In her paper titled “The End of Personhood,” Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) takes a swipe at the functionalist account of personhood. The problem with the functionalist view of personhood is that...

Parsa-Parsi et al systematically discuss and elucidate contentious and non-controversial ethical issues that emerged during the ICoME (International Code of Medical Ethics) revision process and the consensus they achieved. The ethical issues discussed include the physician’s duty to act in the best interests of patients and to ensure they are protected from the unjustifiable risk of harm, respect for patient autonomy and the duties of physicians during emergencies, among others. This paper examines paragraph 26, which requires doctors to provide only (...) medically justified remote treatment, ensure patients offer informed consent and adequately protect their confidentiality.1 At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries in Europe and America implemented remote-by-default healthcare policies. At that time, the policy aimed to ensure that patients enjoyed continued access to care while protecting healthcare professionals’ health and well-being. After the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy remained in place. Regardless of the nature of their ailment, patients have consistently preferred in-person care out of concern that their health issues might not be accurately diagnosed and that they may not receive quality care …. (shrink)

Central to Watts and Newson’s argument in their seminal paper ‘ Is there a duty to routinely reinterpret genomic variant classifications? ’ is that diagnostic laboratories are not morally obligated to actively reinterpret variants of uncertain significance (VUS) due to the superior outcomes offered by next-generation sequencing (NGS) compared with traditional methods.1 NGS technologies can identify, analyse and interpret millions of genetic variations at once. For example, ‘the use of conventional molecular assays in clinical contexts could require doing a lot (...) of assays for various mutations. Using these different assays, more tissue may be required. These targets can accurately be questioned using NGS technology in a single test.’2 If NGS-based genomic sequencing is reliable and its output outweighs the potential harm of uncertainties, then, it is plausible to say that those test providers cannot incur a moral duty to actively reinterpret VUS because there won’t be any need to do so.1 Despite its seeming reliability, diagnostic laboratories face enormous challenges in implementing NGS-based …. (shrink)

Anti-abortion proponents argue that a fetus holds the status of a person akin to healthy adult human beings. The fetus possesses inherent dignity and a fundamental right to life, which must be resp...

This is critical review of Richard Dean’ book, The Value of Humanity in Kant’s Moral Theory. Dean’s book was evaluated, and some of his interpretations of Kant were critiqued. However, it concludes that Dean’s book is illuminating especially, as regards the distinction he made between consent and informed consent and their roles in biomedical practice.

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 147-148, September 2021.