This topic focuses on the problems that arise in providing medical care to the population during armed conflict or martial law. Under such conditions, hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities have to work in challenging circumstances with limited resources and reduced security for medical personnel. This topic explores such issues as how martial law affects the work of medical institutions, what problems arise in providing medical care to the population in war, how war affects the health of the people, (...) and what consequences it may have in the long term. Research in this area will help to understand how to organize better and prepare medical facilities to work in war conditions and ensure high-quality medical care to the population in emergencies. The methods used to write this article were analysis, synthesis, generalization, explanation, and data qualification. The primary and fundamental sources for writing an article may vary depending on the topic, but generally, the following sources can be recommended. Academic studies: these can be scholarly articles, monographs, dissertations, conference papers, and other materials related to the topic of your article. These sources can help you find information about the latest research in the field and allow you to see the approaches and methodologies used in the studies. Official sources: These can be legal documents, reports, regulations, guidelines, and other materials issued by government agencies, ministries, and other departments. These sources can help you understand the rules and regulations governing your article's topic. Expert reviews: these can be interviews with experts in the field, articles, and other materials written by well-known specialists. These sources can help you understand the views and opinions of well-known experts on the issues related to your paper. (shrink)

A dogma accepted in many ethical, religious, and legal frameworks is that the reasons behind conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare cannot be evaluated or judged by any institution because conscience is individual and autonomous. This paper shows that this background view is mistaken: the requirement to reveal and explain the reasons for conscientious objection in healthcare is ethically justified and legally desirable. Referring to real healthcare cases and legal regulations, this paper argues that these reasons should be (...) evaluated either ex ante or ex post and defends novel conceptual claims that have not been analyzed in the debates on CO. First, a moral threshold requirement: CO is only justified if the reasons behind a refusal are of a moral nature and meet a certain threshold of moral importance. Second, this paper considers the rarely discussed conceptual similarities between CO in healthcare and the legal regulations concerning military refusals that place the burden of proof on conscientious objectors. This paper concludes that conscientious objection in healthcare can be accommodated only in some cases of destroying or killing human organisms. (shrink)

This paper sketches a framework for the separation of church and state and, with the framework in view, indicates why a government’s maintaining such separation poses challenges for balancing two major democratic ideals: preserving equality before the law and protecting liberty, including religious liberty. The challenge is particularly complex where healthcare is either provided or regulated by government. The contemporary problem in question here is the contraception coverage requirement in the Obama Administration’s healthcare mandate. Many institutions have mounted (...) legal challenges to the mandate on grounds of religious freedom. The paper proposes a number of interconnected principles toward a resolution of the problem: for the institutional realm, specific principles for church-state separation and a principle concerning the protection of citizens’sense of identity; and for the ethics of citizenship in the conduct individuals, principles that provide an adequate place for natural (thus secular) reason in lawmaking and political decisions. (shrink)

Vulnerability and politics are among the relevant and key topics of discussion in the Ethiopian healthcare context. Attempts by the formal bioethics structure in Ethiopia to deliberate on ethical issues relating to vulnerability and politics in healthcare have been limited, even though the informal analysis of bioethical issues has been present in traditional Ethiopian communities. This is reflected in religion, social values, and local moral underpinnings. Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the bioethical implications of (...) vulnerability and politics for healthcare in Ethiopia and to suggest possible ways forward. First, we will briefly introduce what has been done to develop bioethics as a field in Ethiopia and what gaps remain concerning its implementation in healthcare practice. This will give a context for our second and main task – analyzing the healthcare challenges in relation to vulnerability and politics and discussing their bioethical implications. In doing so, and since these two concepts are intrinsically broad, we demarcate their scope by focusing on specific issues such as poverty, gender, health governance, and armed conflicts. Lastly, we provide suggestions for the ways forward. (shrink)

Most people are completely oblivious to the danger that their medical data undergoes as soon as it goes out into the burgeoning world of big data. Medical data is financially valuable, and your sensitive data may be shared or sold by doctors, hospitals, clinical laboratories, and pharmacies—without your knowledge or consent. Medical data can also be found in your browsing history, the smartphone applications you use, data from wearables, your shopping list, and more. At best, data about your health might (...) end up in the hands of researchers on whose good will we depend to avoid abuses of power.2 Most likely, it will end up with data brokers who might sell it to a future employer, or an insurance company, or the government. At worst, your medical data may end up in the hands of criminals eager to commit extortion or identity theft. In addition to data harms related to exposure and discrimination, the collection of sensitive data by powerful corporations risks the creation of data monopolies that can dominate and condition access to health care. -/- This chapter aims to explore the challenge that big data brings to medical privacy. Section I offers a brief overview of the role of privacy in medical settings. I define privacy as having one’s personal information and one’s personal sensorial space (what I call autotopos) unaccessed. Section II discusses how the challenge of big data differs from other risks to medical privacy. Section III is about what can be done to minimise those risks. I argue that the most effective way of protecting people from suffering unfair medical consequences is by having a public universal healthcare system in which coverage is not influenced by personal data (e.g., genetic predisposition, exercise habits, eating habits, etc.). (shrink)

As national and state health care policy -making becomes contentious and complex, there is a need for a forum to debate and explore public concerns and values in health care, give voice to local citizens, to facilitate consensus among various stakeholders, and provide feedback and direction to health care institutions and policy makers. This paper explores the role that regional health care ethics committees can play and provides two contrasting examples of Networks involved in facilitation of public input into and (...) the development of health care policies and adoption of state-wide practices. (shrink)

A common critique of nudges is that they reduce someone's of choices or elicit behavior through means other than rational persuasion. In this paper, I argue against this form of critique. I argue that, if there is anything distinctively worrisome about nudges from the standpoint of morality, it is their tendency to hide the amount of social control that they embody, undermining democratic governance by making it more difficult for members of a political community to detect the social architect’s pulling (...) of the strings. This concern is particularly salient as to choices where it is important for people to directly engage with a certain set of values, “big personal decisions” (to use a simplifying phrase). Many healthcare decisions are exactly these kinds of choices. (shrink)

