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April 24, 2015
Expenditure on insurance, consultations, the multitude of tests ordered by the doctor, and very expensive drugs make the treatment of illness a great burden. Should the patient need admission to a hospital and, worse, an intensive care unit, the load becomes almost unbearable. Medical research ha...
January 01, 2015
In the most recent attempt to regulate commercial surrogacy, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued a notice altering the category of visa for foreign nationals entering into commercial surrogacy arrangements from "tourist" to "medical". Upon close scrutiny, it becomes clear that this meas...
January 01, 2015
Preventive lipostasis, ie lowering/controlling the various lipid levels to protect the coronaries from atherosclerosis, is firmly entrenched in modern therapeutics, to the point of being an almost knee-jerk prescription to every cardiac patient, a genureflexopathy of some sort. Enforced lip...
January 01, 2015
In India, the 1971 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, while allowing abortions under a broad range of circumstances, can be considered a conservative law from a feminist perspective. The Act allows healthcare providers rather than women seeking abortion to have the final say on abortion,...
January 01, 2015
The human body and its parts and organs are invariably used in medical teaching institutions for academic purposes. Legal provisions for the preservation of such specimens are made in anatomy Acts across the country. However, after they have been used, the specimens are not disposed of in a...
October 16, 2014
This paper examines the ethics of childcare in Yoruba culture in the contexts of autism and abortion. The traditional Yoruba moral principles of ibikojuibi (equality of humans at birth) and ajowapo (solidarity) have been theoretically developed to establish the personhood of autistic children and...
July 22, 2014
The Tuskegee experiment has become an essential case study in the discussion of medical research ethics. The lessons learnt from it continue to be debated and written about. Briefly, the Tuskegee experiment, carried out over three decades till the early 1970's, was an observational study of Afric...
January 01, 2014
A vast majority of people believes that doctors are a negligent lot. This often implies that doctors are not courteous enough, are brusque to the point of being rude, are not available when needed, and prescribe unnecessary laboratory tests, scans and medicines. At a function organised by the Ind...
April 01, 2014
Shortages in the public budget for government health services led to the adoption of a system of user fees for healthcare in many developing countries. The Government of India introduced user charges in public health services on a pilot basis as a part of its health sector reforms in the late 199...
April 01, 2014
According to Transparency International, corruption is "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain". In many parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia, corruption is associated with healthcare in the daily life of patients, as well as routines in all types of hospitals. In the developing world, ...