If it’s ok to use research carried out in unethical experiments – as long as we acknowledge they were wrong – is it ok to keep a statue of an infamous imperialist?
The dramatic improvements in survival for children with cancer depend on clinical trials, and these trials depend on parents understanding the possible risks and benefits involved.
Doctors at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital are refusing to release a 12-month-old asylum seeker, highlighting a murky intersection of politics, ethics and law.
Thalidomide’s manufacturer, Chemie Grünenthal, marketed the drug as safe for pregnant women despite reports it was causing malformations in newborns. Why such blatant denial?
Broadcaster Andrew Denton, an advocate for assisted dying law, told the Q&A audience it was not correct to say 550 newborn babies were killed last year under Dutch euthanasia laws. Is that right?
The risk of harm in sex selection stems from the fact that parents don’t desire any child, they want a child of a particular sex, who is to remain within the limits of binary gender roles.
A recent survey of people living with HIV in the United Kingdom found that over half would participate in a clinical study to develop a cure for HIV despite this posing a risk to their health.
Australia’s organ donation levels are low by international standards. At least twenty countries achieve better donation rates than Australia’s 16.1 donors per million population (DPM).
Four years ago, just before Christmas, my hospital ran out of cytarabine, an essential drug used to treat and cure certain kinds of acute leukemia. This drug was suddenly in short supply across the nation…
Taking care of sick people has always involved personal risk. From plague to tuberculosis to smallpox to SARS, health-care workers have put themselves in danger in the course of fulfilling their duties…
The current outbreak of Ebola is the worst in history. Almost 2,000 people have been infected and around 1,000 people have died. The outbreak seems to have originated in Guinea and has now spread to Sierra…
A century ago the world went to war. When the conflagration finally ended 10m soldiers lay dead. Among the fallen were 18 medical doctors who had trained at St George’s Hospital and countless more from…
Starting with Karl Marx, many thinkers have pointed out that the creative potential of the capitalist economic system comes at a cost – the lack of inherent ethical scruples to limit the inexorable logic…
There could be a way of predicting – and preventing – which children will go on to have low intelligence, according to the findings of a study researchers at Cardiff University presented on Monday. They…
There is a clear legal distinction in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States between withdrawing life-prolonging treatment – such as ventilation for a person who can’t breathe unaided, or…
Across hospitals and doctor’s surgeries every day, patients have to make difficult choices. But for most of us the freedom to decide what happens to our bodies is taken for granted – doctors recommend…
In November, 33-year-old Texas woman Marlise Munoz collapsed at her Fort Worth home after suffering a suspected blood clot in her lungs. She was later declared brain dead. When the hospital determined…
The general movement in medical practice and ethics over the last 40 years has been away from paternalism towards strong respect for the autonomy of individuals. So a recent judgement in the High Court…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney
Paediatrician at the Royal Childrens Hospital and Associate Professor and Clinician Scientist, University of Melbourne and MCRI, Murdoch Children's Research Institute