Objectives The study aims to evaluate the impact of the Revised Health Insurance Law 2014 on the utilisation of outpatient and inpatient care services, healthcare services utilisation at different levels of providers, types of providers and types of visits across different entitlement groups. Design/setting Secondary data from two waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) 2016, VHLSS 2014 were used. A cross-sectional study applying propensity score matching was conducted. Participants A total of 4900 individuals who reported using (...) healthcare services are analysed. Outcomes measure Numbers of outpatient and inpatient visits, frequency of healthcare service utilisation at commune health stations, district hospitals, provincial hospitals, public and private health facilities, number of visits at health facility for medical treatment and health checks per year. Results The result indicates that health insurance (HI) policy increased the number of outpatient visits for the enrolled between 0.87 and 1.29. The greatest impact was found on participants of heavily subsidised health insurance (HSHI) programmes with 1.29 visits per person per year. Similarly, an increase between 0.08 and 0.16 in the number of inpatient admissions was because of participation in HI. With regard to type of healthcare providers, the study found that participation in HI has the most effect on the use of healthcare services at district hospitals. However, the study demonstrated that the impacts of HI on the increase in the frequency of visiting commune health stations, number of visits at the provincial hospital for HSHI groups, and number of visits at health facilities for health check and consultation were sensitive to unobserved characteristics. Conclusion Our findings imply that policy-makers in Vietnam could continue expanding health insurance coverage to increase access to healthcare services for citizens, especially vulnerable groups. In addition, the government should draw more attention to primary healthcare level. (shrink)

Nanomedicine applications are an extension of traditional pharmaceutical drug development that are targeting the most pressing health concerns through improvements to diagnostics, drug delivery systems, therapeutics, equipment, surgery and prosthetics. The benefits and risks to the individual have been extrapolated to include broader societal impacts of nanomedicine with concerns extending to inequitable distribution of benefits accruing to developed, or North countries, rather than developing, or South countries. Analysis reveals a great deal of overlap between the North and South's most serious (...) health priorities which kill millions each year. A significant amount of nanomedicine research activity is also underway for the most pressing South country-specific health concerns. Nanomedicine development promises profound breakthroughs for both North and South countries; however, the existing inequities in pharmaceutical drug development, patenting, access and delivery remain significant barriers for South countries. (shrink)

Central elements of Roman Catholic treatment ethics include: 1) that rejection of treatment with the intent of hastening death (even for a good end) is ethically equivalent to active euthanasia with the same intent; 2) a distinction between morally obligatory “ordinary” treatment and morally optional “extraordinary treatment”; 3) that the quality of the patient’s life is not be a legitimate basis for rejecting treatment; and 4) that extraordinary treatment is not forbidden, but optional, and that it is the patient or (...) the patient’s legal surrogate–not the doctor– who has the right to choose or reject it. Despite these principles, even in a cultural climate fully sympathetic to Catholic treatment ethics, it is appropriate as a legal matter to maintain the doctrine of informed consent under which it is possible for patients or their surrogates to reject life-preserving treatment, including for unethical reasons. It is normally impossible to enforce in practice in the external forum a differentiation between rejection of treatment for ethically acceptable and ethically unacceptable reasons. By contrast, in cases of direct killing, such as assisting suicide, the intent to cause death is unmistakable (as opposed to accepting an increased risk of death as a foreseeable but unintended consequence of pursuing a good end). In a pluralistic society Catholic ethics cannot be legislatively enforced on the ground that they are compelled by Catholic teaching. However, the basic principles of Catholic treatment ethics may be justified based on logic and widely accepted norms of human equality independently of revelation or ecclesiastical authority. Particularly in protecting the right of individuals to choose and obtain life-saving medical treatment regardless of their “quality of life,” and in suicide prevention, secular law can and should be congruent with key aspects of Catholic health care ethics. (shrink)

Societies need markets, so just as trustworthy professionals are needed in fields such as healthcare, law and education, modern societies need trustworthy market managers, including corporate officers and directors. But in its screening of candidates, U.S. corporate business has lagged behind fields such as medicine and law, which in the nineteenth century addressed their need for screening by upgrading professional education and establishing licensing of individual practitioners. Corporate business, by contrast, has been too tolerant of problematic executives, particularly executives (...) of a type shown by recent research in psychology to exhibit a set of personality traits including below average concern about bad effects of their actions on other people. Over-representation of this problematic type has cost corporate business the trust and respect it could earn by resting fully on a time-honored alternative foundation already espoused by many trustworthy teachers and practitioners of business. Society needs these trustworthy people of business to work together to establish screening of candidates for high level corporate positions by upgrading MBA education and establishing licensing for these positions. For reasons again based on current findings in psychology, screening candidates for the MBA could be significantly strengthened by requiring historical studies, particularly history of the corporate legal structure in the U.S. and history of the MBA itself. Upgrading the MBA and establishing correlated licensing could open the way toward corrections in the legal form of the corporation to bring it into line with hospitals, law courts and universities as places where responsible professionals pursue their callings on behalf of society. (shrink)

“Bodily autonomy” has received significant attention in bioethics, medical ethics, and medical law in terms of the general inviolability of a patient’s bodily sovereignty and the rights of patients to make choices (e.g., reproductive choices) that concern their own body. However, the role of the body in terms of how it can or does contribute to a patient’s capacity for, or exercises of their autonomy in clinical decision-making situations has not been explicitly addressed. The approach to autonomy in this paper (...) is aligned with traditional theories that conceive autonomy in terms of an individual’s capacities for, and exercises of rational reflection. However, at the same time, this paper extends these accounts by arguing that autonomy is, in part, embodied. Specifically, by drawing on phenomenological conceptions of the experience of autonomy, we argue that, in principle, the body is a necessary component of the capacity for autonomy. Secondly, through the presentation of two different cases, we highlight ways in which a patient’s body can contribute to the autonomy of treatment choices. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to explore additional conditions under which a concept of embodied autonomy should be employed in medical decision making, how its underlying principles might be operationalised in clinical situations, and its consequences for approaches to patient autonomy in healthcare practice, policy, and law. (shrink)

