Cultural models of health, illness, and moral reasoning are receiving increasing attention in bioethics scholarship. Drawing upon research tools from medical and cultural anthropology, numerous researchers explore cultural variations in attitudes toward truth telling, informed consent, pain relief, and planning for end-of-life care. However, culture should not simply be equated with ethnicity. Rather, the concept of culture can serve as an heuristic device at various levels of analysis. In addition to considering how participation in particular ethnic groups and religious traditions (...) can shape moral reasoning, bioethicists need to consider processes of socialization into professional cultures, organizational cultures, national civic culture, and transnational culture. From the local world of the community clinic or oncology unit to the transnational workings of human rights agencies, attentiveness to the concept of culture can illuminate how patients, family members, and health care providers interpret illness, healing, and moral obligations. (shrink)

Recent events demonstrated to the world a growing sense of interconnection and interdependence that will call for universal values and ethical behaviors on the part of journalists. In this article I look at journalism, likening this profession of inquiry to that of scientists, and I look at journalism ethics as a body of knowledge before identifying universal characteristics and suggesting that because of the many universal values that bond humans at whatever location, journalists should be able to agree on common (...) ethical principles. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

Medical ethicists have assumed a role in justifying public voyeurism of human "curiosities." This role has precedent in how scientists and natural philosophers once legitimized the marketing of museums of "human curiosities." At the beginning of the twentieth century, physicians dissociated themselves from entrepreneurial displays of persons with anomalies, and such commercial exhibits went into decline. Today, news media, principally on television, promote news features about persons that closely resemble the nineteenth century exhibits of human curiosities. Reporters solicit medical ethicists (...) for soundbites to affirm the newsworthiness and propriety of public voyeurism of these medical stories. Ethicists' soundbites are usually ambiguous or self-evident and rarely enable viewers to morally engage the issues. The precedent of early twentieth century physicians disengaging from such exploitive public shows is a useful example for medical ethics. (shrink)

I argue that the televisual cosmetic surgical makeover is usefully understood as a contemporary manifestation of normalization, in Foucault’s sense—a process of defining a population in relation to its conformity or deviance from a norm, while simultaneously generating narratives of individual authenticity. Drawing on detailed analysis of “Extreme Makeover,” I suggest that the show erases its complicity with creating homogeneous bodies by representing cosmetic surgery as enabling of personal transformation through its narratives of intrinsic motivation and authentic becoming, and its (...) deployment of fairy tale tropes. (shrink)

Ethical lapses associated with the first facial transplant included breaches of confidentiality, bending of research rules, and film deals. However, discussions of the risk-benefit ratio for face transplantation are often deficient in that they ignore the needs, experience, and decision-making capability of potential recipients.

As the worlds of economics, politics, culture, and communications face a growing wave of globalization that will likely continue, ethical challenges for journalists have also gone global. I propose a clear division between ethics codes for media owners, the public, and professional journalists and present a set of considerations and specific rules applicable only to the last group. In this article I advocate a universal code of journalistic ethics but point out problems and warn against dangers that have made the (...) application of such codes difficult in the past. A universal code should consider the voluntary nature of such an endeavor, the cultural and economic differences in various journalistic traditions, and the problem of producing solutions acceptable to all involved. (shrink)

Wiggins and his colleagues (2004) are to be commended for their willingness to raise the question of the ethics of undertaking the world's first face transplant prior to initiating the experiment....

ABSTRACT An American surgical team has announced its intention to perform the first human facial transplantation. The team has, however, invited further analysis of the ethical issues before it proceeds and in this paper we take up that challenge in seeking to frame the debate with a particular focus on the recipients of the transplant. We address seven related areas of concern and identify numerous questions that require answers or, perhaps, better answers. We start by examining the nature of the (...) procedure and its intended benefits, why the procedure is being developed, and whether or not this should be viewed as experimental. Having concluded that this is experimental in nature, we then consider the broad question, who is the patient? Here we perceive difficulties in terms of the autonomy of the recipient, the unpredictable effects of receiving the transplant, and the role and influence of society. We conclude by asking whether the question should be ‘whether or not?’ rather than ‘when?’, particularly while the risks of losing face appear to far outweigh the likelihood of gaining face. (shrink)