Moral challenges and understanding of clinical ethics in Tanzanian hospitals: Perspectives of healthcare professionals.

Healthcare professionals encounter many moral challenges in their daily clinical practice. However, there have been few studies on the subject matter in Tanzania. This study aims to provide an account of moral challenges faced by healthcare professionals in Tanzanian hospitals, their understanding of clinical ethics, and the ethics education they have received.

Institutional Review Boards and post-approval monitoring (PAM) of human research: content analysis of select university (academic health center) web pages across the USA.

Objective: To conduct a content analysis of IRB webpages of select universities (academic health centers) in the USA that describe post IRB- approval monitoring activities.

Method: This was a qualitative study. Thematic analysis was the method to review the webpage content of selected academic health centers (AHC) within the USA.

Research ethics committees and post-approval activities: a qualitative study on the perspectives of European research ethics committee representatives.

Objective: To explore the views of Research Ethics Committee (REC) representatives in the European Union (EU) on what the status quo is in terms of RECs' activities after the approval of trial protocols for clinical studies.

Method: This is a qualitative study. The participants in this study are members or representatives of a research ethics committee from the member countries of the European Network of Research Ethics Committees (EUREC) and the United Kingdom.

Navigating abortion law dilemmas: experiences and attitudes among Ethiopian health care professionals.

Background: Ethiopia's 2005 abortion law improved access to legal abortion. In this study we examine the experiences of abortion providers with the revised abortion law, including how they view and resolve perceived moral challenges.

Methods: Thirty healthcare professionals involved in abortion provisions in Addis Ababa were interviewed.

The role of research ethics committees after the approval of clinical trial protocols in the EU and the USA: a descriptive content analysis of international and regional normative documents.

Aim: To conduct a descriptive content analysis of normative documents on the role of research ethics committees (RECs) after the approval of clinical trial protocols. The question to be addressed is whether and to what extent normative documents support a monitoring role for RECs in the United States and the European Union.

Design: A qualitative content analysis of 19 normative documents on clinical research as outlined by the International Compilation of Human Research Standards 2020 edition and other related documents for the EU and USA.

Back to WHAT? The role of research ethics in pandemic times.

The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times.

Still a moral dilemma: how Ethiopian professionals providing abortion come to terms with conflicting norms and demands.

Background: The Ethiopian law on abortion was liberalized in 2005. However, as a strongly religious country, the new law has remained controversial from the outset. Many abortion providers have religious allegiances, which begs the question how to negotiate the conflicting demands of their jobs and their commitment to their patients on the one hand, and their religious convictions and moral values on the other.

The rise of reimbursement-based medicine: the case of bone metastasis radiation treatment.

It has been hypothesised that the reimbursement system pertaining to radiotherapy is influencing prescription practices for patients with cancer with bone metastases. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of an empirical study that was undertaken on patient records, referred to radiotherapy for the treatment of bone metastases, in a medium-size city, in southern Brazil, during the period of March 2006 to March 2014. Our findings seem to confirm this hypothesis: after a change in the reimbursement method, radiation prescriptions were adapted accordingly, in order to maximise profits.

Bioethics and imagination: towards a narrative bioethics committed to social action and justice.

Recently, the involvement of various authors coming from the social sciences and the arts has reinforced the humanistic component of bioethics. Their contributions vary from very theoretical perspectives to rather practical ones. In this paper, Martha Nussbaum's books, (1986), (1990), (1997) and (2011) are analysed from the vantage point of narrative bioethics.

Ethical issues in nanomedicine: Tempest in a teapot?

Nanomedicine offers remarkable options for new therapeutic avenues. As methods in nanomedicine advance, ethical questions conjunctly arise. Nanomedicine is an exceptional niche in several aspects as it reflects risks and uncertainties not encountered in other areas of medical research or practice.

What is it to do good medical ethics? On the concepts of 'good' and 'goodness' in medical ethics.

In his book The Varieties of Goodness Georg Henrik von Wright advocates that a useful preliminary to the study of the word 'good' is to compile a list of familiar uses and try to group them under some main headings. The present paper aims at exploring the question, 'What is it to do good medical ethics?', and notably from the vantage point of everyday expressions of the word 'good' and von Wright's grouping of them into six different types of goodness.

The whole and the art of medical dialectic: a platonic account.

The aim of this paper is to investigate Plato's conception of the whole in the Phaedrus and the theory of medical dialectic underlying this conception. Through this analysis Plato's conception of kairos will also be adressed. It will be argued that the epistemological holism developed in the dialogue and the patient-typology emerging from it provides us with a way of perceiving individual situations of medical discourse and decision-making that makes it possible to bridge the gap between observations of a professional nature, i.

Position statement on the provision and procurement of human eggs for stem cell research.

The nature of compensation for women who donate eggs (oocytes) for research remains a contentious issue internationally. This position paper lays out the arguments for, and discusses the arrangements in which, a modest payment might be ethically justifiable.

Illness as a condition of our existence in the world: on illness and pathic existence.

This paper seeks to find different ways of addressing illness as an experience essential to the understanding of being a human being. As a conceptual point of departure, we suggest the notion of 'pathic existence' as developed by the German physician and philosopher Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957). Through an analysis of his conceptualisation of the pathic and of pathic categories, we demonstrate how this auxiliary typology may be of help in unveiling different modes of ill-being, or Kranksein.

A waste of time: the problem of common morality in Principles of Biomedical Ethics.

From the 5th edition of Beauchamp and Childress' Principles of Biomedical Ethics, the problem of common morality has been given a more prominent role and emphasis. With the publication of the 6th and latest edition, the authors not only attempt to ground their theory in common morality, but there is also an increased tendency to identify the former with the latter. While this stratagem may give the impression of a more robust, and hence stable, foundation for their theoretical construct, we fear that it comes with a cost, namely the need to keep any theory in medical ethics open to, and thereby aware of, the challenges arising from biomedical research and clinical practice, as well as healthcare systems.

In the ruins of Babel: pitfalls on the way toward a universal language for research ethics and benefit sharing.

At the end of a paper on international research ethics published in the July-August 2010 issue of the Hastings Center Report, London and Zollman argue the need for grounding our duties in international medical and health-related research within a broader normative framework of social, distributive, and rectificatory justice. The same goes for Thomas Pogge, who, in a whole range of publications during the past years, has argued for a human-rights-based approach to international research. In a thought-provoking paper in the June 2010 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, Angela J.

The tragedy of translation: the case of "first use" in human embryonic stem cell research.

Who should go first in phase-I human trials when neither risks nor benefits can be estimated? By assessing concerns raised by Bretzner et al. (2011), we highlight a tragic dimension underlying all such trials. We discuss strategies to avoid the pitfalls of ethical hubris by promoting fidelity and trust.

Between the needy and the greedy: the quest for a just and fair ethics of clinical research.

The acceleration of the market globalisation process over the last three decades has internationalised clinical research and influenced both the way in which it is funded and the development and application of research practices. In addition, in recent years international multicentre randomised clinical trials have become the model par excellence for research on new medicines. The neoliberal model of globalisation has induced a decline in state power, both with regard to establishing national research for health priorities and to influencing the development of adequate ethical guidelines to protect human beings that participate in multinational research.