The paper reports results of the very first survey-based study on the prevalence, frequency and nature of ethical or other non-medical difficulties faced by Polish physicians in their everyday clinical practice. The study involved 521 physicians of various medical specialties, practicing mainly in inpatient healthcare. The study showed that the majority of Polish physicians encounter ethical and other non-medical difficulties in making clinical decisions. However, they confront such difficulties less frequently than their foreign peers. Moreover, Polish doctors indicate different (...) circumstances as a source of the experienced problems. The difficulties most often reported relate to (i) patients (or their proxies) requests for medically non-indicated interventions; (ii) problems with communication with patients (or their proxies) due to the patients’ negative attitude, unwillingness to cooperate, or aggression; and (iii) various difficulties with obtaining informed consent. Polish physicians report difficulties associated with disagreements among care givers or scarcity of resources less frequently than doctors from other countries. The study’s findings provide support for the thesis that a significant portion of Polish physicians still follow a traditional, paternalistic, and hierarchical model of healthcare practice. Instead of promoting patient’s empowerment, engagement, and rights, they often consider these ideas as a threat to physicians’ professional authority and autonomy. The study leads to the conclusion that due to insufficient training in medical ethics, communication skills, and medical law, many Polish physicians lack the knowledge and competence necessary to adequately respond to challenges posed by modern healthcare practice. (shrink)

A book chapter exploring the potential consquences and ethical ramifications of using coercive measures within community mental healthcare. We argue that, althogh the move towards 'care in the community' may have had liberalising motivations, the subsequent reduction in inpatient or other supported residential provision, means that there has been an increasing move towards coercive measures outside of formal inpatient detention. We consider measures such as Community Treatment Orders, inducements, and other forms of leverage, explaining the underlying concepts, aims, and (...) exploring adverse consequences and ethical difficulties. (shrink)

Resumen Ésta es la primera traducción al español de las guías “Atención después de la investigación: un marco para los comités de ética de investigación del National Health Service (NHS) (borrador versión 8.0)”. El documento afirma que existe una fuerte obligación moral de garantizar que los participantes enfermos de un estudio clínico hagan una transición después del estudio hacia una atención de la salud apropiada. Con “atención de la salud apropiada” se hace referencia al acceso para los participantes a la (...) atención de la salud, proporcionada principalmente por el National Health Service (en adelante NHS), el sistema de salud del Reino Unido, y/o a la intervención en estudio, también llamada producto o tratamiento en investigación. Las guías “Atención después de la investigación” están dirigidas principalmente a los miembros de los 79 comités de ética de investigación del NHS y a quienes presentan sus estudios de investigación ante estos comités. Se trata de un documento borrador muy avanzado, trabajado en numerosas reuniones, durante más de 3 años, que ha sido discutido por participantes de estudios y miembros de la comunidad, miembros y presidentes de comités de ética de investigación del Reino Unido, especialistas internacionales en ética de la investigación, representantes de la industria y otras partes interesadas. La redacción de las guías es producto de la colaboración de Neema Sofaer y Penney Lewis, ambas investigadoras del King’s College London, en el Centre of Medical Law and Ethics del Dickson Poon School of Law, y Hugh Davies, Asesor en Ética de la Investigación de la Health Research Authority (HRA) del NHS. El traductor del presente documento, Ignacio Mastroleo, participó del workshop en la Fundación Brocher (Ginebra, Suiza, diciembre de 2011) donde se revisó el borrador versión 7.0 y contribuyó en la revisión del borrador de la versión 8.0 durante el 2012. -/- Abstract This is the first Spanish translation of the guidelines “Care after research: a framework for NHS RECs (8th draft)”. The document states that there is a strong moral obligation to ensure that participants in a clinical study who are ill transition after the study to appropriate healthcare. The terms "appropriate healthcare" refer to participants’ access to health care, mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), the health system in the UK, and/or to the intervention study also named investigational treatment or product. The guides "Care after research" are mainly directed to members of the 79 NHS committees of research ethics (RECs) and to those who submit their research to these committees. This is a very advanced draft document, worked in several meetings, for more than three years, that has been discussed with study participants and community members, members and chairs of RECs in the UK, international specialists in research ethics, industry representatives and other stakeholders. The drafting of the guidelines is the result of the collaboration of Neema Sofaer and Penney Lewis, both researchers at King's College London, at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics of Dickson Poon School of Law, and Hugh Davies, Research Ethics Advisor of the Health Research Authority (HRA) of the NHS. The translator of this document, Ignacio Mastroleo, attended the workshop at the Brocher Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland, December 2011) where draft version 7.0 was revised and contributed in the revision of draft version 8.0 during 2012. (shrink)

