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April 2019 EACME Newsletter
Contents
Editorial 1 G. Birchley
News from the EACME Bureau R. Porz
Aging between participation and simulation Ethical Dimensions of Socially Assistive Technologies J. Hovemann
Project Summary – Thesis C. Brall
Why we edited “Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects of Healthcare for Migrants: Perspectives from the UK and Germany” K. Kuehlmeyer
Book review J. Martin
Book review S. Liosi
Book review J. Martin
Deadline of next EACME Newsletter
Editorial Board
Editorial
Several items in the news recently may have caught your attention as they have mine: there has been disquiet about the role of social media in recent outbreaks of preventable disease worldwide due to anti-vaccination campaigns;1 there have been questions about the roles and constitution of industry ethics committees convened to govern “artificial Intelligence ethics”; more broadly the protests at the pace of action over climate change by schoolchildren have also hit the headlines.
These social phenomenon may be linked. The same technologies increase the effectiveness of anti-vaccination campaigns as power climate change activism. The heuristics of these technologies are frequently driven by the same artificial intelligence technologies that industry ethics committees are intended to police. Whether industry bodies, at best answerable to their shareholders, have sufficient public accountability is heatedly questioned. Yet these questions do not just affect the tech-giants. The same questions about public role and accountability are also true of medical ethicists, whether working within hospitals or in academic roles. Should we be answerable for the opinions we express in the clinic, the classroom or the academy? Should we seek to neutralise our own intuitions and perspectives? Or should we embrace them and become activists in our areas of (presumptive) expertise? The Janus faces of activism highlighted here show there is surely a need both for passion and disinterested expertise — so, on what authority do we, as ethicists, express our viewpoint — or silence our consciences? These are important questions for medical ethicists in every sphere.
In this month’s newsletter we consider the ethics of new technologies and climate activism, in the form of two excellent articles by, respectively, Johanna Hovemann and colleagues and by our stalwart contributor Dr. Jean Martin. Alongside these is a very interesting article examining the ethical implications of austerity, an essay by the editors of a major new collection on migrant health and book reviews of both this collection and a new work on examining the relationship of law to psychiatric practice. I hope, to use an English idiom, there will be “grist for your mill” in pondering these questions in this issue of the EACME newsletter.
Dr Giles Birchley
Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, U.K.
Download the full April 2019 EACME Newsletter
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