Accounts of the value of patient choice in contemporary medical ethics typically focus on the act of choosing. Being the one to choose, it is argued, can be valuable either because it enables one to ...

Introduction Switzerland lacks specific legal regulation of assistance in suicide. The practice has, however, developed since the 1980s as a consequence of a gap in the Swiss Criminal Code and is ...

Subjects of ectogenesis—human beings that are developing in artificial wombs (AWs)—share the same moral status as newborns. To demonstrate this, I defend two claims. First, subjects of partial ...

Objective: Little empirical evidence exists to support either side of the ongoing debate over whether legalising physician aid in dying would undermine patient trust. Design: A random national sample ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced clinicians, policy-makers and the public to wrestle with stark choices about who should receive potentially life-saving interventions such as ventilators, ICU beds and ...

Objective To increase knowledge of how doctors perceive futile treatments and scarcity of resources at the end of life. In particular, their perceptions about whether and how resource limitations ...

Aim To study the views on the acceptability of physician-assisted-suicide (PAS) of lay people and health professionals in an African country, Togo. Method In February–June 2012, 312 lay people and 198 ...

Defining quality of life is a difficult task as it is a subjective and personal experience. However, for the elderly, this definition is necessary for making complicated healthcare-related decisions.

Debate continues about the ethics of sham surgery controls. The most powerful argument for sham surgery controls is that rigorous experiments are needed to demonstrate safety and efficacy of surgical ...

In this issue, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G. Miller ( see page 3 , Editor's choice) argue that what makes killing wrong, when it is wrong, is not that it ends life, but that it causes ...

Background At the point of cancer diagnosis, practitioners may wrestle with ethical dilemmas associated with medico-legal implications of diagnosis, treatment options and disclosure to family members.

Recognising a diminution in his emotional response to patients’ deaths, the author analyses in detail his internal reactions in an attempt to understand what he believes is a common phenomenon among ...