Provider assisted death is becoming a leading cause of death in Canada since the passage of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation in 2016. What was to be exceptional has now become common; some are calling for it to be expected. Increasing numbers of patients with chronic, non-terminal conditions are being euthanized. Healthcare personnel are now approving and offering MAiD to vulnerable patients who are depressed, disabled, chronically ill or impoverished. This paper presents a rationale from a transcendent moral (...) law perspective, traditionally called natural law, for why Canada now has the most liberal euthanasia regime in the world. The act of euthanasia requires the provider to willfully end the life of the patient by administering a lethal substance. This violates the transcendent moral law, do not kill. Once a culture willfully rejects this fundamental law and embraces a utilitarian ethic devoid of any principle except the notion of autonomy, it is inevitable that the practice will lead to ethical ambiguity and uncertainty. As the practice persists and becomes the norm, moral blindness develops which leads to gross abuses to human beings. I present an ethical diagram, the Moral Dissociation Curve, that depicts the reason for the trends unfolding in Canada. The Canadian healthcare system must re-affirm the principles of the Hippocratic Ethic and the inherent dignity of their patients. Those in healthcare need to prioritize high quality, compassionate, palliative care and say “no” to willfully ending the lives of suffering patients. In so doing, moral clarity will be re-gained, and society’s most vulnerable will be protected. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Techniques from behavioral economics—nudges—may help physicians increase pediatric vaccine compliance, but critics have objected that nudges can undermine autonomy. Since autonomy is a centrally important value in healthcare decision-making contexts, it counts against pediatric vaccination nudges if they undermine parental autonomy. Advocates for healthcare nudges have resisted the charge that nudges undermine autonomy, and the recent bioethics literature illustrates the current intractability of this debate. This article rejects a principle to which parties on both sides of this debate (...) sometimes seem committed: that nudges are morally permissible only if they are consistent with autonomy. Instead, I argue that, at least in the case of pediatric vaccination, some autonomy-undermining nudges may be morally justified. This is because parental autonomy in pediatric decision-making is not as morally valuable as the autonomy of adult patients, and because the interests of both the vaccinated child and other members of the community can sometimes be weighty enough to justify autonomy-infringing pediatric vaccination nudges. This article concludes with a set of worries about the effect of pediatric vaccination nudges on parent-physician relationships, and it calls on the American Academy of Pediatrics to draw on scientific and bioethics research to develop guidelines for the use of nudges in pediatric practice and, in particular, for the use of pediatric vaccination nudges. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Consultations are an important tool for physicians in solving difficult cases. They are extremely common in North America and to a lesser extent also present in Europe. However, there is little data on this practice in Poland. We present results of a survey of 521 physicians practising in Poland concerning their opinion on CECs and related practices. We analysed the data looking at such issues as CECs’ perceived availability, use of CECs, and perceived usefulness of such support. Physicians (...) in our study generally encounter hard ethics cases, even—surprisingly—those who do not work in hospitals. Most physicians have no CEC access, and those that do still do not employ CECs. However, physicians perceive this form of support as useful—even more so among actual users of CECs. We compared these findings with similar studies from other European countries and the North America. We point out peculiarities of our results as compared to those in other countries, with some possible explanations. We hope the results may encourage regulatory debate on the need to formally introduce CECs into the Polish healthcare system. (shrink)

Owing to its grappling with a motley of intricate socioeconomic, as well as medico-legal, crises, Haiti has found itself bereft of some of its people, many of whom have had to leave the Caribbean country in search of improved lives elsewhere. Receiving some of the Haitian refugees fleeing abject poverty, unemployment, and other harms and barriers has been the United States, one of Haiti's northern neighbors and a country that has played an outcome-determinative, if not outsized, role in steering the (...) country toward its presently hobbled state. Drawing on the U.S.’s recent treatment of Haitian refugees, this paper argues that U.S. reception of Haitian immigrants rubs salt in the wound of a long history of dehumanizing and oppressive abuses endured by Haitians. Furthermore, and more importantly, this paper posits that U.S. failure to wholly embrace its legal obligation to accept Haitian refugees under international law needs to be understood in the light of the specific horrors inflicted by science, in pre-independence Haiti, on non-consenting, Afro-Haitian experimental subjects. And by extension, such a contextually-nuanced understanding is crucial in shaping the delivery of healthcare services to Haitian refugees fortunate enough to remain in the U.S. —as an awareness and appreciation of the socio-historical context of patients' lived experiences, i.e., their complete social history, can furnish important clues vis-à-vis the presence and etiologies of disease, influence the foci of physical exams, and generally pave the way for the provision of cost-efficient and evidence-based care. (shrink)

Some of the most difficult consultations for an ethics consultant to resolve are those in which the patient is ready to leave the acute-care setting, but the patient or family refuses the plan, or the plan is impeded by deficiencies in the healthcare system. Either way, the patient is “stuck” in the hospital and the ethics consultant is called to help get the patient “unstuck.” These encounters, which we call “complex discharges,” are beset with tensions between the interests of (...) the institution and the interests of the patient as well as tensions within the ethics consultant whose commitments are shaped both by the values of the organization and the values of their own profession. The clinical ethics literature on this topic is limited and provides little guidance. What is needed is guidance for consultants operating at the bedside and for those participating at a higher organizational level. To fill this gap, we offer guidance for facilitating a fair process designed to resolve the conflict without resorting to coercive legal measures. We reflect on three cases to argue that the approach of the consultant is generally one of mediation in these types of disputes. For patients who lack decision making capacity and lack a surrogate decision maker, we recommend the creation of a complex discharge committee within the organization so that ethics consultants can properly discharge their duties to assist patients who are unable to advocate for themselves through a fair and transparent process. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of digital health innovation, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), is transforming healthcare. The growing role the European Union (EU) plays in regulating the use of AI in healthcare renders national laws insufficient to safeguard patients from unique AIrelated risks. This underscores the urgent need for the recognition of a canon of patients' rights in the scope of EU law. This paper proposes the blueprint for an EU Charter for Digital Patients' Rights, consolidating and adapting existing rights (...) for patients to address these specific challenges. Traditional patients' rights such as the right to privacy and the right to informed consent are interpreted in light of the challenges posed by AI. It also proposes novel rights for patients, such as the right not to be subject to automated medical decision-making and the right to meaningful human contact. This paper highlights the EU's central role in protecting patients' rights and outlines strategies for effective implementation. This comprehensive approach aims to address the current shortcomings and enhance the legal framework governing digital health in Europe. (shrink)

As opposed to a ‘one size fits all’ approach, precision medicine uses relevant biological, medical, behavioural and environmental information about a person to further personalize their healthcare. This could mean better prediction of someone’s disease risk and more effective diagnosis and treatment if they have a condition. Big data allows for far more precision and tailoring than was ever before possible by linking together diverse datasets to reveal hitherto-unknown correlations and causal pathways. But it also raises ethical issues relating (...) to the balancing of interests, viability of anonymization, familial and group implications, as well as genetic discrimination. This article analyses these issues in light of the values of public benefit, justice, harm minimization, transparency, engagement and reflexivity and applies the deliberative balancing approach found in theEthical Framework for Big Data in Health and Research to a case study on clinical genomic data sharing. Please refer to that article for an explanation of how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. Our discussion is meant to be of use to those involved in the practice as well as governance and oversight of precision medicine to address ethical concerns that arise in a coherent and systematic manner. (shrink)

