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Category: Letters
January 23, 2018
Compulsory service programmes for MBBS students have existed for many years in India and other parts of the world. Such programmes have been referred to differently as "obligatory", "mandatory", "requisite" and "compulsory" service. Governments look at these programmes as a means to deploy and re...
January 18, 2018
Five years since Nirbhaya, and nearly as long since the Justice Verma Committee Report, amendments to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2013, and the National guidelines and protocols on medico-legal care for survivors of sexual violence by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) 2014, we,...
January 01, 2018
In their letter, Singh and Thawani highlight the gender insensitivity of the government which, after declaring items such as sindoor, bindis and condoms as tax-free, opted to levy 12% tax on sanitary napkins, equating the napkin with items such as packaged dry fruits, fruit juices, cell phones an...
January 01, 2018
For some time now, a debate has been raging on the issue of generic drug prescriptions. Doctors are divided on this matter. Those against generic prescription cite possible poor quality and inadequate testing; while those in favour assert that the move would make cheaper medicines accessible to m...
January 08, 2018
The World Medical Association (WMA) provides ethical guidance to physicians through its declarations, resolutions and statements. WMA first adopted its Resolution on physician participation in capital punishment in 1981, which was then amended in 2000, and 2008. The revised Declaration of Geneva ...
December 21, 2017
The editorial by Jesani and Johari in this journal raises some contentious yet relevant ethical issues pertaining to vaccination practices in India. Vaccination is one of the most important preventive measures against infectious diseases. The eradication of smallpox in the 70s and near eradicatio...
November 23, 2017
Consent and ethics are integral to a physician’s work. Patient images have been used for multiple purposes in medical practice; as an adjunct to clinical care, displayed to colleagues, students and other audiences in educational settings, and published in medical journals. But nowadays there is a...
November 14, 2017
The UK was the first country to legalise mitochondrial donation in October 2015. In 2016, the first three-parent baby was born in Mexico and the US Food and Drug Administration declared that further research on mitochondrial donation is ethically permissible. It has now become an important issue,...
September 19, 2017
As India finally has the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates, the GST Council declared that the tax rate on the sanitary products including sanitary napkins, sanitary towels, and tampons would be 12%, ie, the second lowest tax slab. Statistically this is an improvement since until now sanitary...
July 04, 2017
We are concerned about the changes effected by the WHO to the assessment methodology of adverse events following immunisation (AEFI), which make it almost impossible to classify adverse events (deaths in this case) noticed for the first time in phase IV post-marketing surveillance, as "consistent...