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Medical Ethics Advisor

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  • Ethical arguments strong for mandatory vaccination

    Mandatory influenza vaccinations for health care workers can be ethically justified because the vaccine is reasonablysafe andeffective, voluntary participation has failed, and many people will be harmed if it does not occur, according to bioethicists.
  • "Neurohype" is one ethical concern with BRAIN initiative

    Many ethical considerations will be examined with The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative, including privacy, moral responsibility for one's actions, stigmatization and discrimination, and ensuring protection of vulnerable populations.
  • Bioethicists obliged to help impaired clinicians

    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.
  • Controversy stimulates informed consent debate

    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.
  • Ethics in forefront of move to control medical costs

    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.
  • Real-time consults meet needs of ED doctors, but rarely exist

    Ethics consults typically involve intensive care unit patients where issues can be thoroughly examined over a lengthy period of time, but what if a provider has minutes instead of days to make a decision?
  • Ethical responses to surreptitious recording

    Is a patient recording a physician without the doctors knowledge? If so, the reason could be that the patient simply wants to remember complicated discharge instructions, or that he or she intends to use the information as evidence against the physician in a legal proceeding.
  • Providers’ obligation: Protect both patients and society

    Unfounded and ineffective excesses in the use of involuntary commitment proceedings could result from the publics horror over recent mass shootings, according to John Z. Sadler, MD, Daniel W. Foster, MD, professor of medical ethics and professor of psychiatry and clinical sciences at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern in Dallas, TX, pointing to the sociological concept of the outrage dynamic, which emerges in the face of rare but horrific tragedies.
  • Providers face these ethical challenges with commitment

    The need to protect others from a potentially harmful patient is a pressing ethical issue not just for health care providers, but for society to contemplate at this juncture, according to Gary E. Jones, PhD, JD, professor in the Philosophy Department at University of San Diego (CA).
  • Online behaviors need ethical clarification

    There is low consensus among state medical boards as to whether derogatory speech toward patients, showing alcohol use without intoxication, and providing clinical narratives without violation of confidentiality constitute a violation of online professionalism, according to a recent study.