{"title":"Slippery slopes down under: the progressive loosening of requirements for voluntary assisted dying in Australia and New Zealand.","authors":"David Albert Jones","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2593200","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2593200","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Between November 2017 and June 2024 eight jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand passed laws to legalise some form of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide. Like the United States, Australia has a federal constitution and 'voluntary assisted dying' (VAD) in Australia has been legalised at the state level. However, unlike the United States, Australia and New Zealand both permit practitioner administration of the lethal drug (euthanasia) as well as self-administration (assisted suicide). Another difference is that physician-assisted suicide, at first, spread very slowly in the United States, and new laws were based closely on the requirements of the original legislation in Oregon. In contrast, in Australia and New Zealand, the spread of VAD has been rapid from the outset, and there is a discernible pattern of successive weakening of safeguards in more recent legislation. The Australian model has increasingly come to resemble that of Canada.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"86-107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145640857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Muhammad Hasan, Ayaz Khan, Muzibunnisa Begam Abdul Hathi, Sultan Muhammad Salahudeen
{"title":"The Four Principles in Islamic and Western Medical Ethics: A Scoping Review.","authors":"Muhammad Hasan, Ayaz Khan, Muzibunnisa Begam Abdul Hathi, Sultan Muhammad Salahudeen","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2590274","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2590274","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding medical ethics is essential for healthcare professionals to practise medicine in a culturally sensitive and appropriate manner. We undertook a scoping review of the English literature from PubMed and JSTOR after 1980, to compare the application of the four principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice in Islamic and Western medical ethics (Beauchamp and Childress' model, the most widely used). 34 out of 135 articles met the inclusion criteria (Analysing a principle of stated ethical framework rather than simply mentioning it). Our review demonstrated that there are more similarities in both frameworks than differences, with the key distinction being the perception of autonomy in a familial and societal context in Islam. There is an objectively right medical choice for patients in Islam, which brings one closer to Shari'ah. Beneficence and nonmaleficence are mostly concordant in both schools, and justice in all its forms is espoused in both, with some differences.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"120-135"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145726752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chrisantus Kanayochukwu Ariche, Nneka Sophie Amalu
{"title":"Modern Medicine and Health Care: A Humanized Integrative Medicine (HIM).","authors":"Chrisantus Kanayochukwu Ariche, Nneka Sophie Amalu","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2538395","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2538395","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Medicine, as a science, art and skill, concerns itself with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients. At the centre of this practice is the patient-physician relationship of a special nature. This study argues that there is a missing link in modern-day medical practice which has distorted this relationship of a special nature, and the moral component of medicine. These two interconnected aspects of medicine are quickly fading away and have affected the quality of health care, where medicine is now purely seen as a business and technological-driven enterprise. Using the method of critical analysis, this study examines medical practice in recent times to find a solution to this disconnect that has evolved in the physician-patient relationship. The study deploys the novel theory of 'Integrative Humanism' and concludes that humanized integrative medicine is missing, which has greatly affected holistic quality health care and the physician-patient relationship of a special nature.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"32-46"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144754713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the Ethics of Creating Chimeric 'Monkey-Human' Embryos: <i>Could Xenotransplantation, the Treatment of Anencephalic Infants, or Synthetic Human Embryos Provide Insights?</i>","authors":"Francis J O'Keeffe","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2538394","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2538394","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Induced human extended pluripotent stem cells (hEPSC) have been injected into monkey blastocysts to create chimeric embryos. Chimera research is a scientific technique which seeks to develop human organs for transplantation, but it has raised concerns regarding human cells contributing to the brain formation of nonhuman animals. This article considered whether brain development should guide ethical considerations on chimera research by investigating the morality of terminating live anencephalic infants to procure their organs. It found that identifying the presence or absence of a human biological developmental programme helps to determine the correct ethics of chimera research, and that experimentation with this programme should be prohibited. However, the formation of chimeric embryos with induced hEPSC does not experiment with a human biological developmental programme. This determination was made after investigating the developmental potential of synthetic embryos created with induced pluripotent stem cells. Based upon these findings, this article cautiously recommends that chimera research only be permitted to continue with induced hEPSC.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"13-31"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144733755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Overgeneralization of the Future Like Ours Argument.","authors":"Joe Slater","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2483588","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2483588","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Future Like Ours (FLO) argument, provided by Don Marquis remains one of the most persuasive arguments against the general permissibility of abortion. Marquis is aware of concerns that his argument overgeneralizes, but thinks by requiring that it is possible to specify <i>individuals</i> who are deprived, he is able to overcome them. In this paper, I argue that Marquis' account <i>does</i> overgeneralize. To do this I demonstrate that <i>having</i> an FLO (Future Like Ours) must be understood as having an FLO <i>in favourable circumstances</i>. However, once the favourable circumstances caveat is exposed, the possibility of artificial enhancement of lower order animals would entail that those animals - and the fetuses of those animals - would also have FLOs. This overgeneralization commits the defender of the Future Like Ours argument to accept conclusions that seem independently implausible and which many explicitly reject. I argue that the FLO argument should instead be rejected.