Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Patient Choice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patient Choice. Show all posts

Monday, February 16, 2015

A Little Girl Died Because Canada Chose Cultural Sensitivity Over Western Medicine

By Jerry Coyne
The New Republic
Originally published

On Monday, Makayla Sault, an 11-year-old from Ontario and member of the Mississauga tribe of the New Credit First Nation, died from acute lymphoblastic leukemia after suffering a stroke the previous day. This would normally not be big news in Canada or the U.S.—except for the fact that Makayla's death was probably preventable and thus unnecessary.

Makayla died not only from leukemia, but from faith—the faith of her parents, who are pastors. They not only inculcated her with Christianity, but, on religious grounds, removed her from chemotherapy to put her in a dubious institute of “alternative medicine” in Florida.

The entire article is here.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Broadening Bioethics: Clinical Ethics, Public Health and Global Health

By Onora O'Neill
Nuffield Council on Bioethics

Medical ethics is the most discussed field of bioethics, and has been mainly concerned with clinical ethics.  It has often marginalized ethical questions about public health.  A focus on the treatment of individuals has highlighted patient choice and informed consent.  It can be widened to discuss the just distribution of health care, but is useless for considering many other interventions and policies that matter for public health.  Many public health interventions are non-distributable goods, so cannot be allocated to individuals or subjected to individual choice requirements.  In marginalizing public health, work in medical ethics also often marginalized questions about global health issues, where public health interventions matter hugely, and entrenched a deep separation of medical from environmental ethics.

Work that takes public and global health seriously needs to be anchored in political philosophy, to look beyond informed consent and individual choice, and to ask which interventions are permissible without the consent of those who they may affect, and which are not.  Public health encompasses more than health 'promotion' and 'nudges' - and these too require justification - and even clinical interventions that are directed to individuals presuppose standards, technologies, and structures that cannot be matters of choice.

The entire article is here.