Medical humanities
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Risk and uncertainty are unavoidable in clinical medicine. In the case of childhood food allergy, the dysphoric experience of uncertainty is heightened by the perception of unpredictable danger to young children. Medicine has tended to respond to uncertainty with forms of rational decision making. ⋯ One emotion in particular, regret, assists in explaining the actions taken to prevent allergic reactions, given the diffuse nature of responsibility for children. In this light, the assumption that doctors make rational judgments while patients have emotion led preferences is a false dichotomy. Reconciling medical and lay accounts requires acknowledgement of the interrelationship between the rational and the emotional, and may lead to more appropriate clinical decision making under conditions of uncertainty.
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Historical Article
Can Mary Shelley's Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text?
The current popular view of the novel Frankenstein is that it describes the horrors consequent upon scientific experimentation; the pursuit of science leading inevitably to tragedy. In reality the importance of the book is far from this. ⋯ As a narrative it provides a gripping story that merits careful analysis by those involved in medical research and its ethical review, and it is more enjoyable than many current textbooks. To support this thesis, the author will place the book in historical, scientific context, analyse it for lessons relevant to those involved in research ethics today, and then draw conclusions.
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This paper addresses a current debate in the bioethics community between principlists, who consider that principles are at the heart of moral life, and narrativists, who see communication at its core. Using a case study entitled "The forgetful mourner" to introduce the tensions between each of these positions, I go on to explain the central tenets of both principlism and narrative ethics. ⋯ My ultimate aim is to identify the, sometimes overlapping, skills that both principlism and narrative ethics require on the part of health professionals who deploy them. I conclude that a good principlist has narrativist tendencies and a good narrativist is inclined toward principlism.