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Category: Letters
January 01, 2015
The topic under discussion at the 10th Brazilian Congress on Bioethics was "Advance directives, palliative care, and clinical bioethics committees," among the most important end-of-life issues. Other than the psychosocial, medical, and ethical aspects of making an end-of-life decision, juri...
January 01, 2015
The recent editorials by Dr George Thomas and Dr Sunil K Pandya in the IJME with respect to the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI) force us to think about how reforms can be introduced inthe MCI. Dr Pandya suggests that we would do well to l...
January 01, 2015
Are the informed consent forms of clinical trials silent on the rights and obligations of participants with respect to their life insurance policies?
Though life insurance in India has poor penetration, it has increased over the last couple of years after the entry of private insurance p...
January 01, 2015
I happened to meet a journal editor at an IMA (Indian Medical Association) Conference who invited me to deliver a talk on my journey as a clinical researcher over the past three decades. I was delighted to share my experiences in research driven by patient needs, performed at resource-limit...
October 16, 2014
Issuing mental fitness certificates is always a challenge for the psychiatrist. Employers tend to seek mental fitness certificates for employees who display unusual behaviour either at the workstation or at home, with the intention of safeguarding the working environment.
October 16, 2014
The "Consensus Framework for Ethical Collaboration between Patients' Organisations, Healthcare Professionals and Pharmaceutical Industry" was signed by five global healthcare organisations in January 2014. These are the International Alliance of Patients' Organisations (IAPO), the World Medical A...
October 16, 2014
An editorial in the IJME on sexual assault and the ethical responsibility of health professionals in this context draws our attention to the need to understand and provide solutions to the problem of aberrant sexual behaviours in our society. News items about the prevalence of sexual abu...
October 16, 2014
It was 1 am when my wife woke me up, saying that our tiny tot (who was six months old) was shivering and had a high fever. We immediately wrapped him in his blankets and rushed to the paediatric ward of my hospital. Surprisingly, there was less chaos than usual in the ward that night. I requested...
April 01, 2014
This is with reference to a news item in the November 11, 2013 issue of the Times of India, "Organ Donation pledge on I-Cards". According to the newspaper report, the move to encourage organ donation has been initiated by the state public health minister, Suresh Shetty. Mumbai University has issu...
April 01, 2014
ecent media reports of a startling number of hysterectomies being performed in various Indian states have raised ethical concern in the public health community. In our view, this is a perplexing health policy issue as it could result in serious side effects being apprehended in large numbers of y...