Hot Topics: Education
by Rachel Fabi, PhD, Vivian V. Altiery De Jesús, MBE, and Liz Stokes, JD, MA, RN
In this series we ask bioethicists to respond to a question that embodies current challenges for bioethics, medicine, or health care.…
Full ArticleWritten by Thomas Moller-Nielsen News that children in England were to switch to online schooling as part of the country’s third national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 global pandemic was met with widespread support in the British press. Doctors, public health specialists, and even teaching unions similarly applauded the decision. (Nurseries, which have remained open […]
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by Asma Fazal, MD, MRCPI, MHSc
Covid-19 pandemic has changed world dynamics. Measures such as wearing a face mask, regular hand washing, cleaning surfaces with disinfecting substances, and practicing physical distancing have proven to be effective in controlling the spread of Covid-19.…
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by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
In 1862, the Morrill Act provided for the building of land grant universities throughout the country. Their purpose was to make higher education, especially in agriculture and technical arts, available to people who previously would not have had access.…
Full ArticleCOVID-19 Vaccine ethics: Covid could come back stronger if rich nations monopolise doses“The news that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may prove up to 90 per cent effective at preventing symptoms of Covid has sparked something approaching euphoria across the globe. Stock markets have soared and there is speculation everything could return to “normal” by the spring. But with this […]
Full ArticleU.S. Election Why There is no Ethical Reason Not to Vote (Unless You Come Down with COVID-19 on Election Day)“The three most common reasons I hear are: “I don’t have enough information,” “I don’t like any of the candidates,” and “I don’t want to give this election legitimacy.” It is worth examining why, in my […]
Full ArticleEducation and COVID-19 An Ethical Opening for Higher Ed Institutions “The job of IRBs is to approve research involving human subjects. The ethicists, scientists and community members who staff the IRBs do risk-benefit analyses before they allow a proposed experiment to go forward. Unlike hospitals — nearly all of which have ethics committees — colleges typically […]
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This essay is part of a 2-part series on the burdens placed on black faculty in academic bioethics. The second part, by Keisha Ray, Ph.D.…
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by Asma Fazal, M.B.B.S, MRCPI, MHSc
To care for children in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is not easy because in addition to having an emotionally charged environment with high morbidity and mortality, it has a patient population who is not autonomous.…
Full ArticleHealthcare and Public Health Johns Hopkins University & Medicine: The Unequal Cost of Social Distancing“Right now, we must recognize that we cannot expect the most marginalized among us to bear the greatest costs of social distancing for weeks or months on end. If we devise policy based on the assumption that families who cannot put […]
Full ArticleSelect Interviews From the INS Annual Meeting—Keith Humphreys, Tom Insel, Uma Karmarkar, Carl Marci, Ariel Cascio, Winston Chiong, Frederic Gilbert, Cynthia Kubu, and Jonathan Pugh
Moral distress in medical student reflective writing
Moving beyond the theoretical: Medical students’ desire for practical, role-specific ethics training
Were the “Pioneer” Clinical Ethics Consultants “Outsiders”? For Them, Was “Critical Distance” That Critical?
An empirical assessment of the short-term impacts of a reading of Deborah Zoe Laufer's drama Informed Consent on attitudes and intentions to participate in genetic research
Undisclosed conflicts of interest among biomedical textbook authors
How can bioethics help software in medicine? “Bioethicists can help strengthen ethical, legal, and social analyses that identify the questions to create a good mix of both precautionary and permissive regulation.”
Full ArticleVaccination is hard. “It’s a debate that gets at fundamental questions about individual liberty, bodily autonomy, and communal obligation.” Check out this interview with Keisha Ray, a bioethicist speaking on the obligations for the COVID vaccine.
Full Article“Though many people with disabilities are more vulnerable to COVID-19, in some U.S. states they fear being left behind in a massive effort to get limited vaccines into the arms of those who need them most.”
Full Article“The question then is this: Is it appropriate to continue to keep children out of school until teachers or reticent politicians feel they have a degree of certainty about risk that may not arise for a long time, if ever?” What do we need to consider?
Full Article“Yet, design choices in the built health care environment raise substantive bioethical issues that demand the attention of bioethicists and ethical inquiry. It is time for the built environment to be considered alongside other parameters of care.”
Full Article“Clinicians again face work that’s risky, heart-rending, physically exhausting, and demoralizing, all the elements of burnout. They have seen this before and are frustrated it is happening again.” What effects will this have on healthcare workers?
Full ArticleDigital therapeutics is uncharted waters. In a recent development, “a new product, developed by Akili Interactive Labs, is the first game-based therapeutic to be approved by the FDA for any condition and the first digital therapeutic approved for ADHD.”
Full Article“The issue of physician burnout pervades not just medical training but also the years after…this chronic erosion of empathy has resulted in the attitude that apathy is not just tolerated but, in some cases, even justified.” Here, empathy is crucial.
Full Article“Dermatology, the medical specialty devoted to treating diseases of the skin, has a problem with brown and black skin. Though progress has been made in recent years, most textbooks that serve as road maps for diagnosing skin disorders often don’t include images of skin conditions as they appear on people of color.” – Roni Rabin
Medical disparities exist on the level of doctor-patient interact as well as education of the future generation of doctors. Lack of representation of people of color in skin outcomes presents persistent issues in treatment and healthcare.
Full ArticleWhile the blatant horrors of the past are gone, the ideas that fueled race-based medicine stubbornly linger. We can change.
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