{"title":"Ethical and Linguistic Quality of Participant Information Sheets and Their Association with Recruitment Outcomes : An Empirical Bioethics Study of Clinical Trials.","authors":"Francis Osei","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10588-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10588-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Informed consent protects autonomy in clinical research, and it is often assumed that clearer Participant Information Sheets and Informed Consent Forms may also improve recruitment. This study examined whether the ethical and linguistic qualities of these documents are associated with accrual-related outcomes in industry-sponsored interventional trials. We conducted a retrospective analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov records with readable consent materials, operationalizing ethical clarity, linguistic comprehensibility, and cognitive burden using large language model-based extraction and quantitative text analysis. These measures were linked with trial status, enrolment, and operational duration. Across multinomial, binary, and competing risk models, none of the consent quality indicators predicted termination for poor accrual. Structural factors, particularly start year and enrolment capacity, showed much stronger associations with continuation or discontinuation. The findings suggest that recruitment failure reflects organizational and infrastructural constraints rather than shortcomings in consent communication. Ethically robust communication remains essential, but efforts to improve accrual should target structural conditions that support feasible trial delivery.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149118098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differences in Politeness Toward People Receiving Medical Care: Equal Respect and Avoidance of Misunderstanding.","authors":"Shigeki Matsubara","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10639-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10639-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149082466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond Transparency : Ethical Note Obligations, Documentation Burden, and the Ethical Adoption of AI-Assisted Documentation.","authors":"Kevin R Doherty, Reece E Gorrie","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10624-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10624-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The 2021 Cures Act Final Rule mandated that patients have immediate and complete access to their health records. This policy change fundamentally altered the ethical significance of documentation, transforming the note from a useful clinical artifact to direct testimony from practitioners to clients. Drawing on conceptual and empirically informed resources from philosophy, psychiatry, and public health, we identify six ethical note obligations (ENOs) as a principled theoretical framework to support ethical documentation in a post-Cures Act context. Unfortunately, in nonideal circumstances, these new obligations present an undue burden that is contrary to the aim of care, posing a dilemma between ethical note obligations and documentation burden. We reject note-taking contrary to care, which entails a call for strategies to reduce documentation burden to achieve the aims of the ENOs framework. To this end, we call for the ethical adoption of AI-assisted documentation to meaningfully alleviate documentation burden, thereby enabling ethical notes.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149082336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Reproductive Justice Response on Social Egg Freezing.","authors":"Michiel De Proost, Ji-Young Lee","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10608-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10608-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Current bioethical reflections on social egg freezing appear to be dominated by a rights-based perspective, as illustrated by the recent publication by Gao and Liu in this journal. We argue that, to avoid theoretical blindness in this debate, a more reproductive justice-oriented perspective is necessary. In this article, we critically address two interrelated points in response to Gao and Liu's analysis. First, alongside their discussion of reproductive freedom, we introduce a reproductive justice framework to illustrate how intersectional forms of oppression may inhibit individuals from genuinely exercising any \"right\" to social egg freezing. Second, we highlight the case of weight bias among egg freezing candidates as a pertinent example of social domination in reproductive healthcare, one that exacerbates health inequalities.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149076527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Cradles and Compassion: A Conditional Obligation to Adopt Instead of Procreating.","authors":"Marcus T L Teo","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10613-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10613-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Such prominent authors as Tina Rulli have argued in favour of pro tanto duties to adopt instead of procreating. This article interrogates-and then subsequently extends support for-such a view. Specifically, this paper develops and defends a conditional moral obligation to adopt rather than procreate for agents who intend to become parents by drawing on antinatalist philosophy. It argues that even non-antinatalists should recognize what I call \"antinatalistic pressures\": reasons arising from the harms and risks of existence that shift the justificatory burden onto would-be procreators. I formulate a Conditional Obligation to Adopt and support it with two interlocking arguments: a modal argument, which highlights morally salient differences between aiding presently existing orphans and creating possible future children, and a moral epistemic argument, which emphasizes our comparatively firmer evidence about the harms and benefits affecting existing children. Together, these arguments suggest that preventing and alleviating actual-orphan-related harms has stronger moral claim than conferring merely possible benefits on not-yet-existent children. I then address prominent attempts to limit or waive duties to adopt, particularly those of Travis Rieder and Tina Rulli, arguing that appeals to the radical intimacy of family-making do less to block obligation than is often assumed. The upshot is that the pro tanto duty to adopt is both more robust and more demanding than its current defenders acknowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149076583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contested Life in Bioart: A Daoist-Inspired Inquiry into Xing-Shen Ju Miao, Living Matter, and Technological Responsibility.","authors":"Yuan Chufeng, Tan Yang, Tan Qiu","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10630-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10630-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Contemporary bioart uses living tissues, genetic sequences, microbial