The Universal Formula: Solving the Problem of Free Will Through the Law of Balance By Angelito Malicse Introduction The problem of free will has puzzled humanity for centuries, often viewed as a philosophical or metaphysical enigma. This essay presents a universal formula that resolves this dilemma by focusing on the law of karma and the universal law of balance. It explores the interconnectedness of systems, the critical role of accurate knowledge, and the evolution of emotions in maintaining harmony. By examining (...) real-world examples such as overpopulation, environmental degradation, economic instability, and the flaws of capitalism, this essay demonstrates how the universal formula can guide human decision-making to achieve a balanced and sustainable world. The Law of Karma: Systems and Balance The universal formula begins with the law of karma, which extends beyond cause and effect to encompass the integrity of systems, both natural and man-made. Every system—whether ecological, social, or economic—operates according to the universal law of balance. When imbalances arise, the system becomes dysfunctional, leading to adverse consequences. For example, while humans sit at the top of the food chain, the Earth's ecosystem cannot sustain unchecked overpopulation of our species. Overpopulation leads to the destruction of natural resources as humans consume everything, including plants, animals, and even insects. This voracious consumption damages ecosystems, accelerates deforestation, depletes biodiversity, and disrupts the delicate balance of the natural world. To ensure the sustainability of life on Earth, it is crucial to regulate population growth, conserve natural resources, and refrain from exploiting all animals on land and in the sea. By preserving biodiversity and maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, we protect the foundation of life that supports all species, including humans. Free Will and the Dependence on Correct Knowledge Human free will is not an autonomous force but is entirely dependent on correct knowledge and information. Errors in decision-making, often caused by ignorance, false beliefs, and distorted theories, disrupt the balance of systems. For instance, the failure to regulate overpopulation creates cascading problems, including climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. Without accurate knowledge about the consequences of overpopulation, individuals and societies continue to make decisions that exacerbate these imbalances. Education and government policy play vital roles in addressing these issues. Policies that promote population regulation can maintain a sustainable economy, while education fosters awareness of the need to protect ecosystems and biodiversity. Correct information empowers individuals to make decisions that align with the universal law of balance, preventing errors that destabilize systems. The Flaws of Capitalism and the Need for Balance The efficiency of the capitalistic system increases over time, leading to significant flaws if left unchecked. Private companies continually strive to reduce overhead and operating expenses, often by automating processes and replacing human labor with robotics. While this enhances profitability, it also reduces employment opportunities, suppresses wages, and widens income inequality. These principles, central to the management strategies of most private companies, create systemic imbalances in the economy. The solution lies in adopting a mixed economic system that counterbalances the excesses of capitalism with socialist principles. Governments must play a pivotal role in addressing these imbalances by implementing the following measures: Creating High-Salary Government Jobs: These jobs provide stable income and stimulate local economies. Providing Unemployment Benefits or Universal Basic Income (UBI): These measures ensure that individuals who lose jobs due to automation and efficiency gains still have the purchasing power to meet their needs. Offering Free Healthcare and Education: These fundamental services reduce the financial burden on families, enabling them to invest in other areas of life. Promoting Government Spending: By investing in infrastructure, renewable energy, and public services, governments can create new jobs and maintain the flow of money in the economy. Government spending serves as a balancing mechanism by injecting funds into the economy, which in turn supports private companies through increased consumer demand. This feedback loop creates private-sector jobs, stabilizes the economy, and ensures a balanced flow of resources between public and private sectors. The Role of Emotions in Balancing Systems Human emotions, both positive and negative, serve as essential feedback mechanisms for maintaining balance. Positive emotions, such as love and joy, encourage cooperative behavior and strengthen familial and social bonds. Negative emotions, such as fear and anger, signal imbalances that require corrective action. For example, the unconditional love within a family fosters a nurturing environment that supports the emotional and psychological development of children. This foundation contributes to a high-quality next generation of parents, capable of fostering further generational improvement. Conversely, the absence of such love or a dysfunctional family structure often leads to crime, substance abuse, and other societal problems. These negative outcomes are the effects of systemic imbalances, whether caused by poor parenting, economic hardship, or the lack of a government safety net. Addressing Environmental and Social Imbalances The universal formula underscores the importance of a holistic education system in addressing systemic imbalances. Education must instill values such as cleanliness, discipline, ethics, and good manners while fostering a respect for nature. Teaching children the importance of not harming wildlife and preserving ecosystems is critical to protecting biodiversity and ensuring a harmonious coexistence with other species. Government policies also play a crucial role. Regulations that protect natural resources, reduce pollution, and promote renewable energy can prevent environmental degradation. Policies that provide social safety nets can alleviate poverty and reduce crime by addressing the root causes of economic and social imbalance. The Importance of Holistic Systems Thinking The universal formula emphasizes the interconnectedness of systems, demonstrating that imbalances in one area often ripple through others. For instance, a lack of holistic education contributes to ignorance, which leads to poor decision-making. This, in turn, exacerbates issues such as overpopulation, resource depletion, and social unrest. Producing a high-quality young generation requires a combination of good parenting, access to education, and supportive government policies. By fostering an environment that values balance, discipline, and ethics, societies can produce individuals capable of making decisions that align with the universal law of balance. Conclusion The universal formula offers a comprehensive solution to the problem of free will by integrating the law of karma, the universal law of balance, and the evolutionary role of emotions. By understanding and addressing the root causes of imbalance—whether environmental, social, or economic—humanity can achieve harmony within and across systems. Real-world examples, such as overpopulation, economic instability, environmental destruction, and the flaws of capitalism, highlight the urgent need to apply this formula. Through holistic education, informed policies, and an unwavering commitment to balance, individuals and societies can prevent errors, correct existing imbalances, and create a sustainable and harmonious future. The time to act is now. By embracing the universal formula, humanity can unlock the full potential of free will, ensuring a balanced and equitable world for generations to come. ---. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes, expectations, experiences, and barriers that physicians in Tripoli hospitals experienced when working alongside Clinical Pharmacists (CPs). A descriptive self-administered questionnaire was used for the study, and participants were selected from several Tripoli hospitals. Most of the respondents agreed that CPs are an essential part of patient care teams and that they have the legal authority to review a patient's medication regimen and response. More than half of respondents believe CPs must (...) be responsible for the medications they prescribe to patients. Half of the respondents agreed that CPs should be encouraged to play a more active role in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The majority of participants agreed that CPs should participate in managing drug side effects and almost half agreed that CPs can contribute to decisions about drug interactions. By a low agreement rate, 42.7% of respondents thought CPs were specially qualified to counsel patients on drug therapy. A similar low trend was observed, with 40.9% agreeing to provide pharmacists with additional responsibility and authority in clinical departments, in contrast, 54.5% expressed their concern about the clinical responsibility of CPs in clinical practice. A minority of physicians agreed that Physicians should consult pharmacists in selecting the best pharmacological treatment. At the same time, the majority think that pharmacists lack clinical skills and 61.8% feel that physicians are unable to communicate effectively with CPs. 43.6% acknowledged that the traditional opposition between the two professions was a barrier to interprofessional collaboration while the absence of pharmacy space in clinical settings was cited by 39.1%. A majority of respondents agreed that physicians and pharmacists may improve their interprofessional collaboration by raising their awareness about it. A minority of respondents thought that laws and regulations governing physician collaboration should be put in place to promote effective collaboration between physicians and CPs. The study discovered that although most physicians endorse the introduction of clinical pharmacy services in hospitals and believe that physicians and pharmacists can collaborate on many tasks, respondents were not as impressed with the CPs' performance and believed that they lacked the professionalism required to carry out clinical responsibilities successfully. To facilitate the growth of clinical pharmacy services, laws and regulations must be put in place. (shrink)

