Tag / healthcare ethics
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
When Empathy Is Turned into Fear
Empathy is redirected into self-protection. When immigration enforcement is highly visible, inconsistently applied, and no longer constrained by once-respected boundaries, people begin to ask not only what is happening to them? but could this happen to us? Distance begins to feel safer than beneficence. All this while the steps needed to protect immigrant patients are well known, ethically justified and within bounds of the law. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
When the ECMO Bridge Leads Nowhere
No Tidy Answers: When the ECMO Bridge Leads Nowhere Perhaps it’s not about destination but the journey. That when we cannot alter the destination, we can profoundly shape the experience of getting there. The case study picks up the topic with a patient whose husband requests ECMO to save her life without her consent. Ryan follows up with the one question to ask about ECMO and other medical miracles. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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Bioethics Case Study – When a Parent Overrules Their Child’s Best Interests
When parents overrule their child’s best interest is the topic of this Bioethics case study in VIDEO and PRINT. Patient self-determination and personal autonomy are central components of ethically appropriate care. Published by the Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
Doing Harm: Vaccine Policy in the Age of Distortion
Doing Harm: Vaccine Policy in the Age of Distortion The January 2026 Ethics Dispatch discusses how the current head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is calling for the reduction or even the elimination of childhood vaccine and by doing so, is doing harm. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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December 2025 Bioethics Bulletin E-Newsletter
We focus on the bioethics of ECMO in the Center for Practical Bioethics’ December 18, 2025 Bioethics Bulletin. We discuss ECMO in our Ethics Dispatch and video case study, while professors Dr. Kayhan Parsi and Nanette Elster begin shaping programming that bridges scholarship and the practice of bioethics.
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November 20 2025 Bioethics Bulletin E-Newsletter
Clinical ethics is the focus of the Center for Practical Bioethics’ November 20, 2025 Bioethics Bulletin. We discuss the bioethics principle of beneficence and using hospitals to continue to care for some patients instead of other recovery facilities which refuse to admit the patients.
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![A hand intervening in dominoes falling. Stopping the process.]()
Bioethics Case Study – ECMO and Healthcare Technology
Bioethics case study on ECMO and Healthcare Technology in VIDEO and PRINT. Technology Means Hard Choices: To Start or Not to Start ECMO. His wife became critically ill and had to be transferred to the ICU after delivering her baby via emergency C-section. She continued to decline in the ICU to the point that her only chance of survival was to be transferred to another hospital to start ECMO. Published by the Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![Arrows on pavement to represent having to make a choice.]()
Bioethics Case Study – When Facilities Refuse Admission
Bioethics case study on when facilities refuse admission, hospitals are the last resort in VIDEO and PRINT. Hospitals must jump through hoops to find facilities that can meet patient mental health needs. Without a deliberate effort to provide for such patients, they will continue to remain abandoned by society and left to places of last resort, typically the hospital. Published by the Center for Practical Bioethics.
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![A graphic stating the Ethics Dispatch is like an ethics committee meeting in a box. With four topic sections: monthly hot topic, new clinical ethics case study, current bioethics news stories and ethical musing essay.]()
Ethics Dispatch November 2025 Beneficence
The November 2025 Ethics Dispatch discusses beneficence in the season of caring . What does it mean to actively do good? 150,000 people with serious mental illness live in nursing homes, often longer than their medical needs require because the broader system has no place for them to go. In the case study we learn about a patient ready for discharge, but no facilities will take him. Then we discuss the shortcomings of EMTALA and how they demonstrate the need to rediscover the theory of medicine so that its practice meets patients’ needs. The Center for Practical Bioethics.
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October 23 2025 Bioethics Bulletin E-Newsletter
Read about justice in an age of misinformation in the Center for Practical Bioethics’ October 23, 2025 Bioethics Bulletin. Other topics include announcing the new Francis co-chairs, our upcoming free lecture, “Jazz, Bioethics, and the Moral Practice of Medicine,” our 2025 Vision to Action award winner, and watch a new case study on the meaning of expertise.
