Digital medicine is a medical treatment that combines technology with drug delivery. The promises of this combination are continuous and remote monitoring, better disease management, self-tracking, ...self-management of diseases, and improved treatment adherence. These devices pose ethical challenges for patients, providers, and the social practice of medicine. For patients, having both informed consent and a user agreement raises questions of understanding for autonomy and informed consent, therapeutic misconception, external influences on decision making, confidentiality and privacy, and device dependability. For providers, digital medicine changes the relationship where trust can be verified, clinicians can be monitored, expectations must be managed, and new liability risks may be assumed. Other ethical questions include direct third-party monitoring of health treatment, affordability, and planning for adverse events in the case of device malfunction. This article seeks to lay out the ethical landscape for the implementation of such devices in patient care.
As defined by the International Federation of Social Workers, social work is a human rights profession. This is explicitly stated in the professional codes of ethics in many nations. However, the ...most recent version of the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers continues to exclude any mention of human rights, fitting in with the history of U.S. exceptionalism on this subject. Social workers around the world have a long history of working for the achievement of human rights, including an explicit grounding of practice in human rights principles: human dignity, nondiscrimination, participation, transparency, and accountability. Utilizing these principles, U.S. social workers can move from the deficit model of the needs-based approach to competently contextualizing individual issues in their larger human rights framework. In this way, social work can address larger social problems and make way for the concurrent achievement of human rights. This article explains these principles and provides a case example of how to apply them in practice.
As growing numbers of patients turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the focus of attention has largely been on whether these therapies work and whether they are safe. These questions ...are central to further integration of CAM with orthodox medicine. But in the absence of formal regulation, it is equally critical to consider the ethical dimensions of the CAM therapeutic encounter. In this book, Julie Stone demonstrates that ethical issues are no less relevant to CAM therapists than they are to doctors or any other group of health professionals. She provides CAM therapists with a detailed framework of the specific ethical issues which affect CAM practice to help practitioners think constructively about how ethics underpin their therapeutic work. An Ethical Framework for Complementary and Alternative Therapists encourages critical and reflective practice, suggests practical problems to common problems, includes illustrative scenarios of ethical dilemmas faced by therapists and summarises key points. This timely book offers a comprehensive guide to this important area. Its challenging conclusions are as relevant to experienced practitioners as to students and newly qualified therapists. This book will also interest policy makers and professional bodies interested in strengthening and enhancing CAM's potential.
'This is a unique and seminal text and one every CAM student and practitioner should have on their shelves.' - Complimentary Therapies and Midwifery 'An important and timely addition to the limited literature in this fast developing field.' - Bulletin of Medical Ethics
1. Introduction Part One: Understanding Ethics 2. What Do We Mean by 'Ethics'? 3. Ethical Theories 4. Professional Codes of Ethics 5. The Law 6. Do Alternative Therapies Require an Alternative Ethical Framework Part Two: Ethical Issues Common to all Therapies 7. Competence 8. Research 9. Supervision 10. Continuing Professional Development 11. Maintaining Boundaries and Preventing Abuse 12. Respect for Autonomy and Consent 13. Truth-telling 14. Confidentiality and Patient Records 15. Negotiating Contracts with Patients 16. Duties Towards Children and Mentally Incapacitated Adults 17. Issues Relating to Justice Part Three: Ethics in Practice 18. Hands-on Therapies 19. Invasive Therapies 20. Product-based Therapies 21. Energy-based Medicine 22. Psychological Interventions 23. Self-help Therapies 24. Conclusion
Integration of genomic technology into healthcare settings establishes new capabilities to predict disease susceptibility and optimize treatment regimes. Yet, Indigenous peoples remain starkly ...underrepresented in genetic and clinical health research and are unlikely to benefit from such efforts. To foster collaboration with Indigenous communities, we propose six principles for ethical engagement in genomic research: understand existing regulations, foster collaboration, build cultural competency, improve research transparency, support capacity building, and disseminate research findings. Inclusion of underrepresented communities in genomic research has the potential to expand our understanding of genomic influences on health and improve clinical approaches for all populations.
The idea of moral progress played a central role in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century but is rarely encountered in moral and political philosophical ...discourse today. One reason for this is that traditional liberal theorists of moral progress, like their conservative detractors, tended to rely on underevidenced assumptions about human psychology and society. For the first time in history, we are developing robust scientific knowledge about human nature, especially through empirical psychological theories of morality and culture that are informed by evolutionary theory. In addition, the social sciences now provide better information about which social arrangements are feasible and sustainable and about how social norms arise, change, and come to shape moral thought and behavior. Accordingly, it is time to revisit the question of moral progress. On the surface, evolutionary accounts of morality paint a pessimistic picture, suggesting that certain types of moral progress are unrealistic or inappropriate for beings like us. In brief, humans are said to be “hard-wired” for rather limited moral capacities. However, such a view overlooks the great plasticity of human morality as evidenced by our history of social and political moral achievements. To account for these changes while giving evolved moral psychology its due, we develop a dynamic, biocultural theory of moral progress that highlights the interaction between adaptive components of moral psychology and the cultural construction of moral norms and beliefs; and we explore how this interaction can advance, impede, and reverse moral progress.
Does the possibility of plant sentience pose a problem for ethical veganism? It has not yet been demonstrated that plants are sentient (i.e., that they can feel). Moreover, even if it were ...demonstrated that plants could feel, it would also have to be demonstrated that they can feel the affectively "valenced" feelings that are ethically significant, such as pain and fear, rather than just neutral sensations such as darker/lighter, or wetter/drier. Finally, if plants could feel valenced feelings, veganism would likely still be the ethical option, on the principle of causing the least harm.
This open access book marks the first historical overview of the autism rights branch of the neurodiversity movement, describing the activities and rationales of key leaders in their own words since ...it organized into a unique community in 1992. Sandwiched by editorial chapters that include critical analysis, the book contains 19 chapters by 21 authors about the forming of the autistic community and neurodiversity movement, progress in their influence on the broader autism community and field, and their possible threshold of the advocacy establishment. The actions covered are legendary in the autistic community, including manifestos such as “Don’t Mourn for Us”, mailing lists, websites or webpages, conferences, issue campaigns, academic project and journal, a book, and advisory roles. These actions have shifted the landscape toward viewing autism in social terms of human rights and identity to accept, rather than as a medical collection of deficits and symptoms to cure.
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