As a feminist working on bioethics, I often turn to the reality of material singularity as a way to argue for more specificity in our dealings with the matter of living bodies. What do I mean by “material singularity?” This … Continue reading
The NIH has launched a program to counter gender bias in medical research. Fortunately policy makers seem to be listening to feminist Copyright 2012 Pamela Thompson Your subconscious mind is quite receptive to the words and suggestions of the Hypnotherapist … Continue reading
In this piece from Scientific American, R. Douglas Fields argues that the new US National Institutes of Health policy, which is intended to drive research in sex differences, is a major step in the wrong direction. The new policy requires … Continue reading
The current outbreak of Ebola in west Africa has prompted a fair amount of debate around the ethics of epidemic control, containment, and intervention. Some of this discussion looks at what kind of intervention (use of experimental treatment? compassionate use? … Continue reading
One typically thinks of advances in medical science and technology as unalloyed benefits. The ability to cure illness, mitigate pain, and make more accurate diagnoses are some of the uncontroversial results of medical progress. Yet as a new study of … Continue reading
Video here. After all, “women are only variations on a theme.” Oh, the pesky hormones! (Though the side effects may include heat vision!) Increased blood sugar level reduces the go to web-site online levitra canada blood flow to the penile … Continue reading
Hard to know where to start on this issue, given all the ethical ramifications, starting with questions about informed consent in the experiments on humans, the failure of government There cialis overnight delivery are many different types of heart diseases. … Continue reading
Check out this article and project that will be of interest to people working in the university system. Turns out, even fully funded PhD students are taking out massive loans to cover basic costs and stay afloat during the summer. … Continue reading
Read This and Weep. . . Assuming that this is an accurate story–and determining that would be part of the job–what should bioethics’ response be? I’m not sure there’s anything distinctively feminist at issue here, except insofar as we are … Continue reading
In this NPR blog, Barbara J. King reflects upon potential extensions of Susumu Tonegawa et al’s recent experiment in creating a fear-based memory in mice. While the ability to physically alter memory could have benefits (e.g. healing PTSD), King raises … Continue reading
Biomonitoring is a technique for assessing exposures to chemical substances in the body through testing blood, urine, semen, amniotic fluid, breast milk, saliva, hair, and fingernails and other human tissues. Examples of chemicals that can be tested for include lead, … Continue reading
I suppose that we should always be wary when the facts about an ethical dispute seem clear cut. I say this because it strikes me that the vast majority of clinical medical ethical conflicts I have observed or read descriptions of tend to come down to misunderstanding or a lack of shared information. For this reason, my first inclination when coming across an emergent issue in bioethics is to try to determine a) which facts are in dispute and b) where miscommunication may have occurred. In situations as diverse as end-of-life care for Great Aunt Tillie to concerns about a NICU’s policies on perinates thinking about these two aspects have gone far in my experience in resolving disputes.
Thus it was with increasing confusion that I looked at the ethical concerns surrounding the Surfactant Positive Airway Pressure and Pulse Oximetry Trial (SUPPORT). Here it did not seem that there were either facts in dispute or miscommunication between those seeing the study in very different lights. (This of course is not to say that there was no miscommunication in the study itself; indeed this miscommunication strikes at the heart of the critique of the study.) We all see what the study was and how the consent forms were written. What we do not seem to agree on is how important the failings of those consent forms are. This is not a miscommunication, but a difference in weighting of ethical standards.
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