Reactions to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health are wide ranging, and many seem to reflect emotion and use charged language. I do not mean to downplay the tossing out of an established constitutional right, but a cooling off period may allow for more reasoned discussion. While in the past courts disagreed about where in the…
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….
In criminal law, the mens rea is the criminal intent. It is a mindset – most crimes require both an act and a mindset. Often mens rea is what distinguishes guilt from innocence even among people who have committed the same act. For example, pushing a shopping cart of bagged groceries out of a store…
Diagnosis is a tricky word. Doctors diagnose some scientific truths: for example, a finding of a tumor and the accompanying pathology report describing cellular activity and genetic information, etc. Diagnosis is also the term used for many things for which science does not provide a distinct test – diagnosis depends in those cases on a…
The social determinants of health by Marmot and Wilkinson are a list of social circumstances that impede or positively influence good health. Pointing out barriers to achieving health, the social determinants set the backdrop for justice-based bioethics. Access to good jobs in which one has agency or discretion and a living wage and access to…
Bioethics concerns justice, fairness, and the social determinants of health. One example of an area in which bioethics can contribute to promoting justice is in advocating for access to civil justice. While few people (and a decreasing number of people) wronged in a tort actually file a lawsuit, the ability to do so is a…
I don’t think so, but I do wonder whether the coins or tokens that yield healthcare access or access to items and services conducive to health can develop robust trading markets, increasing their value, and become a universal tool for accessing health care and improving health. As with an NFT, token, or coin, demand drives…
One strategy for improving public trust in science, the COVID-19 vaccine and possibly future COVID-19 vaccines or vaccines for emerging virus should be improving trustworthiness at all levels. The way bioethics and public health approach public trust often leaves out the most crucial element: improving trustworthiness and maintaining trustworthy institutions. Doctors and other healthcare professionals…
When ethics becomes too rules-based the thinking and making sense of complex situations can be obscured by techniques that declare some ethical decisions final and powered by precedent or guidelines. A stronger practicum that includes ethical tools designed to help people wrestle with complex dilemmas using rationality, logic, and compassion may lead to better ethical…