Ravitsky and Wilfond (2006) correctly highlight the need for uniform guidelines to assist investigators and institutional review boards (IRBs) in determining whether to disclose individual genetic results to research participants. However, their results-evaluation framework, like other proposals that call for the disclosure of individual results to research participants (Partridge and Winer 200...

This paper examines the ethical probity of Health Canada's Special Access Program (SAP). The SAP is designed for patients with life-threatening conditions who require "emergency" access to drugs that are not authorized for use in Canada when conventional therapies have failed. We argue that the SAP inappropriately uses the tenets of evidence-based decision-making in situations where evidence-ba...

The Supreme Decree 440 of March 23, 1943, ordered the coordination of antivenereal activities and placed all the separate organizations, including the Antivenereal Dispensaries of the Public Health Service, the Social Assurance Law, and the Beneficence Hospitals, under the direct responsibility of a national committee formed by representatives of the coordinated entities. From this date all med...

Human trafficking is an egregious human rights violation with profound negative physical and psychological consequences, including communicable diseases, substance use disorders, and mental illnesses. The health needs of this population are multiple, complex, and influenced by past and present experiences of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Effective health care services for trafficked patient...

Traditional disciplinary guidelines are inadequate to address some of the ethical dilemmas that emerge when conducting research on violence against women and girls. This article is organized according to the ethical principles of respect for persons, privacy and confidentiality, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. In the article, I describe dilemmas involved in cross-cultural research, re...

This second approach to the doctrine and thinking of Edmund D. Pellegrino presents the basics of the author's proposal to reform medical ethics, based on the rehabilitation of beneficence principle in health care. It describes the research and interest of our bioethicist towards the concept of 'good' of the patient and his four components. Pellegrino's classic concepts of 'healing' and 'help' a...

Informed consent is reviewed as it applies to psychiatric patients. Although new legislation, such as the Mental Health Act 1983, provides a useful safeguard for the protection of the civil rights of patients, it could actually reduce their humane care unless applied with sensitivity for the nature of their unique difficulties. In order to guard against this possibility, we suggest that legal r...

Although deeply committed to the model of nondirective counseling, most genetic counselors enter the profession with certain assumptions about health and disability-for example, that it is preferable to be a hearing person than a deaf person. Thus, most genetic counselors are deeply troubled when parents with certain disabilities ask for assistance in having a child who shares their disability....