Journal of medical ethics
-
Journal of medical ethics · Aug 2015
ReviewPhysician-assisted death with limited access to palliative care.
Even among advocates of legalising physician-assisted death, many argue that this should be done only once palliative care has become widely available. Meanwhile, according to them, physician-assisted death should be banned. Four arguments are often presented to support this claim, which we call the argument of lack of autonomy, the argument of existing alternatives, the argument of unfair inequalities and the argument of the antagonism between physician-assisted death and palliative care. We argue that although these arguments provide strong reasons to take appropriate measures to guarantee access to good quality palliative care to everyone who needs it, they do not justify a ban on physician-assisted death until we have achieved this goal.
-
Journal of medical ethics · Jul 2015
How Danes evaluate moral claims related to abortion: a questionnaire survey.
To investigate how Danish citizens evaluate four moral claims related to abortion issues, regarding the moral status of the fetus, autonomy, harm and possible negative consequences of allowing abortion and to explore the association between moral beliefs and attitudes towards abortion for different reasons and at different gestational weeks. ⋯ The direction of causality is discussed with reference to both moral reasoning and moral intuitions. The relationship between normative social behaviour and abortion attitudes is considered.
-
Journal of medical ethics · Jul 2015
Comparative StudyThe physician charter on medical professionalism from the Chinese perspective: a comparative analysis.
The charter of medical professionalism in the new millennium (Charter) has been endorsed worldwide, including by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association from 2005. Six years later, the association drafted a Chinese version of medical professionalism based on the Charter, the Chinese Medical Doctor Declaration (Declaration). This Declaration encompasses six tenets, which have large areas of overlap with the Charter. ⋯ In this paper, we explore the unique aspects of the Declaration in contrast with the Charter to gain a deeper understanding of professionalism in the particular context of China. The Declaration may omit some valuable commitments found in the Charter, but it includes longstanding Confucian and cultural traditions of China, as well as consideration of current social circumstances. The Declaration thus re-establishes the ideal of universal professionalism in light of the Chinese context.
-
Journal of medical ethics · Jun 2015
CommentSubstance over style: is there something wrong with abandoning the white coat?
In this paper, we address points raised by Stephanie Dancer's article in The BMJ in which she claimed that by 'dressing down', physicians fail to adhere to the dignitas of the medical profession, and damage its reputation. At the beginning of this paper, we distinguish between two different senses in which a person can be, as she terms it, 'scruffy'; and then we address Dancer's three main claims. First, we argue that in regard to the medical profession it is fallacious to assume, as she appears to do, that someone is incompetent or irresponsible when such a judgement is grounded in the fact that a physician is not dressed in a formal way. ⋯ Third, we examine two ways in which doctors can 'dress down' and show that 'scruffiness' does not necessarily intimates a lack of personal hygiene. Finally, we show that pointing to mere statistical correlation without causation, cannot be used as an argument against scruffiness. We conclude by suggesting that in the medical context, it is more appropriate to educate patients than to chastise practitioners for not following arbitrary cultural mores.