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144051494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conscience: A Brief History.","authors":"Jose A Bufill, Xavier Symons","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2550821","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2550821","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The lived experience of human moral agency suggests that some actions favour human flourishing while others lead to division and conflict: the universal human desire for happiness is bound up with the effort to discern and do 'good' and to avoid 'evil'. Words exist to convey an experience, and the word 'conscience' has emerged as an attempt to describe the experience of moral discernment. We offer an account of the development of the word 'conscience'. Our treatment is divided into three sections: the first beginning around 600 BCE until the arrival of Christianity; the second will cover the Christian era through to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century; and the third section will cover post-Reformation and post-Christian developments to the present day. We argue that the Christian understanding of the conscience constitutes a major human achievement with durable and beneficial effects on human history, and that the progressive undermining of the Christian notion of conscience is an important contributor to the fragmentation of society today and increasing hostility to conscientious objection in medicine.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"47-65"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144972868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fertility Fix: the Boom in Facial-matching Algorithms for Donor Selection in Assisted Reproduction in Spain.","authors":"Rebecca Close","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2024.2371738","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2024.2371738","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article reads the uptake of facial-matching algorithms by fertility clinics in Spain through the lens of 'the fertility fix': a software fix to the social reconfiguration of kinship and a fixed capital investment made by competing fertility companies and firms. 'The fertility fix' is proposed as a critical, ethical lens through which to situate algorithmic facial-matching in assisted reproduction in the context of the racial politics of the face and phenotype and the spatial politics of market expansion. While an 'infertility crisis' is often mentioned when explaining the growth of the assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) industry, the use of donated reproductive cells is tied up in societal, ecological and economic shifts. Combining Software Studies analysis with Marxist Feminist and trans*feminist perspectives on shifting re/production dynamics, the article details the role of computational technologies in promoting certain ideas and beliefs about family and fixing certain territories of capital flow.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"268-284"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141564776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards Accountable, Legitimate and Trustworthy AI in Healthcare: Enhancing AI Ethics with Effective Data Stewardship.","authors":"Benjamin Bartlett","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2482282","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2482282","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Data Stewardship is a novel governance mechanism in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) development in healthcare. This paper examines whether the conceptual tool of stewardship can remedy inadequacies of 'AI ethics' which has fundamental problems of accountability, legitimacy and trustworthiness. A modern secular conceptual explanation of stewardship involves taking a balanced account of the interests of society, and the core element of <i>answerability.</i> This conception of stewardship lends itself to legal mechanisms involving fiduciary duties, which introduces accountability mechanisms into AI development. The separation of AI development from the permanent enclosure of health data presents a useful lever to counter unethical behaviour and ensure societal engagement. Stewardship offers some promise to remedy the inadequacies of AI ethics, but there are risks that a narrow technical conception of data stewardship, without fiduciary duties and decoupled from beneficiaries, will be insufficient to drive the required fundamental change.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"285-309"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143711490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2541436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20502877.2025.2541436","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":"30 4","pages":"310"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145041808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethical Challenges to the Adoption of AI in Healthcare: A Review.","authors":"Michal Pruski","doi":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2541438","DOIUrl":"10.1080/20502877.2025.2541438","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>There are few comprehensive summaries of the ethical challenges associated with the adoption of artificial intelligence in healthcare. This review utilizes a systematic search focused on identifying the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of artificial intelligence in healthcare, highlighting the diversity of ethical challenges and the complex interactions between practical challenges and ethics issues. For example, the quality of the data upon which artificial intelligence models are developed relates to several ethics principles, as does the issue of gaining user trust. Importantly, there is also the difficulty of achieving the right balance between the discussed principles, since one might not be able to maximize one principle without having to sacrifice another. For example, maximizing privacy might require minimizing data collection from patients, which might negatively affect beneficence. As such, this review highlights the variety and complexity of ethical issues associated with artificial intelligence implementation in healthcare.</p>","PeriodicalId":43760,"journal":{"name":"New Bioethics-A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body","volume":" ","pages":"251-267"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144800578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}