Uterine lavage: ethics of research and clinical applications

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 1949-1953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Pennings

ABSTRACT Uterine lavage is presented as a way to perform aneuploidy screening without IVF. The feasibility of this method was tested in a research study. This study combined a number of highly contentious ethical issues: the creation of embryos for research (very early), abortion and (moderate) payments to research participants. It is concluded that the study largely fulfils the criteria of ethical research but that the researchers should have avoided a number of steps. These steps were the inclusion of infertility patients, the performance of the research in a middle-income country and the double destination of the embryos. The next question then becomes whether it would be acceptable to apply the method in a clinical setting. Two elements complicate the introduction in the clinic: low success rate of embryo collection and risk of unintended pregnancy. The application of the method in the clinic may lead to very complicated ethical and legal situations for which both patients and doctors should be prepared.

2021 ◽  
pp. 285-305
Author(s):  
Lainie Friedman ◽  
J. Richard Thistlethwaite, Jr

The original living kidney paired exchanges (KPE) involved two donors who were ABO- or crossmatch incompatible with their intended recipients but were compatible with the other’s recipient such that they could “swap” kidneys. This chapter examines the ethical issues raised by two novel expansions of KPE: bi-organ (also known as trans-organ) exchange involving a living liver donor (donor-L)-kidney recipient (recipient-K) and a living kidney donor (donor-K)-liver recipient (recipient-L), and global kidney exchange (GKE) between a living kidney donor-recipient pair from a low to middle income country and living kidney donor-recipient pair(s) from a high income country. Although this chapter describes a case report of an ethical bi-organ exchange, bi-organ exchanges and GKE are usually unjust because they challenge the fair selection of donors. Bi-organ exchanges and GKE also raise significant deferential and infrastructural vulnerability challenges that threaten the donor’s ability (autonomy) to provide a voluntary and informed consent.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Marie Ackerman

Until now, there has been little experimental work investigating the processing and formal properties of the singular they suite of pronouns. As scientific and popular attention to singular they increases, it will be critical for research to acknowledge theoretical and ethical issues regarding discussion of this phenomenon. This commentary uses the recent paper by Doherty & Conklin (2017) as a starting point to discuss issues surrounding work on the various forms of singular they. It concludes that there is sufficient theoretical and empirical evidence to claim they has a grammatically singular form (at least in colloquial English). It also recommends care be taken in academic discussions of the grammaticality and acceptability of terms which are associated with marginalised communities.


Author(s):  
Bridget Pratt

Health research funded by organizations from HICs and conducted in low- and middle-income countries has grown significantly since 1990. Power imbalances and inequities frequently (but not always) exist at each stage of the international research process. Unsurprisingly then, a variety of ethical concerns commonly arise in the context of international health research, such as inequities in funding, the semi-colonial nature of international research models, the brain drain of low- and middle-income country researchers, and inequities in partnerships between HIC and low- and middle-income country researchers. In this chapter, these (and other) ethical concerns are introduced and the following ethical concepts to address the concerns are then discussed: responsiveness, standard of care, benefit sharing, community engagement, and social value. Existing guidance and remaining debates about how to specify each of the concepts are summarized. The chapter concludes by highlighting the existence of epistemic injustices within the field of international research ethics.


Author(s):  
Margo S Harrison

Abstract Background A secondary analysis was conducted of two separate datasets to observe the association between maternal age and interpregnancy interval (IPI). Methods The IPI in a middle-income country (Guatemala) was compared with that of a very-high-income country (USA) among women with two pregnancies. Results A regression model found that with each increasing year of age, the IPI increases by 1.26 months (p<0.001) in Guatemala. A regression model found that IPI decreased as women aged in the USA. Conclusions It is hypothesized that as countries progress in their development indices, women may delay childbearing, which may result in reduced IPI, as was the case in the USA compared with Guatemala in these datasets.


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