New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body最新文献

This article considers rival views of flourishing and their significance for healthcare, compassion and professional practice. It argues that 'making a success of life' is ultimately not in our hands and so criticises quasi-Aristotelian interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount that call for an intentional formation and achievement of virtuous character as a condition of flourishing. Close attention is paid to the moral concepts and instruction arising from the Psalms and the beatitudes of Matthew's gospel. Civic, economic and biotechnological dimensions of healthcare are explored through study of the beatitudes, guided by William Tyndale, John Wesley, Martin Luther King Jr and Rebekah Eklund, and against the background of divine providential and eschatological agency. What making a success of life means for healthcare is identified by attention to covetousness, arrogance, distinguishing good and evil, discerning the presence of God among healthcare staff and patients, contending with societal violence and whistleblowing.

Many people think that producing online pornography, such as creating sexual content at OnlyFans, is permissible. Many of the same people also think that creating deepfake pornography without or against the consent of the person is wrong. I argue that accepting online sex work is inconsistent with judging pornographic deepfakes as worse than non-pornographic deepfakes. This claim resembles similarity with a broader problem in sexual ethics raised by David Benatar. I apply Benatar's argument in the context of online sexual activities to highlight the ethical issues recent technological developments raise. I do this neither as a case against the permissibility of online sex work nor as a defense of pornographic deep fakes. The purpose is to point out the inconsistency. One could avoid the problem by extending or limiting the range of permissible sexual practices online. But if I am right, we cannot both accept OnlyFans and condemn non-consensual pornographic deep fakes.

The tyranny of compassion is a consequence of defaulting to the model of patient as citizen. Borrowed from Rawls's liberalism, this is the notion that everyone should be free and equal. Hordern's attempt to recover compassion is an attempt to recover a fuller account of the political person - the citizen - as more, not less, than free and equal. The physician enters into a covenantal relationship of reciprocity with the patient, enabling persuasion beyond just shared decision making. This sort of relationship has implications not only for the clinic, but also as a potential source of repair in the broader political sphere.

Alison Gemmill et al. claim that infant mortality in Texas increased following its 2021 abortion restrictions, and several sources reported that abortion restrictions harm infants. This is misleading. Gemmill et al.'s findings show that infant deaths increased primarily because abortion for "congenital anomalies" decreased, and a subset of those subjects died in infancy. In other words, infant mortality rose because fetal mortality fell. By analogy, one can reduce teenage deaths by causing deaths before age thirteen, but this does not save lives. Likewise, abortion restrictions may lead to more infants dying (since fewer subjects are aborted), but this does not imply that abortion restrictions harm infants. The opposite seems true. We argue that it is reasonable to regard Texas's abortion restrictions as a net benefit for infants. We also highlight ableist assumptions surrounding Gemmill et al.'s study and call for bipartisan efforts to support people with disabilities and their families.

Bioethics has long been concerned with human flourishing. With advances in healthcare, science, and technology, different accounts of flourishing have been proposed. Furthermore, societal changes and organizational statements have led to the overemphasis of health in human flourishing and patient autonomy, which have resulted in consumeristic medicine. Some have noted that health may be the ultimate good of the patient, while this manuscript argues that there is a need for a return to a philosophy of healthcare grounded in a teleology of humanity seen in philosophical and religious accounts of human flourishing and health. This manuscript discusses the concepts of human flourishing and health to propose a return to a religious philosophy of healthcare found in Christian Hippocratism. It then briefly applies this framework to abortion and physician-assisted suicide to inform its readers of the implications for those who adhere to particular philosophical or Christian theological convictions.

Is it ethically defensible to remove xenotransplant recipients' right to withdraw from long term biosurveillance on grounds of theoretically possible but potentially excessive third-party risk? Some think so arguing that to protect public health from potential infectious diseases originating in the xenograft, xenotransplant recipients should not be allowed to withdraw from long term biosurveillance. We present a dilemma for this view: if xenotransplant research poses such significant risk to public health as to warrant the requirement that xenotransplant recipients voluntarily waive their right to withdraw, then the research warrants long term quarantine. If the risk is not so great as to require long term quarantine, however, then individuals should not have to forfeit this right in order to participate in xenotransplant research. Either way, xenotransplant recipients should not be required to waive their right to withdraw from long term biosurveillance.

This article offers a sustained philosophical and legal critique of Giubilini and Minerva's controversial thesis in 'After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?' The authors argue that newborns, like foetuses, lack full moral status and that infanticide may be ethically permissible in circumstances analogous to abortion. This response challenges that view on three grounds: (1) conceptually, the claim that birth is morally irrelevant is inconsistent with established theories of moral worth rooted in potentiality and the value of a future-like-ours; (2) legally, neonates acquire personhood at birth in both domestic and international legal systems, making their killing unlawful; and (3) ethically, societal practices and intuitions clearly ascribe value and rights to newborns, regardless of developmental stage. The article concludes that the thesis of after-birth abortion is ethically indefensible and legally untenable.

Between November 2017 and June 2024 eight jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand passed laws to legalise some form of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide. Like the United States, Australia has a federal constitution and 'voluntary assisted dying' (VAD) in Australia has been legalised at the state level. However, unlike the United States, Australia and New Zealand both permit practitioner administration of the lethal drug (euthanasia) as well as self-administration (assisted suicide). Another difference is that physician-assisted suicide, at first, spread very slowly in the United States, and new laws were based closely on the requirements of the original legislation in Oregon. In contrast, in Australia and New Zealand, the spread of VAD has been rapid from the outset, and there is a discernible pattern of successive weakening of safeguards in more recent legislation. The Australian model has increasingly come to resemble that of Canada.

Understanding medical ethics is essential for healthcare professionals to practise medicine in a culturally sensitive and appropriate manner. We undertook a scoping review of the English literature from PubMed and JSTOR after 1980, to compare the application of the four principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice in Islamic and Western medical ethics (Beauchamp and Childress' model, the most widely used). 34 out of 135 articles met the inclusion criteria (Analysing a principle of stated ethical framework rather than simply mentioning it). Our review demonstrated that there are more similarities in both frameworks than differences, with the key distinction being the perception of autonomy in a familial and societal context in Islam. There is an objectively right medical choice for patients in Islam, which brings one closer to Shari'ah. Beneficence and nonmaleficence are mostly concordant in both schools, and justice in all its forms is espoused in both, with some differences.

Medicine, as a science, art and skill, concerns itself with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients. At the centre of this practice is the patient-physician relationship of a special nature. This study argues that there is a missing link in modern-day medical practice which has distorted this relationship of a special nature, and the moral component of medicine. These two interconnected aspects of medicine are quickly fading away and have affected the quality of health care, where medicine is now purely seen as a business and technological-driven enterprise. Using the method of critical analysis, this study examines medical practice in recent times to find a solution to this disconnect that has evolved in the physician-patient relationship. The study deploys the novel theory of 'Integrative Humanism' and concludes that humanized integrative medicine is missing, which has greatly affected holistic quality health care and the physician-patient relationship of a special nature.