This research aims to investigate managing information and planning for the participation of health charities. With the Covid-19 outbreak, it was important to use information systems to optimize health management. The correct processing of information is the basis for better use of health charities’ participation. Using the snowball technique, and semi-structured interviews, 47 experts and non-experts in Fars province were asked for their opinions. Next, based on the fuzzy network analysis, important factors were prioritized. Four categories and 8 important criteria (...) were identified. To prioritize the effective aspects of the participation of health charities in Fars province, a network analysis technique was used via MATLAB software. Strategy and programs with a normal weight of 0.34 showed the highest priority. Research and education with a normal weight of 0.26 received the second priority. Laws and regulations with a normal weight of 0.24 were placed as the third priority. Based on the obtained results, creating strategy and planning, training and building cultural in this field, ease of rules and regulations as well as planning of financial resources play an important role in managing the participation of health donors. With precise planning of health programs, donors see the transparency of decisions. They check the part that needs financing and equipment completion. Because the quality of plans and programs, effectiveness and efficiency of strategies, and the quality of results depend on the decisions made by donors. (shrink)

This chapter examines whether high prices for gene therapies are justified and whether the problems associated with high prices can be solved by the "pay for performance" (P4P) reimbursement model. To this end, we first describe how prices for new drugs, including gene therapies, are set in Germany (section 2.). P4P is then presented as an example of a reimbursement model (section 3.). The subsequent ethical analysis (section 4.) first examines whether P4P models can sustainably guarantee the right to health (...) and healthcare for all people (section 4.1; cf. on the "sustainable right to health" already Alex, 2021). It is then shown that cost-benefit analyses for setting prices for new gene therapies must be viewed critically from an ethical perspective and pose a problem for equity of access and thus also for the sustainable guarantee of a right to health (section 4.2). The final question is whether P4P is compatible with the idea of human dignity (Article 1 I 1 of the German Basic Law) (section 4.3; cf. already König et al., 2020). -/- Alex, K. (2021): Ethical conceptualization of a sustainable right to health(care). In: Schildmann, J. et al. (eds.): Defining the value of medical interventions. Normative and empirical challenges. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart: 29-48. PMID: 36256802 König, J. et al. (2020): Am individuellen Therapieergebnis orientierte Erstattungsverfahren in der Onkologie: ethische Implikationen am Beispiel der CAR-T-Zelltherapie. In: Ethik Med 32: 85–92. doi: 10.1007/s00481-020-00565-3. (shrink)

Much has been written about the ethics of sex selection. This article thoroughly explores the ethical arguments put forth in the literature both for and against non-medical sex selection using sperm sorting. While most of these arguments come from philosophers, feminist scholars, social scientists and members of the healthcare community, they are often echoed in empirical studies that have explored community values. This review is timely because the first efficacious method for sex selection via sperm sorting, MicroSort, is currently (...) in clinical trials and moving closer to FDA approval for marketing in the USA. While the clinical trials are currently focused on the use of MicroSort to avoid X-linked genetic diseases, MicroSort can also be used to satisfy parental preferences. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence and robotics is pervasive in daily life and set to expand to new levels potentially replacing human decision-making and action. Self-driving cars, home and healthcare robots, and autonomous weapons are some examples. A distinction appears to be emerging between potentially benevolent civilian uses of the technology (eg unmanned aerial vehicles delivering medicines), and potentially malevolent military uses (eg lethal autonomous weapons killing human com- batants). Machine-mediated human interaction challenges the philosophical basis of human existence and ethical conduct. (...) Aside from technical challenges of ensuring ethical conduct in artificial intelligence and robotics, there are moral questions about the desirability of replacing human functions and the human mind with such technology. How will artificial intelligence and robotics engage in moral reasoning in order to act ethically? Is there a need for a new set of moral rules? What happens to human interaction when it is mediated by technology? Should such technology be used to end human life? Who bears responsibility for wrongdoing or harmful conduct by artificial intelligence and robotics? -/- Whilst Kant may be familiar to international lawyers for setting restraints on the use of force and rules for perpetual peace, his foundational work on ethics provides an inclusive moral philosophy for assessing ethical conduct of individuals and states and, thus, is relevant to discussions on the use and development of artificial intelligence and robotics. His philosophy is inclusive because it incorporates justifications for morals and legitimate responses to immoral conduct, and applies to all human agents irrespective of whether they are wrongdoers, unlawful combatants, or unjust enemies. Humans are at the centre of rational thinking, action, and norm-creation so that the rationale for restraints on methods and means of warfare, for example, is based on preserving human dignity as well as ensuring conditions for perpetual peace among states. Unlike utilitarian arguments which favour use of autonomous weapons on the basis of cost-benefit reasoning or the potential to save lives, Kantian ethics establish non-consequentialist and deontological rules which are good in themselves to follow and not dependent on expediency or achieving a greater public good. -/- Kantian ethics make two distinct contributions to the debate. First, they provide a human-centric ethical framework whereby human exist- ence and capacity are at the centre of a norm-creating moral philosophy guiding our understanding of moral conduct. Second, the ultimate aim of Kantian ethics is practical philosophy that is relevant and applicable to achieving moral conduct. -/- I will seek to address the moral questions outlined above by exploring how core elements of Kantian ethics relate to use of artificial intelli- gence and robotics in the civilian and military spheres. Section 2 sets out and examines core elements of Kantian ethics: the categorical imperative; autonomy of the will; rational beings and rational thinking capacity; and human dignity and humanity as an end in itself. Sections 3-7 consider how these core elements apply to artificial intelligence and robotics with discussion of fully autonomous and human-machine rule-generating approaches; types of moral reasoning; the difference be- tween ‘human will’ and ‘machine will’; and respecting human dignity. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the way in which two foundational principles of medical ethics–the trusted doctor and patient autonomy–can be undermined by the use of machine learning (ML) algorithms and addresses its legal significance. This paper can be a guide to both health care providers and other stakeholders about how to anticipate and in some cases mitigate ethical conflicts caused by the use of ML in healthcare. It can also be read as a road map as to (...) what needs to be done to achieve an acceptable level of explainability in an ML algorithm when it is used in a healthcare context. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

