Hospital systems commonly face the challenge of determining just ways to allocate scarce drugs during national shortages. There is no standardised approach of how this should be instituted, but principles of distributive justice are commonly used so that patients who are most likely to benefit from the drug receive it. As a result, clinical indications, … Read more

The increasing pace and international diffusion of developments in human genome editing research have prompted ongoing efforts to develop responsible governance for such research. One point of broad agreement across these efforts is that human genome editing research should prioritize medical applications over attempts to enhance human traits because of the moral concerns the latter … Read more

Introduction: The ethical skills fundamental to medical practice encompass a large portion of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) professionalism milestones. Yet many ethical practices are difficult to reduce to milestone frameworks given the variety of traditions of moral reasoning that clinician-trainees and their colleagues might properly employ. Methods: We developed an observed … Read more

Background: A growing literature has raised—skeptically—the question of whether cutting-edge scientific research can identify and address broader ethical and policy considerations in real time. In genomics, the question is: Can ELSI contribute to genomics in real time, or will it be relegated to its historical role of after-the-fact outsider critique? We address this question against … Read more

Julie Childers and Bob Arnold’s (2019) article, “The Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill,” uses Kübler-Ross’s influential work on death and dying to remind us that the experiences contained within her framework relate not only to patients but also to members of their care teams. Childers and Arnold’s … Read more

Our aim in this article is to define the difficulties that clinical ethics services encounter when they are asked to demonstrate the value a clinical ethics service (CES) could and should have for an institution and those it serves. The topic emerged out of numerous related presentations at the Un-Conference hosted by the Cleveland Clinic … Read more

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at … Read more

Sara Meyers and Lisa Michelson have been selected as the new student leaders for the School of Medicine’s  Clinical Ethics Discussion Group This position also entails appointment to the UNC Hospital Ethics Committee. Outgoing leaders are Tyler Clay and Mark Baumgarten. Center for Bioethics faculty members Arlene Davis, Jean Cadigan, and Eric Juengst are advisors to … Read more

While risk of harm is an important focus for whether clinical research on humans can and should proceed, there is uncertainty about what constitutes harm to a trial participant. In Phase I trials on healthy volunteers, the purpose of the research is to document and measure safety concerns associated with investigational drugs, and participants are … Read more

Mark Baumgarten and Tyler Clay will join the Clinical Ethics Discussion Group as student leaders, and the Hospital Ethics Committee as student members, in January 2019. Center for Bioethics faculty members Arlene Davis and Eric Juengst are advisors to the student group and Arlene Davis co-chairs the Hospital Ethics Committee.   Mark Baumgarten grew up in … Read more