Page 5 of 31
Xenotransplantation has great potential as an alternative to alleviate the shortage of organs for donation. However, given that the animal most suited for xenotransplantation is the pig, there are concerns tha...
To examine the understanding of the ethical dilemmas associated with Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) among Jordanian medical students, physicians in training, and senior practitioners.
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Medical Ethics 2025 26:30
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Medical Ethics 2024 25:27
Symptom checker apps (SCAs) are mobile or online applications for lay people that usually have two main functions: symptom analysis and recommendations. SCAs ask users questions about their symptoms via a chat...
The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the approach to the health-disease system, raising the question about the principles of bioethics present in physician–patient relations. The principles while widely accept...
Despite the great benefits of intelligent assistive technology (IAT) for dementia care – for example, the enhanced safety and increased independence of people with dementia and their caregivers – its practical...
While most countries that allow abortion on women’s request also grant physicians a right to conscientious objection (CO), this has proven to constitute a potential barrier to abortion access. Conscientious ob...
The underrepresentation of scholarly works from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in academic literature is a documented concern, attributed partly to editorial biases. This trend, prevalent across vari...
Radiotherapy is an essential component of cancer treatment, yet many countries do not have adequate capacity to serve all patients who would benefit from it. Allocation systems are needed to guide patient prio...
Intellectual honesty and integrity are the cornerstones of conducting any form of research. Over the last few years, scholars have shown great concerns over questionable research practices (QRPs) in academia. ...
While the theoretical benefits and harms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been widely discussed in academic literature, empirical evidence remains elusive regarding the practical ethical challenges of deve...
The conduct of research is critical to advancing human health. However, there are issues of ethical concern specific to the design and conduct of research in conflict settings. Conflict-affected countries ofte...
It is a common ethical challenge for ambulance clinicians to care for patients with impaired decision-making capacities while assessing and determining the degree of decision-making ability and considering eth...
On December 2017 the Italian Parliament approved law n. 219/2017 “Provisions for informed consent and advance directives” regarding challenging legal and bioethical issues related to healthcare decisions and e...
Given that AI-driven decision support systems (AI-DSS) are intended to assist in medical decision making, it is essential that clinicians are willing to incorporate AI-DSS into their practice. This study takes...
International electives are often considered a valuable learning opportunity for medical students. Yet, as travelling to lower and middle income countries (LMICs) becomes more common, ethical considerations of...
Increasing social pluralism adds to the already existing variety of heterogeneous moral perspectives on good care, health, and quality of life. Pluralism in social identities is also connected to health and ca...
Current requirements for ethical research in Canada, specifically the standard of active or signed parental consent, can leave Indigenous children and youth with inequitable access to research opportunities or...
Based on the principle of informed consent, doctors are required to fully inform patients and respect their medical decisions. In China, however, family members usually play a special role in the patient’s inf...
Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research...
Achieving meaningful consent can be challenging, particularly in contexts of diminished literacy, yet is a vital part of participant protection in global health research.
Health care workers (HCWs) are susceptible to moral stress and distress when they are faced with morally challenging situations where it is difficult to act in line with their moral standards. In times of cris...
Doctors are increasingly faced with end-of-life decisions. Little is known about how medical students approach euthanasia. The objective of this study was to evaluate, among medical students and residents, the...
Biobanking and genomic research requires collection and storage of human tissue from study participants. From participants’ perspectives within the African context, this can be associated with fears and misgiv...
Conventional consent practices face ethical challenges in continuously evolving digital health environments due to their static, one-time nature. Dynamic consent offers a promising solution, providing adaptabi...
Socially assistive devices (care robots, companions, smart screen assistants) have been advocated as a promising tool in elderly care in Western healthcare systems. Ethical debates indicate various challenges....
Clinical trials should be as inclusive as possible to facilitate equitable access to research and better reflect the population towards which any intervention is aimed. Informed by the UK’s National Institute ...
Collecting post-mortem brain tissue is essential, especially from healthy “control” individuals, to advance knowledge on increasingly common neurological and mental disorders. Yet, healthy individuals, on whic...
The original article was published in BMC Medical Ethics 2023 24:79
Allocation of scarce organs for transplantation is ethically challenging. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been proposed to assist in liver allocation, however the ethics of this remains unexplored and the vie...
Voluntary post-mortem donation to science (PDS) is the most appropriate source for body dissection in medical education and training, and highly useful for biomedical research. In Mexico, unclaimed bodies are ...
In this Matters Arising article, we outline how the recent article “The impact on patients of objections by institutions to assisted dying: a qualitative study of family caregivers’ perceptions” (White et al.,...
Improving the ways in which routinely-collected mental health data are shared could facilitate substantial advances in research and treatment. However, this process should only be undertaken in partnership wit...
Massively parallel sequencing techniques, such as whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), may reveal unsolicited findings (UFs) unrelated to the diagnostic aim. Such techniques are freq...
Informed consent procedures for large population-based cohort studies should be comprehensive and easy-to-use. This is particularly challenging when participants from different socio-economic groups and multic...
Parental refusal of routine childhood vaccination remains an ethically contested area. This systematic review sought to explore and characterise the normative arguments made about parental refusal of routine v...
Defensive medicine is physicians’ deviation from standard medical care which is primarily intended either to reduce or avoid medico legal litigation. Although the Federal Ethics Committee review in Ethiopia ha...
Researchers must adhere to ethical and scientific standards in their research involving human subjects; therefore, their knowledge of human subjects’ rights is essential. A tool to measure the extent of this k...
The organ donation and transplantation (ODT) system heavily relies on the willingness of individuals to donate their organs. While it is widely believed that public trust plays a crucial role in shaping donati...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Medical Ethics 2024 25:26
Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: impro...
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries sought to manufacture and supply effective vaccines to control the disease and prevent and protect public health in society. The implementation...
The health sector aims to improve health outcomes and access to healthcare. At the same time, the sector relies on unsustainable environmental practices that are increasingly recognised to be catastrophic thre...
Porcine-derived products serve as an effective solution for a wide range of human ailments; however, there may be objections to their use due to Islamic religious prohibitions on consuming products derived fro...
We discuss the concept of women’s empowerment in FemTech, considering cultural and legal differences, ethical concerns, and legal consequences. We claim that it is crucial to prioritize privacy, a fundamental ...
The introduction and wide application of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has triggered further evolution of routines in the practice of prenatal diagnosis. ‘Routinization’ of prenatal diagnosis however ha...
Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) sparks debate in several countries, some of which allow or plan to allow MAiD where a mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition (MAiD-MD). Since MAiD-MD is bec...
Prenatal genetic testing, in particular non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), as well as screening for risks associated with pregnancy, and counseling, play pivotal roles in reproductive healthcare, offering v...
With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), global researchers were confronted with major challenges. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) was launched in...
New disease-modifying ways to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD) may soon become a reality with intracerebral transplantation of cell products produced from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The aim of this stud...
Medical errors, unsatisfactory outcomes, or treatment complications often prompt patient complaints about healthcare providers. In response, physicians may adopt defensive practices to mitigate objections, avo...
While genomic data sharing can facilitate important health research and discovery benefits, these must be balanced against potential privacy risks and harms to individuals. Understanding public attitudes and p...
Citation Impact 2023
Journal Impact Factor: 3.0
5-year Journal Impact Factor: 3.1
Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.384
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.975
Speed 2024
Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 11
Submission to acceptance (median days): 190
Usage 2024
Downloads: 1,858,736
Altmetric mentions: 5,048
The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: Single anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: Review reports. Reviewer Identities reviewer opt in. Author/reviewer communication