Life Before Birth: Consensus in Medical Ethics

Life and Medical Ethics in Pediatric Neurosurgery

Ethical issues in the field of pediatric neurosurgery, including prenatal diagnosis, palliative care for children with an intractable serious disease, and medical neglect, are discussed. An important role of medicine is to offer every possible treatment to a patient. However, it also is the responsibility of medicine to be conscious of its limitations, and to help parents love and respect a chi...

Medical ethics and the payment of fees before treatment.

Whether it is ethically acceptable for doctors to require payment of fees before treatment depends on interpretation of the ethical rules of the profession, the circumstances of the doctor-patient relationship, the urgency of the patient's need for treatment, and whether refusal to treat before payment represents abandonment of a patient.

Quality of Life Measures in Health Care and Medical Ethics

Evolution of medical ethics in resuscitation and end of life

Medical ethics has evolved from paternalistic to patient-centred. Emergency and end-of-life situations are frequently associated with inability to make informed decisions. Respect for advance directives, proxy informed consent for therapeutic/research interventions, do-not-attempt resuscitation orders, and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment focus on autonomy and nonmaleficence. Beneficence...

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and life before birth.

Thomas Browne was born in 1605. His father was a London merchant about whom little is known. His mother married a second time and Thomas's stepfather, Sit Thomas Dutton, gave him an excellent education, first at Winchester and then at Bradgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. His undergraduate career was distinguished and he acquired a BA in 1626, followed by a MA in 1629. After a visit to I...