Abstract

‘ The Journal of Medical Ethics reflects the whole field of medical ethics and aims to encourage a high academic standard for this ever-developing subject, and the enhancement of professional and public discussion’. A single issue of this Journal can reflect only some aspects of this ‘whole field’ and only some of the ways in which they are studied and discussed. The contributions to this issue however illustrate a rich variety, both of those aspects of contemporary healthcare with which medical ethics is currently concerned and also of the disciplined imaginative ways in which these may be ethically analysed with an eye to enhancing both public discussion and professional practice. The aspects of healthcare examined in this issue include some that are notably contemporary: genomics, mobile health, environmental sustainability and artificial intelligence, but also others more familiar to earlier generations: mixed wards in hospitals, coercion in psychiatry, patient and public involvement in research, abortion, palliative medicine and intensive care. These various aspects of healthcare practice are analysed in terms of a variety of ethical principles, philosophies, values and virtues. Most familiar perhaps are the four principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy and justice or fairness, together with those of individual human rights, for example to personal security and dignity; but in addition the rights, derived from the philosophy of Afro-communitarianism, of populations and of their researchers. The Aristotelian value of human flourishing moreover informs some of these analyses as does reflection on the virtues of kindness and curiosity. This issue’s contributions on contemporary aspects of healthcare include two concerned with the ethics of …