News by Subject Policy & Ethics

Early-view essay in Hastings Center Report, March-April 2020.

A team of medical researchers and bioethicists at Oxford University has published results today in Science that furthers our understanding of coronavirus transmission. This evidence is enabling several international partners to assess the feasibility of developing mobile apps for instant contact tracing in record time. If rapidly and widely developed, these mobile apps could help to significantly slow the rate of transmission, and support countries to emerge from lockdowns safely, as restrictions are gradually eased.

Improving care for children with cancer worldwide will bring a triple return on investment and prevent millions of needless deaths, according to a new Commission report published today by The Lancet Oncology entitled Sustainable Care for Children with Cancer.

Even if fatality rates are at the lower end of expectations -- one percent of virus victims -- it is highly likely that death and bereavement services will be overwhelmed, according to newly-published research by Dr Julia Meaton, Dr Anna Williams and researcher Helen-Marie Kruger.

In a study published online yesterday focused on the medical products industry -- which includes medical devices, pharmaceuticals and biologics -- a group of researchers found that, compared to firms with all-male boards, firms with female directors announced high-severity product recalls 28 days sooner. This is a 35% reduction in the time between when a firm was first made aware of the defect and when the firm decided to recall the defective product.

Clinical data should be treated as a public good when it is used for secondary purposes, such as research or the development of AI algorithms, according to a new special report.

In the United States today, healthcare providers seem appropriately confused about present and future issues concerning coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In a commentary in The American Journal of Medicine, published by Elsevier, internationally recognized public health experts say that the current, incomplete totality of evidence provides cause for serious concerns, but more importantly it creates an urgent need for public health leadership that can direct the country's response with neither reassurance nor alarm.

Negligence claims against the NHS due to failure to inform patients before they consent to procedures have spiralled up since a landmark legal ruling in 2015, a new study has found.