Objectives Medical futility at the end of life is a growing challenge to medicine. The goals of the authors were to elucidate how clinicians define futility, when they perceive life-sustaining ...

In an influential essay entitled Why abortion is wrong, Donald Marquis argues that killing actual persons is wrong because it unjustly deprives victims of their future; that the fetus has a future ...

Correspondence to Dr Nicholas Makins, Department of Philosophy, King's College London, London, WC2R 2LS, UK; ndmakins{at}gmail.com A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years ...

This paper discusses the role of consent in decision making generally and its role in end of life decisions in particular. It outlines a conception of autonomy which explains and justifies the role of ...

The hypothesis that values change and evolve is examined by this paper. The discussion is based on a series of examples where, over a period of a few decades, new ethical issues have arisen and values ...

The key to the euthanasia debate lies in how best to regulate what doctors do. Opponents of euthanasia frequently warn of the possible negative consequences of legalising physician assisted suicide ...

In clinical ethics consultations, clinical ethicists bring moral reasoning to bear on concrete and complex clinical ethical problems by undertaking ethical deliberation in collaboration with others.

In 2025, an Australian couple asked to have their remaining embryos moved to another clinic, only to discover that the child ...

The public discourse surrounding sex and severe disability over the past 40 years has largely focused on protecting vulnerable populations from abuse. However, health professionals and activists are ...

Many accounts of informed consent in medical ethics claim that it is valuable because it supports individual autonomy. Unfortunately there are many distinct conceptions of individual autonomy, and ...

Correspondence to Dr Angela Ballantyne, Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice and the Bioethics Center, Otago University, Wellington, New Zealand; angela.ballantyne{at}otago.ac.nz The ...

In response to public outrage stemming from exposés of animal abuse in research laboratories, the US Congress in 1985 mandated Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) to oversee animal ...