Muddying the Waters

ByAnne Zimmerman May 11, 2021December 18, 2021

This blog (and the accompanying course) is not designed to make bioethics easier or even more academically accessible. It is to address whether ethical dilemmas caused by complex scientific developments or traditions in the doctor patient relationship require broader frameworks and the identification of additional issues.

One goal is to figure out whether upstream policies cause many of the dilemmas. Another is to flesh out analytical tools and considerations for identifying where one profession’s authority over an issue ends and personal authority begins. Is there overlap and which stakeholders deserve to be included in the discourse?

A need for clinical simplicity sometimes supplants moral philosophy. This website addresses whether that is acceptable, what alternatives could be created, and whether added voices would level the bioethics playing field. The frameworks are both deeper and wider reflecting how special the personal issues are and how important public policy is in people’s lives.

Photo 14582420 © Irabel8 | Dreamstime.com

Policy and Bioethics

Why the Biggest Health News of the Week is the ProPublica Tax Report

ByAnne Zimmerman June 19, 2021December 18, 2021

The ProPublica report on the taxes paid by the ultrawealthy is an important backdrop in a syndemic framework for evaluating health. A strong tax base contributes directly to health in several ways. Public parks, social services, education, community health centers, strong infrastructure, and Medicaid rely on tax dollars. Medical research is often funded by NIH…

Person-Centered Care | Policy and Bioethics

Medical Tourism in Mexico: An Ethical Quagmire

ByAnne Zimmerman March 17, 2023March 17, 2023

Medical tourism presents ethical dilemmas and has many downsides. The CDC does recognize that many people from the United States travel to Mexico for care and its website provides some guidance and warnings. Last week, members of a drug cartel kidnapped four travelers to Mexico and killed two of them. Safety along the US-Mexico border…

Policy and Bioethics | Theory, Morals, and Bioethics

Hunger and The Global Food Crisis

ByAnne Zimmerman July 23, 2022August 9, 2022

Organizations and scholars frame the current food crisis as a global phenomenon due to a confluence of events and circumstances like droughts, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. As Samantha Power noted this week, “a decade of progress” has been “obliterated”. The number of people with unmet food needs is steeply increasing after a…

Policy and Bioethics

Opening or Closing the Window: Can the “Multiple Streams Framework” for Policy Benefit Bioethics?

ByAnne Zimmerman May 25, 2021December 18, 2021

The public policy theory of multiple streams formulated by John Kingdon in 1984 applies to problems at a time when they become ripe for solving. By aligning the problem, policy, and political “streams” a window to solving the problem arises. In public health, the analysis was applied to UK health disparities and to obesity in…

Responsible Technology

Big Data as Collective Judgments

ByAnne Zimmerman June 30, 2022July 20, 2022

People put a lot of stock in data. Data is essentially information. It often becomes the basis for an assumption. When we think of data, we think of facts. That works in many settings. For example, an ingredient label, done truthfully, lists ingredients. If it lists flour, one would reasonably assume the product contains flour….

Theory, Morals, and Bioethics

Science or Humanities: A Need for Adaptability and Individuality Limit the Role of Quantitative and Qualitative Research in Bioethics

ByAnne Zimmerman June 11, 2021December 18, 2021

Science is defined many ways, but the modern definition used here is knowledge based on data and observation. That is, the distinction between science and the social sciences or humanities is that critical thinking and complex reasoning, generally based in philosophy, logic, and reason, are the backbone of the social sciences and humanities. Critical thought…

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