The below BBC article highlights the increasingly prominent and beneficial role of the hospital ethicist, albeit for interesting reasons. It focuses more on how ethics improves the bottom line and prevents lawsuits than on how it improves the quality of care.  There is no specific mention that ethics and quality care are inseparable, but there is a connection [...]

The Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) is calling for provinces and territories to legally recognize advance care directives for minors who are very sick or dying.  In a position paper published last week the CPS states that: 
Medical and technological advances have resulted in higher survival rates in… children with complex health conditions, many of whom would not [...]

LA state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, is considering paying poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied to limit their reproduction capabilities while simultaneously encouraging wealthy college-educated individuals to have more children through tax incentives.  Labruzzo proudly states that he is aiming to reduce ”the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare”, [...]

[NYT] HOW much is your life worth? How about a year of life? How much is your vision worth? What about being pain-free? Able to walk unassisted? Have sex?  Unanswerable questions all. Or maybe not.
Economists are sometimes accused of knowing the prices of everything and the value of nothing. Now they are trying to answer [...]

Alabama state employees will be required to undergo obesity screenings, along with other medical screenings, starting in January 2009. Those found to be obese will be allotted one year to lose their weight or face a $25 increase in their monthly insurance premiums, reported WebMD (article below).  The bioethicist in me questions what the effects of this new requirement are on [...]

A pair of doctors have said that British parents should have fewer children, because kids cause carbon emissions and climate change. The two medics suggest that choosing to have a third child is the same as buying a patio heater or driving a gas-guzzling car, and that GPs should advise their patients against it.
Writing in [...]

Capital Region residents should take steps to ensure that the presidential candidates’ current focus on the economy does not detract from a critically necessary national discussion about health care. The two are inexorably linked.
The connection between a sound American economy and health care was recognized as long ago as 1945, when President Truman observed that [...]

Providing proportionate medical care is crucial – a balance between overtreating and undertreating patients – but I worry that ’slow medicine’ may be linked more with saving money than providing quality patient care, per the below NYT article.
Edie Gieg, 85, strides ahead of people half her age and plays a fast-paced game of tennis. But when [...]

When I train doctors to deliver ‘person-centered’ healthcare, concierge practices are not exactly what I had in mind. NBC’s article highlights potential disparities in resource allocation and access resulting from the use of boutique medicine. –
Concierge practice — also known as boutique medicine — is a new a model of medical service emphasizing easy access, [...]

How will the world look in the year 2058? Sixty thinkers from around the world rise to that challenge in “The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today,” a collection of essays edited by longtime journalist Mike Wallace.

The consensus view is that we’ll muddle through many of the issues that vex us today – [...]