history’s most tragic example of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. In the early 20th century, the Public Health Service and the Rosenwald Fund looked to Alabama’s Maycomb County and found a…
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Eugenics in Chicago, 1915: Harry Haiselden, M.D., and The Black Stork
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden In the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea of eugenics took root in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Great Britain, and the US. Anthropologists, geneticists, physicians, and politicians informed the public about eugenics and influenced policy and law. Eugenics, from the Greek eu-, good, and genos, birth, is an attempt to “improve”…
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From Sophocles to the frontline
Alexandra PliakopanouIoannina, Greece In the deserted misty land of Lemnos, a wailing voice echoes, emanating from a wounded warrior abandoned by his comrades nine years ago. Philoctetes, the titular character of Sophocles’ 409 BC play and once a great hero of the Greeks, now lies in misery with a festering wound that oozes pus and…