Resuscitating Patient Rights during the Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Risk of Resurgent Paternalism.

The COVID-19 Pandemic a stress test for clinical medicine and medical ethics, with a confluence over questions of the proportionality of resuscitation. Drawing upon his experience as a clinical ethicist during the surge in New York City during the Spring of 2020, the author considers how attitudes regarding resuscitation have evolved since the inception of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders decades ago. Sharing a personal narrative about a DNR quandry he encountered as a medical intern, the author considers the balance of patient rights versus clinical discretion, warning about the risk of resurgent physician paternalism dressed up in the guise of a public health crisis.

The Making of a Clinical Ethicist: A Personal Tribute to Al Jonsen.

In this account, the author shares her long-standing personal and professional relationship with her mentor, Albert R. Jonsen, PhD, a prominent figure in the history of bioethics.

Remembering Al Jonsen.

The author, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, recalls the contributions of Albert R. Jonsen, PhD, one of the founding members of the editorial board of the journal.

Constructive Disappointment and Disbelief: Building a Career in Neuroethics.

Sometimes one's greatest academic disappointments can have unexpected outcomes. This is especially true when one is trying to change career trajectories or do something that others did not take seriously. My path into neuroethics was an unexpected journey catalyzed in part by constructive disappointment and the disbelief of colleagues who thought that the work I was pursuing nearly two decades prior was a fool's errand. After all, could anyone-in his or her right mind-ever conceive of waking up a person unconscious from brain injury and getting him to speak? 1.

My Path to Bioethics.

In this series of essays, The Road Less Traveled, noted bioethicists share their stories and the personal experiences that prompted them to pursue the field. These memoirs are less professional chronologies and more descriptions of the seminal touchstone events and turning points that led-often unexpectedly-to their career path.

La bioética ha muerto. Viva la ética médica / Bioethics is dead. Long live medical ethics

El objeto de este artículo es mostrar la crisis paradigmática que vive la bioética académica. Desde que una parte importante del gremio de los bioeticistas comenzó a relativizar la prohibición ética de dar muerte a un ser humano inocente, de una forma u otra comenzó a aliarse con la industria de la muerte: el negocio del aborto provocado y, después, de la eutanasia. La tesis de este trabajo es que al cruzar ese Rubicón la bioética se ha corrompido, y ha perdido su conexión con el discurso ético, político y jurídico. Sólo cabe esperar que resurja de sus cenizas si recupera el «tabú» de la sacralidad de la vida humana, algo para lo que la Ética Médica podría suministrar una ayuda inestimable, pues aún se conserva ahí la referencia de que «un médico no debe matar», si bien en forma excesivamente discreta, y algo avergonzada. De todos modos, los médicos con conciencia saben más de ética que la mayor parte de los bioeticistas

The purpose of this paper is to show a paradigmatic crisis in academic bioethics. Since an important part of bioethicists began to relativize the ethical prohibition of killing an innocent human being, one way or another they began to ally with the death industry: the business of abortion, and then that of euthanasia. The thesis of this paper is that by crossing that Rubicon bioethics has been corrupted and has lost its connection to the ethical, political and legal discourse. One can only hope that it will revive from its ashes if it retakes the taboo of the sacredness of human life, something for which medical ethics could provide invaluable help, because it still keeps the notion that a doctor should not kill, although in an excessively discreet and somehow «ashamed» way. However, conscientious doctors know more about ethics than most bioethicists

CURRENT PERSPECTIVES OF POTTER'S GLOBAL BIOETHICS AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN CLINICAL (PERSONALIZED) AND PUBLIC HEALTH ETHICS.

In the context of modern scientific and technological developments in biomedicine and health care, and the potential consequences of their application on humans and the environment, Potter's global bioethics concept resurfaces. By actualizing Potter's original thoughts on individual bioethical issues, the universality of two of his books, which today represent the backbone of the world bioethical literature, "Bioethics--Bridge to the Future" and "Global Bioethics: Building on the Leopold Legacy", is emphasized. Potter's global bioethics today can legitimately be viewed as a bridge between clinical personalized ethics on the one hand and ethics of public health on the other.

Stumbled, fumbled, bumbled, grumbled, and humbled: looking back at the future history of clinical ethics.

This retrospective of the last quarter century of clinical ethics offers an examination of some of the areas in which it should focus, and refocus, attention in the next.

[Social engineers--providers--bioethicists. Human genetics experts in West-Germany and Denmark between 1950 and 1990]. / Sozialingenieure--Anbieter--Bioethiker. Humangenetische Experten in Westdeutschland und Dänemark zwischen 1950 und 1990.

The author compares the history of human genetics in the Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark from the 1950s to the 1980s. The paper combines a discourse analysis with the exploration of human genetics experts' subject forms along the lines of current considerations within cultural studies. In the 1950s and 1960s, human geneticists acted in close cooperation with other political, judicial and administrative expert groups. They monitored the 'overall genetic development' of the population and cautioned about 'genetic crises'. Laypersons were supposed to submit to 'objectively reasonable' behavioral patterns--to their own as well as society's benefit. In the 1970s, the experts turned into 'providers' of a 'precise, purely medical, diagnostic service'. The patients mainly appeared as 'de-personalized' sources of a common human demand for 'safe eugenic information'. In the 1980s, the demand and supply paradigm manifested psychological and ethical side effects. Human geneticists became aware of the social and historical interrelations of their research and practices. The results of this study contribute to a more complex understanding of the dominant 'individualization narrative' of human genetics history. In this context, the development in Germany and Denmark displays two complementary forms of a transnational discourse.

Deeper problems for Noonan's probability argument against abortion: on a charitable reading of Noonan's conception criterion of humanity.

In 'An Almost Absolute Value in History' John T. Noonan criticizes several attempts to provide a criterion for when an entity deserves rights. These criteria, he argues are either arbitrary or lead to absurd consequence. Noonan proposes human conception as the criterion of rights, and justifies it by appeal to the sharp shift in probability, at conception, of becoming a being possessed of human reason. Conception, then, is when abortion becomes immoral. The article has an historical and a philosophical goal. The historical goal is to carefully present the probability argument in a charitable manner. The philosophical goal is to offer a unique criticism of Noonan's probability argument against abortion. I argue that, even on a very charitable reading of Noonan's argument for the conception criterion, this criterion is also susceptible to charges of arbitrariness and absurdity. Noonan's claim that probability shifts have anything to do with the moral rights of fetuses cannot be made coherent. I also show that there are problems with Noonan's assumptions about moral rights and the potential to become a being possessed of human reason.