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Balancing the therapeutic needs of very sick patients with the demands of rigorous scientific research is a major ethical challenge in stem cell research, according to Mary Devereaux, PhD, director of the biomedical ethics seminars and assistant director of the Research Ethics Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
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The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality, according to a Hastings Center Report special report, Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Care Systems.1
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Can functional neuroimaging, which is currently used largely in the research setting, be used as a clinically actionable tool for disorders of consciousness? This is an important and a loaded topic, says Judy Illes, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics and professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
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Patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) demonstrate behaviors suggestive of consciousness episodically and intermittently, and because these behavioral signs are not reproducible, diagnostic errors can be quite high, says Joseph J. Fins, MD, MACP, the E. William Davis, Jr., MD, Professor of Medical Ethics and chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College.
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While the field of bioethics has traditionally embraced a diversity of approaches to clinical ethics consultations, there is now a general consensus for the need to agree of some basic standards in order to evaluate the quality and impact of the service.
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More than one-third of 310 medical students surveyed had a moderate to strong bias against obese people, according to a recent study.1
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The primary ethical concern with human egg donation is that there are no long-term studies on the safety of this practice, according to Jennifer Lahl, president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in Pleasant Hill, CA.
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The need to reduce, avoid, or not to adopt costly treatments which provide very small benefits, and the need to provide everyone with treatments that are very effective and reasonably priced, present ethical challenges.
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Bioethicists disagreed with the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections' position that a large multisite clinical trial failed to obtain proper consent from the parents of enrolled infants.
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Bioethicists can help clinicians who suspect a colleague may be impaired by giving advice on how to proceed and assisting in creating a confidential process.
