Physician Aid in Dying for Dementia: The Problem With the Early vs. Late Disease Stage Distinction.

Physician aid in dying (PAD) based on dementia is a contentious, highly debated topic. Several countries are considering extending their existing laws to include requests in incompetent patients based on a previously written advance directive. Discussions about this issue often invoke a distinction based on disease stage.

So much at stake: Ethical tradeoffs in accelerating SARSCoV-2 vaccine development.

Background: A sense of urgency exists to develop vaccines against SARS CoV-2, responsible for numerous global cases and deaths, as well as widespread social and economic disruption. Multiple approaches have been proposed to speed up vaccine development, including accelerated randomized controlled trials (RCT), controlled human challenge trials (CHI), and wide distribution through an emergency use authorization after collecting initial data. There is a need to examine how best to accelerate vaccine development in the setting of a pandemic, without compromising ethical and scientific norms.

Substance use disorder and compulsory commitment to care: a care-ethical decision-making framework.

In the era of deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric patients, steady or even increasing rates of compulsory commitment to care (CCC) are an intriguing phenomenon to analyse. From a clinical, legal and ethical perspective, CCC continues to be a controversial practice in psychiatry, and perhaps even more so when applied to patients with severe substance use disorder (SUD). Several reasons make it controversial.