Renée Fox and Judith Swazey’s most recent book traces the origins and development of the field of bioethics, including their participation in it over the past 40 years. According to the authors, the aims of Observing Bioethics are to describe the “intellectual, professional, and organizational development” of bioethics and to situate the field within its … Read more

OBJECTIVE: To describe fertility patients’ preferences for disposition of cryopreserved embryos and determine factors important to these preferences. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey conducted between June 2006 and July 2007. SETTING: Nine geographically diverse U.S. fertility clinics. PATIENT(S): 1020 fertility patients with cryopreserved embryos. INTERVENTION(S): Self-administered questionnaire. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Likelihood of selecting each of five conventional … Read more

In this paper, I analyze the illness stories narrated by a mother and her 13-year-old son as part of an ethnographic study of child chronic pain sufferers and their families. In examining some of the moral, relational and communicative challenges of giving an account of one’s pain, I focus on what is left out of … Read more

Virtue ethics has its theoretical roots in ancient Greek and Chinese ap- proaches to the question of how to live well as a human being—that is, how to live a good life. A “good life” in this sense is one that expresses excellences of human character. In both ancient and modern forms of virtue ethics, … Read more

Patients making difficult choices among therapeutic options often ask their physicians what they would do if they were in the same situation. When faced with that question, physicians might be concerned that a direct answer could infringe on a patient’s autonomy by substituting the physician’s unique worldview or experience for their patients’. However, refusing to … Read more

To gain entry to the lucrative American market, newly developed drugs must be licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Since 1975, the FDA has required applications for licensure from research studies conducted outside the United States to comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, one of the most influential international codes of research ethics. … Read more

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the incidence of maternal cardiovascular and pulmonary events and the prevalence of other comorbid conditions among pregnant smokers. METHODS: We queried the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for pregnancy-related discharge codes for the years 2000-2004. The … Read more

Structured AbstractObjectives:The Vanderbilt Evidence-based Practice Center systematically reviewed evidence on treatment of overactive bladder (OAB), urge urinary incontinence, and related symptoms. We focused on prevalence and incidence, treatment outcomes, comparisons of treatments, modifiers of outcomes, and costs.Data:We searched PubMed, MEDLINE®, EMBASE, and CINAHL.Review Methods:We included studies published in English from January 1966 to October 2008. … Read more