Journal of medical ethics
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Journal of medical ethics · Jun 2017
ReviewAppealing to the crowd: ethical justifications in Canadian medical crowdfunding campaigns.
Medical crowdfunding is growing in terms of the number of active campaigns, amount of funding raised and public visibility. Little is known about how campaigners appeal to potential donors outside of anecdotal evidence collected in news reports on specific medical crowdfunding campaigns. ⋯ We find the justifications campaigners tend to fall into three themes: personal connections, depth of need and giving back. We further discuss how these appeals can understood in terms of ethical justifications for giving and how these justifications should be assessed in light of the academic literature on ethical concerns raised by medical crowdfunding.
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Journal of medical ethics · Apr 2017
Conscientious objection in healthcare: why tribunals might be the answer.
A recent focus of the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare is the question of whether practitioners should have to justify their refusal to perform certain functions. A recent article by Cowley addresses a practical aspect of this controversy, namely the question of whether doctors claiming conscientious objector status in relation to abortion should be required, like their counterparts claiming exemption from military conscription, to defend their claim before a tribunal. Cowley argues against the use of tribunals in the medical case, on the grounds that there are likely to be fewer unjustified claims to conscientious objection in this context than in the military, and that in any case tribunals will not be an effective way of distinguishing genuine and false cases. I reject these arguments and propose a different conception of the role of a medical conscientious objection tribunal.
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This article develops a civic republican approach to medical ethics. It outlines civic republican concerns about the domination that arises from subjection to an arbitrary power of interference, while suggesting republican remedies to such domination in healthcare. ⋯ It extends this analysis by providing a civic republican account of assistive arbitrary power, showing how it can create similar problems within both formal and informal relationships of care, and offering strategies for tackling it. Two important objections to civic republican medical ethics-that it overvalues independence and political participation in healthcare-are also considered and rebutted.
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Journal of medical ethics · Nov 2016
A definition and ethical evaluation of overdiagnosis: response to commentaries.
It is a privilege to have respected colleagues engage with our definition and ethical evaluation of overdiagnosis. In our response to the commentaries, we first deal with paradigmatic issues: the place of realism, the relationship between diagnostic standards and correctness and the distinction between overdiagnosis and both false-positives and medicalisation. We then discuss issues arising across the commentaries in turn. ⋯ We reaffirm that overdiagnosis, for the foreseeable future, must be estimated at a population level and defend the importance of good-quality risk communication for individuals. We acknowledge that a lot turns on the relevance of professional communities in our definition and expand our reasoning in this regard then conclude with a note on the difference between intentions and goals. We expect that it will be some time before these matters are settled and we look forward to continue debating these matters with our colleagues.