The wrong vegetable

Wrong-side/wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient adverse events: Are they preventable?

HYPOTHESIS Wrong-side/wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient adverse events (WSPEs) are devastating, unacceptable, and often result in litigation, but their frequency and root causes are unknown. Wrong-side/wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient events are likely more common than realized, with little evidence that current prevention practice is adequate. DESIGN Analysis of se...

Inside the Wrong Body

The wrong suspect?

P atients with Parkinson's disease (PD) suffer a specifi c loss of dop-aminergic neurons from the mid-brain region that controls motor function. The exact mechanism of this selective neurodegeneration is unclear, though many lines of evidence point to dysfunctional mitochondrial complex I as one root cause of the disease. Yet Choi et al. now suggest that defective regulation of micro-tubules ma...

The Wrong of Rape

If rape is evaluated as a serious wrong, can it also be defined as non-consensual sex (NCS)? Many do not see all instances of NCS as seriously wrongful. I argue that rape is both properly defined as NCS and properly evaluated as a serious wrong. First, I distinguish the hurtfulness of rape from its wrongfulness; secondly, I classify its harms and characterize its essential wrongfulness; thirdly...

The Wrong of Abortion

Much of the public debate about abortion concerns the question whether deliberate feticide ought to be unlawful, at least in most circumstances. We will lay that question aside here in order to focus fIrst on the question: is the choice to have, to perform, or to help procure an abortion morally wrong? We shall argue that the choice of abortion is objectively immoral. By "objectively" we indica...