The number of police departments carrying Narcan keeps increasing at a fast pace throughout the U.S., as it is considered an effective measure to fight the opioid epidemic. However, there have been strong oppositions to the idea of the police Narcan use. Still, in 2018, the nation is debating about it. Though not clearly visible to the public, there are important ethical arguments against the police Narcan use which necessarily involve understanding of the ethical roles and responsibilities of police as (...) the law enforcement agency and apprehension of the moral status of a non-therapeutic opioid use. The authors of the paper investigate, primarily, the existing ethical controversies surrounding the police Narcan use while touching upon the issue of the decriminalizing drug policy in the U.S. The authors conclude that the police can carry and administer Narcan without self-contradiction and that the policymakers’ investigation on the drug decriminalization policy should begin with the understanding of the “common morality” of the American public, the ethical view shared and practiced by the greatest number of people. (shrink)

The dependence solution claims that God’s foreknowledge is no threat to our freedom because God’s foreknowledge depends (in a relevant sense) on our actions. The assumption here is that those parts of the world which depend on our actions are no threat to the freedom of those actions. Recently, Taylor Cyr has presented a case which challenges this assumption. Moreover, since the case is analogous to the case of God’s foreknowledge, it would seem to establish that, even if God’s foreknowledge (...) somehow depends on our actions, our freedom is still threatened. This paper defends the dependence solution, first, by offering an error theory for the intuitions that drive Cyr’s case and, second, by pointing out some arguably mysterious implications of accepting those intuitions. These points taken in conjunction show that Cyr’s case, although quite fascinating, is not as challenging as it might at first seem. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

In Mengzi 6A4, Gaozi states that “yì 義 (propriety, rightness) is external, not internal.” In 6A5, Meng Jizi says of yì that “...it is on the external, not from the internal.” Their defenses are met with Mengzi’s resistance. What does he perceive and resist in these statements? Focusing on several key passages, I compare six promising interpretations. 6A4 and a relevant part of 2A2 can be rendered comparably sensible under each of the six. However, what Gaozi says in 6A1 clearly (...) is evidence to Mengzi that, of the six views, Gaozi holds three although he does not convey them in his statement. As for Meng Jiz’s defense of his statement, Meng Jizi cites a special occasion where one is required to act one way even though one would feel a different way. Mengzi’s response has been traditionally interpreted as boiling down to a dissenting opinion about empirical psychology, that the agent on that special occasion would in fact feel the same way as they ought to act. But on a more charitable reading, the point Mengzi makes is conceptual: Though the satisfaction of yì may not require that the feeling and the act align perfectly in this case, cases where the alignment obtains are conceptually prior. This not only refutes Meng Jizi’s statement but also enables a more elegant explanation of why the Mengzi rightly has no record of Mengzi affirming that yì is internal. I conclude that 6A5 itself uniquely favors one interpretation, as far as Meng Jizi’s position is concerned: How one feels is irrelevant to whether one satisfies yì. (shrink)

In her paper, “The cost of conscience: Kant on conscience and conscientious objection,” Jeanette Kennett argues that a Kantian view of conscientious objection in medicine would bar physicians from refusing to perform certain practices based on conscience. I offer a response in the following manner: First, I reconstruct her main argument; second, I present a more accurate picture of Kant’s view of conscience. I conclude that, given a Kantian framework, a physician should be allowed to refuse to perform practices that (...) break the moral law and, thus, refuse practices that violate her conscience. (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

Ill persons suffer from a variety of epistemically-inflected harms and wrongs. Many of these are interpretable as specific forms of what we dub pathocentric epistemic injustices, these being ones that target and track ill persons. We sketch the general forms of pathocentric testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, each of which are pervasive within the experiences of ill persons during their encounters in healthcare contexts and the social world. What’s epistemically unjust might not be only agents, communities and institutions, but the (...) theoretical conceptions of health that structure our responses to illness. Thus, we suggest that although such pathocentric epistemic injustices have a variety of interpersonal and structural causes, they are also sustained by a deeper naturalistic conception of the nature of illness. (shrink)