systems, synthetic organisms, and biofabricated materials as artistic media. In doing so, it makes living matter publicly visible as something that can be cultivated, modified, displayed, maintained, and terminated. These practices unsettle familiar distinctions between organism and artefact, human and nonhuman, nature and technology, artistic creation and biological intervention. This article examines such controversies through the Daoist expression xing-shen ju miao (), understood here as the mutually wondrous co-constitution of embodied form, vital-spiritual efficacy, and qi () within a processual cosmology of transformation. It does not claim that the artists discussed consciously draw on Daoist thought, nor does it classify their work as Daoist art. Instead, it develops Daoist ethical resources as a supplementary, cross-cultural mode of bioethical inquiry. The argument is that these resources can redirect discussion from the policing of categorical boundaries toward relational transformation, technological humility, distributed agency, and responsibility for the consequences of intervention. Bioartistic controversy is therefore not treated as a problem to be resolved by a Daoist answer but as a productive public site in which the meanings of life, vulnerability, agency, and responsibility remain open to deliberation. In this framework, qi is neither a mystical substance nor a measurable regulatory standard. It functions as an ethical-poetic concept for thinking about vitality, dependence, interdependence, maintenance, decay, and responsible transformation both within and beyond art.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149065687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Healthy Ageing without Health Equity? Capability, Justice, and Ageing Governance in the UN Decade.","authors":"Israel Huerta Castillo","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10623-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10623-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The U.N. Decade of Healthy Ageing frames later life through functional ability, environments, and well-being rather than through demographic burden alone. This article argues that healthy ageing becomes ethically unstable when it is pursued without health equity. It first distinguishes the historically influential vocabulary of active ageing from the later healthy-ageing framework centred on functional ability. It then develops a bioethical account of capability-enabling ageing governance: assistance and long-term care are ethically necessary, but they become insufficient when downstream service delivery under scarcity substitutes for upstream conditions that sustain agency, mobility, care, and social participation. The article introduces the malaise state as a conceptual diagnostic category for welfare drift under demographic, fiscal, administrative, and commercial pressure. It also formulates the knowledge-to-equity conversion problem: societies may expand biomedical knowledge, digital health, and innovation while failing to secure the conditions through which those resources become equitable functional ability. The article concludes that the Decade should be evaluated as a justice project, not as a behavioural exhortation to older persons.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149041611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interrogating The Telepathy Tapes: Ethical Obligations at the Intersection of Disability, Lived Experience, and Entertainment.","authors":"Amy S F Lutz","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10617-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10617-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fifteen million listeners and counting have devoured the 2024 podcast The Telepathy Tapes. Despite its extraordinary claims of paranormal abilities in profoundly autistic people, and its grounding in the pseudoscientific intervention Facilitated Communication (FC), bioethicists and other scholars in the medical humanities have been slow to respond. This paper uses the framework of narrative ethics to interrogate the obligation, if any, such experts have to challenge the lived experience depicted in The Telepathy Tapes. While many attach epistemic privilege to this kind of knowledge production, calling for \"narrative humility,\" others argue that \"narrative vigilance\" is required, noting that personal narratives are just as prone to intentional and unintentional inaccuracies as any other source. The tremendous and well-documented harms that FC poses to profoundly vulnerable people, I argue, demand this latter, sceptical attitude, as part of an increasingly imperative defence of the rights of the autistic and intellectually disabled to evidence-based interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149041614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bioethics and Warfare: Social Responsibility and the Recognition of Shared Humanity.","authors":"Ilaria Bertini","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10614-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10614-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper responds to calls to expand bioethics' engagement with the public health consequences of war. It argues that bioethics can offer more than normative evaluation of conduct in armed conflict; it can contribute to a deeper understanding of human vulnerability and interdependence in conditions of extreme crisis. Such an approach has the potential to reframe state political objectives around the protection of civilians and essential infrastructures. War frequently leads to the collapse or transformation of healthcare systems, exposing profound ethical dynamics that extend beyond battlefield strategy. The actions of healthcare professionals in such contexts reveal moral commitments that persist even when legal and institutional structures weaken. Rather than assessing the legality of specific military actions, this study explores the ethical foundations underpinning international humanitarian law. It examines the historical development of the Geneva Conventions, with particular attention to the Martens Clause, and analyses the principle of humanity in armed conflict. The paper ultimately argues that bioethics, especially when linked to solidarity, provides a critical framework for preserving shared humanity in times of war.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149018452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Awakening Under the Empty Sky: Lingis and Karma.","authors":"Brian Schroeder","doi":"10.1007/s11673-026-10616-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-026-10616-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay considers the philosophy of Alphonso Lingis as presented in his book Dangerous Emotions (2000) with respect to the themes of ethical responsibility, generosity, and karma. It engages the author's personal relationship to Lingis with respect to his work and takes up the speculative connection between Lingis' thinking and Buddhism.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149002861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}