Journal of Medical Ethics is a leading international journal that reflects the whole field of medical ethics.

Healthcare professionals are expected to deliver care that is consistent with clinical guidelines. In this article, we show that the English courts are increasingly willing to be persuaded by written guidelines when determining the standard of care in cases of alleged clinical negligence. This reflects a wider shift in the approach taken by courts in a …

Jan 12, 2025 · In this paper, we take a data-driven approach to analyse intellectual trends over the first five decades of the Journal of Medical Ethics ( JME ). Our data set, comprising all texts published in the JME since 1975, reveals not only the most distinctive topics of the JME in comparison to other key journals with similar profiles but also diachronic fluctuations in the prominence of certain ...

Dec 20, 2024 · The scientific rationale for including diverse populations First, including diverse populations in the first clinical trials of cardiac xenotransplantation enhances the scientific value of the data by assessing safety and efficacy among various populations. Treatment response can differ among patient (sub)groups as a result of genetic, physiological and socioeconomic factors. 2 By including ...

Jan 19, 2025 · In the UK, the Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment (ReSPECT) is a widely used process, designed to facilitate shared decision-making between a clinician and a patient or, if the patient lacks capacity to participate in the conversation, a person close to the patient. A key outcome of the ReSPECT process is a set of recommendations, recorded on the patient-held ReSPECT ...

This month’s issue of Journal of Medical Ethics features a symposium on ‘neuro rights’ and the ‘right to mental integrity’. Medical ethics and the law have long recognised bodily rights—motivating requirements that patients give informed consent before medical interventions are performed on them or before research is conducted on them. Rapid advancements in neuroscience and ...

Dec 20, 2024 · The principle of respecting patient autonomy underpins the concept and practice of informed consent. Yet current approaches to consent often ignore the ways in which the exercise of autonomy is deeply epistemically dependent. In this paper, we draw on philosophical descriptions of autonomy ‘scaffolding’ and apply them to informed consent in medicine. We examine how this relates to other ...

The Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress is a classic in the field of medical ethics. The first edition was published in 1979 and “unleashed” the four principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice on the newly emerging field. These principles were argued to be mid-level principles mediating between high-level moral theory and low-level ...

A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years concerns our understanding of the different risk attitudes exhibited by decision makers. There is ample evidence that risk-averse and risk-seeking behaviours are widespread, and a growing consensus that such behaviour is rationally permissible. In the context of clinical medicine, this matter is …

Following the well-publicised case of Dr Sarah Benn, the former General Practioner (GP) who was suspended from the UK medical register earlier this year for breaching injunctions in order to peacefully protest climate change,1 uncertainty and wider discourse has persisted about the extent to which doctors can be involved in protests without risking regulatory action. In …