By framing aging theologically as a life of discipleship, Willimon avoids vapid cultural messages that seek to ignore or minimize aging, yet also criticizes the notion of retirement as freedom from secular and sacred responsibilities.
Category Archives: Early Access
Professional Integrity in Healthcare Professionals: What, Why, and How
Abstract
In this article, the authors discuss some empirical and conceptual basics of professional integrity of conduct in healthcare professions, such as nursing and medicine. They do so in three sections: the basics of professional conduct, including what they are, why they are, and how they work together, integrating original research as well as practical applications. We suggest professional integrity is integral to ethical caring practice, for the good for the patient is at stake, involving the trust of the patient in the professional, in her professional position, and in her profession as a whole. Professional integrity is the moral quality to keep together three dimensions of one’s person, one’s professional practice, and the patient’s interest. Several factors are identified either supporting or eroding professional integrity and the ability to manage integrity issues in practice. Those factors constitute five rules of thumb as well as reflective tools.
Keywords: professional ethics, professional integrity, moral wholeness, reliability, trustworthiness
Book Review: Brian Brock, “Disability: Living into the Diversity of Christ’s Body”
By framing aging theologically as a life of discipleship, Willimon avoids vapid cultural messages that seek to ignore or minimize aging, yet also criticizes the notion of retirement as freedom from secular and sacred responsibilities.
The Ethics of Uterine Transplant in Absolute Uterine Factor Infertility: A Review of Uterine Transplant Today from the Lens of the Belmont Report
Abstract
The miracle of childbirth and childrearing has been apparent since the beginning of time. Most women can birth children, and consequently, it is distressing for those who suffer from infertility. Medicine and research have advanced to provide relief from this type of suffering. Previously, absolute uterine factor infertility, or absence of a uterus, has been untreatable. However, advances in surgical and transplant techniques have made uterus transplantation a possibility for this type of infertility. Many risks are involved for women and children throughout the transplantation, pregnancy, and birthing process. As scientists, medical professionals, and Christians, we must ask, do the ends justify the means? This article will review the promises, perils, science, and current statistics of uterine transplantation from the specific view of research ethics. It will analyze the ethical permissibility or impermissibility of continuing research or approving this type of infertility treatment from the lens of the Belmont Report, with additional attention to the Montreal Criteria, traditional transplant ethics, the epistemology of science, the purpose of medicine, the particular view of Christian bioethics, and biomedical ethics. After reviewing these methods with statistical analysis of current research data, it will be perceptible from all presented views, with special attention to the research lens of the Belmont Report and Christian bioethics, that they do not permit uterine transplantation.
Keywords: AUFI, Biomedical Ethics, Christian Bioethics, Infertility, IVF, Medical Ethics, Transplant Ethics, Reproduction, Uterus, Organ Transplantation.