Self-tracking-technologies can serve as a prominent example of how digital technologies put to test established practices, institutions, and structures of medicine and healthcare. While proponents emphasize the potentials, e.g., for individualized healthcare and new research data, opponents stress the risk that these technologies will reinforce gender-related inequalities. -/- While this has been made clear from—often intersectional—feminist perspectives since the introduction of such technologies, we aim to provide a queer-feminist perspective on self-tracking applications in healthcare by analyzing three (...) concrete cases. In this way, we want to show why such a perspective is helpful in assessing self-tracking technologies and how such a perspective might contribute to a queering of healthcare. -/- After a short introduction to self-tracking in healthcare and the corresponding risks of reproducing gender-related inequalities, we introduce queer bioethics as a methodology to examine structural discrimination and marginalization in bioethical research. We apply this framework in the analysis of three exemplary self-tracking applications from the areas of nutrition/fitness, reproductive health, and mental health. In the subsequent discussion of these results against the backdrop of already existing queer-sensitive technologies, we identify an equal access, a subversive design, an inclusive database, and a diversity-sensitive and discriminatory-critical definition of purposes as well as individualized usage possibilities as first possible starting points for a queering of self-tracking applications. Finally, we draw conclusions, how such a critical perspective on self-tracking applications might also contribute to a queering of the healthcare system at a structural level. (shrink)

Abstract Aim: The COVID-19 infection is transmitted either by human-to-human contact, social-physical contact, and respiratory droplets or by touching items touched by the infected. This has triggered some conflicted behaviors such as stigma, violence, and opposite behavior applause. The aim of this study is to explore several newspaper articles about stigma, violence, or insensitive behavior against healthcare professionals and to analyze the reason for these behaviors during these COVID-19 pandemics. Method: The website of the Turkish Medical Association "Press Releases (...) News" and online newspaper articles have been scanned using keywords and have been classified and analyzed according to the content of articles between the periods of March 11 to April 28, 2020. This is a qualitative study with content analysis. No official ethical permission was obtained as the study was conducted through open access internet news sites. Result: 16 reports were selected from online reports that matched the keywords of the study. 13 of these reports included desensitization, violence, lack of precaution, stigmatization, and applause, and 3 reports included doctors’ statements. After being categorized, content analyses were conducted. Conclusion: This study revealed the necessity of a multi-faceted evaluation of the problems faced by healthcare professionals who are at the forefront of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study has a primary role in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of the pandemic and reveals that doctors are trying to fulfill their duties in an ethical framework despite stigmatized behavior. Authorities should provide various supports to protect healthcare professionals before, during, and after the epidemic for the success of the COVID-19 outbreak struggle. (shrink)

One aim of the Critique of Practical Reason is to establish that reason alone can determine the will. To show that it can, it suffices to show that there are practical principles given by reason alone – what Kant terms ‘practical laws’, or (roughly) requirements of reason on action. Chapter I of the Analytic accomplishes this aim by arguing that the moral law is an authoritative practical principle given as a ‘fact of reason’. The chapter begins in section 1 with (...) a ‘Definition’ (Erklärung) of a practical law as a practical principle that.. (shrink)

Adaptation and stress are two main concepts useful for better understanding the phases of illness and health-related human behavior. The two faces of adaptation, adaptation as a process and adaptation as a product, have raised the question of how long the adaptation process will take in cancer trajectories. The care setting transition from clinical-based into home-based cancer care has stressed the role of family caregivers (FCG) in cancer management. This study examines how types of demanded healthcare information affect the (...) FCG’s role in catalyzing the adaptation of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and results interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of demanded healthcare information, FCGs with a higher tendency to demand cancer-specific information are more likely to need support in catalyzing the adaptation of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information on alternative therapies are less likely to need support in catalyzing cancer adaptation. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in cancer adaptation assistance. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer’s prognosis or likely outcome, must be prioritized to assist FCG’s role in catalyzing adaptation among female cancer patients. Cancer prognosis and outcomes reflect the future of cancer care results. (shrink)

Trans healthcare and thus trans people have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trans people’s healthcare situations have turned out to be so vulnerable in this crisis because they have been precarious to begin with. There are multiple ways in which trans healthcare has been affected: Surgeries and other procedures have been cancelled or postponed, and mental health services have been paused or moved online. This raises ethical questions around discrimination against trans people in the (...) class='Hi'>healthcare system. This article argues that cancelling trans surgeries and procedures in the COVID-19 crisis is made possible through an understanding of trans healthcare as non-essential. The article explores how trans healthcare in particular has been affected by the pandemic. (shrink)

Decision-making regarding healthcare expenditure hinges heavily on an individual's health status and the certainty about the future. This study uses data on propensity of general health exam (GHE) spending to show that despite the debate on the necessity of GHE, its objective is clear—to obtain more information and certainty about one’s health so as to minimise future risks. Most studies on this topic, however, focus only on factors associated with GHE uptake and overlook the shifts in behaviours and attitudes (...) regarding different levels of cost. To fill the gap, this study analyses a dataset of 2068 subjects collected from Hanoi (Vietnam) and its vicinities using the baseline-category logit method. We evaluate the sensitivity of Vietnamese healthcare consumers against two groups of factors (demographic and socioeconomic-cognitive) regarding payment for periodic GHE, which is not covered by insurance. Our study shows that uninsured, married and employed individuals are less sensitive to cost than their counterparts because they value the information in reducing future health uncertainty. The empirical results challenge the objections to periodic health screening by highlighting its utility. The relevance of behavioural economics is further highlighted through a look at the bounded rationality of healthcare consumers and private insurance companies in using and providing the service, respectively. (shrink)

One fundamental healthcare issue brought to the fore by the current COVID-19 pandemic concerns the scope and nature of the right to healthcare. Given our increasing need for the usually limited healthcare resources, to what extent can we demand provision of these resources as a matter of right? One philosophical way of handling this issue is to clarify the nature of this right. Using the challenges of COVID-19 in the Philippines as the context of analysis, we argue (...) for the view that regards the right to healthcare as fundamentally moral in kind, which should thereby guide its legal and contractual appropriations. In particular, we respond to objections against this view stemming from issues concerning the universality and satisfiability of the right’s correlative duty. We deal with such issues by invoking the relative degree of incumbency of moral rights and the capability-relativity of positive duties. We further contend that as these factors define the scope of the moral right to healthcare, they thus constrain what we can demand as a matter of right to meet our healthcare needs in this time of the pandemic. (shrink)