Ethics Controversies Arise in Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences
Apr 7th, 2008 • Posted in: NewsAt issue: moral implications of weight-loss surgery, skeletal fashion models, physicians’ ethics beliefs, secret DNA sampling, outsourcing of clinical drug trials, and home testing kits to determine sex of unborn
VARIOUS DATELINES
Controversies in life sciences captured headlines in a variety of venues last week as new technologies continued to push the ethics envelope. Among the stories:
- Ethics concerns surround a new type of elective surgery, reports the Wall Street Journal, as “medical-device makers, venture capitalists, and surgeons are racing to turn a once-controversial weight-loss procedure into the next big thing.” The Journal writes that gastric binding, a surgical intervention to reduce the usable size of the stomach and the amount of food that an obese patient can consume, took off after a firm began directly advertising the procedure to consumers — an unusual and controversial tactic for a surgical device. Surgeons across the country also are pushing weight-loss surgery at free seminars as well as on the Internet.
- In another development related to the ethics of body weight, a British modeling agency called Quintessentially Models recently announced that it will refuse to hire so-called size-zero women — abnormally thin models — and will work with the Britain’s largest eating-disorders charity to promote nutrition, according to a report from fashion-industry publication Vogue.
- Under regulations published last week by U.K. medical authorities, doctors will be required to display posters or hand out leaflets disclosing any ethics objections they may harbor toward abortion or other controversial medical issues. The Times of London reports that the General Medical Council also mandates that doctors must set aside their personal beliefs when the patient wishes a legal medical option with which the doctor disagrees, or refer the patient to another physician who does not hold the same ethical objections. The admonitions are set out in what is characterized as an advisory document, but the council stipulates that “serious or persistence failure to follow this guidance will put your [medical] registration at risk,” notes the Times.
- Civil libertarians are challenging the ethics and legality of a law enforcement practice known as “surreptitious sampling,” in which police gather DNA samples by following suspects and waiting for evidence such as a discarded cigarette butt. “Critics argue that by covertly collecting DNA contained in the minute amounts of saliva, sweat, and skin that everyone sheds in the course of daily life, police officers are exploiting an unforeseen loophole in the requirement to show probable cause that a suspect has committed a crime before conducting a search,” the New York Times writes.
- India has overtaken China as the number-one destination for clinical drug trials, according to the Times of India. The market is lucrative, with up to $2 billion expected to flow into the country annually by 2010, according to the paper. The Times report cites various Indian officials as claiming the nation’s doctors have better reputations than their Chinese counterparts, and that India follows stricter ethics guidelines. But authorities in India acknowledge that there are problems associated with the growing industry, including a shortage of personnel to serve on ethics committees that monitor the safety of participants.
- The Ottawa Citizen examines an ethics issue just beginning to show up on moral radar: the implications of readily available home-testing devices that determine the sex of unborn children. “Some families might use that information for more than just choosing nursery décor,” says the unbylined report. “In India and China, many families actively prevent female births. The combination of sex-testing with the availability of abortion could lead to an abhorrent dystopia — a society that has weeded out one gender.” The report notes, though, that there are instances in which the ethics of sex selection become even more complicated, such as one case in which a couple is suing because their efforts to select the sex of their baby were unsuccessful. The problem: The parents wanted to avoid passing along a genetic blood disorder that affects only males.
Sources: Times of India, Apr. 5 — Ottawa Citizen, Apr. 5 — Wall Street Journal, Apr. 4 — Vogue, Mar. 13 — New York Times, Apr. 3 — Times of London, Mar. 17.
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