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January 01, 2002
One day in early 1993 a doctor from BARC hospital brought to my office a friend from Kota in Rajasthan. The latter, a middle-aged medical practioner, had a son afflicted with DMD (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy). He also had an unaffected daughter but did not know whether she also had the defective ...
January 01, 2002
The major ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) issues that have arisen in the context of developments in genomics and health in developed countries are also of relevance to developing countries. The question before the World Health Organization (WHO) today is: what role can it play vis-à-vis ...
January 01, 2002
The successful completion of the human genome sequence can be counted as one of the most important scientific achievements in biology in recent times. The analysis of the draft sequence by two groups, the human genome consortium and a private company (1, 2), has revealed astonishing insights into...
October 01, 2001
I recollect one of the first lectures in my first year of medical college where my venerable professor thundered: "... the first thing that a doctor should have is confidence. If you kill a patient, kill him with confidence." This is a classic expression of the necessity felt by the medical profe...
October 01, 2001
Inequities in global health care, an increasing disease burden with decreasing availability of affordable remedies in the developing world, uneven public allocations for health, and the commercial demands of the pharmaceutical industry - all these have fed into an intense debate on the ethics of ...
October 01, 2001
Dr Asad Jamil Raja's essay on the amendments to the Helsinki Declaration raises many significant issues. While I agree with the essence of his comments, I differ on certain issues.
October 01, 2001
In countries like India the researcher's responsibilities to research participants may sometimes come into conflict with the search for affordable drugs and therapies for problems of the poor. An on-going trial in Mumbai illustrates this situation, and is being presented here for discussion.
July 01, 2001
The vegetative state was first defined by Jennet and Plum in 1972. It can occur as a result of trauma, hypoxia or degenerative diseases. It can be considered a result of improvements in resuscitation, retrieval and intensive care which sustain cardiovascular and respiratory functions but are not ...
July 01, 2001
Decisions on the withdrawal of care are not made in abstraction. They impact on the meaning and understanding of life — the life of the individual in question as well as life in a wider communitarian sense. The web of life into which we are bound makes arbitrary decisions on the withdrawal of car...
July 01, 2001
Ethics have always been an integral part of nursing on a daily basis. Exposure to frequent moral and ethical conflicts may affect the nurse, leading to burnout or resignation.