Medical Ethics
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Study Looks at Use of Emergency Research Informed Consent
Emergency research is essential to improving healthcare, but following regulatory human research protection rules can be challenging — particularly with informed consent.
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Clinical Trials Often Exclude Women, Even When There Could Be Compelling Benefit
Clinical trials often exclude pregnant women, citing additional risks. However, women almost never are asked what they think about participating in those studies and the risks. This is an issue some researchers are working to correct.
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Revisiting the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ in New Zealand
It’s astonishing in retrospect that women in New Zealand diagnosed with an increasingly clear precursor to cervical cancer were left untreated and uninformed in an unethical study that continued for two decades.
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Pain Research Can Harm Participants
Researchers must pay greater attention to the rights of study participants in pain research, concludes a recent paper by the Ethics Committee of the Pain-Omics Group.
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‘Little Quality Evidence’ for Marketing MRT as Fertility Treatment
The doctor who delivered the first “three-parent” baby is seeking to commercialize mitochondrial replacement therapy by marketing a treatment to older women who want to produce viable embryos — at a cost of $80,000 to $120,000.
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‘Decision-makers of Last Resort’ Pose Unique Ethical Challenges
Surrogates sometimes vehemently disagree, despite all attempts to resolve the conflict. In other cases, there’s simply no one to speak on the patient’s behalf. Either way, the clinical team is forced to turn to the courts or government if an important medical decision must be made.
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‘Feel-Good Approach’ Is Not Enough: Assess Quality of Ethics Consults
Quality of clinical care routinely is assessed using myriad established approaches, with patient safety issues addressed with such proven methods as root cause analyses. On the other hand, quality of ethics consultations often is not addressed at all.
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Disclosure of Errors Not Documented — Even if Patient Seriously Harmed
Very few disclosures of medical errors or apologies to the patient or relatives were documented in medical records, found a recent analysis of malpractice claims.
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Lawsuits Allege Patients’ End-of-Life Wishes Ignored
Several recent lawsuits alleged that patients were harmed by unwanted care because their end-of-life wishes were disregarded by the clinical team, with one case resulting in a $1 million settlement against the hospital.
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Are Organ Transplant Recipients in a Trial Protocol Considered Research Subjects?
Research protocols to extend the viability period of transplant organs are of great interest, but does that mean organ recipients must give informed consent as research subjects? Here we enter an ethical impasse, that if adequately resolved could increase the supply of organs for transplant.