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From the late nineteenth century onwards there emerged an increasingly diverse response to escalating patenting activity. Inventors were generally supportive of legislation that made patenting more accessible, while others, especially manufacturers, saw patenting culture as an impediment. The medical profession claimed that patenting represented ‘a barrier to medical treatment’ and was thus detrimental to the nation's health, yet, as I argue, the profession's development of strict codes of conduct forbidding practitioners from patenting resulted in rebellion from some members, who increasingly sought protection for their inventions. Such polarized opinions within the medical trade continue to affect current medical practice today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses the relationship between bioethics, psychoanalysis and medicine. She is critical of what bioethics has become in 2013 and of the objectives behind much bioethics research which is conducted in 2013. She is supportive of liberating bioethics from the medico-industrial complex and from bioscience and technology, both intellectually and financially, and of helping bioethics become more global in its scope.

This article explores the ways in which risk and responsibility were conceptualised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by surgeons, their patients and the lay public. By this point surgery could be seen, simultaneously, as safe (due to developments in surgical science) and increasingly risky (because such progress allowed for greater experimentation). With the glorification of the heroic surgeon in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period came a corresponding, if grudging, recognition that successful surgery was supported by a team of ancillary professionals. In theory, therefore, blame for mistakes could be shared amongst the team; in practice, this was not always the case. Opening with an examination of the May Thorne negligence case of 1904, I will also, in the latter third of this piece, focus on surgical risks encountered by women surgeons, themselves still relatively new and, therefore, potentially risky individuals. A brief case study of the ways in which one female-run institution, the New Hospital forWomen, dealt with debates surrounding risk and responsibility concludes this article. The origin of the risks perceived and the ways in which responsibility was taken (or not) for risky procedures will provide ways of conceptualising what 'surgical anxiety' meant in the 1890s and 1900s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed substantial changes to how biospecimen research is treated under the regulations governing human subjects research. Currently, much of this research can be conducted without consent because it may not be considered 'human subjects' research, is considered exempt, or consent may be waived. Responding to criticisms that scientific changes have made biospecimen research riskier than contemplated when the Common Rule was last amended, the ANPRM proposes to require written consent for biospecimen research, even if they have been stripped of identifiers or initially collected for a non-research purpose. The ANPRM's recognition of these risks is consistent with relatively recent NIH recommendations that research projects involving genetics, genomics, or biospecimen repositories should consider getting a Certificate of Confidentiality to provide additional protections to participants where breach of confidentiality is typically the primary risk. Ironically, the ANPRM proposals may make it more difficult to provide these protections. Our paper explores the implications of the conflicting requirements of the Certificate and the ANPRM proposals and makes recommendations for achieving the dual goals of appropriate consent and adequate confidentiality protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physician and sexologist Albert Moll, from Berlin, was one of the main protagonists within the German discourse on the opportunities and dangers of social engineering, by eugenic interventions into human life in general, as well as into reproductive hygiene and healthcare policy in particular. One of the main sexological topics that were discussed intensively during the late-Wilhelminian German Reich and the Weimar Republic was the question of the legalisation of voluntary and compulsory sterilisations on the basis of medical, social, eugenic, economic or criminological indications. As is clear from Moll's conservative principles of medical ethics, and his conviction that the genetic knowledge required for eugenically indicated sterilisations was not yet sufficiently elaborated, he had doubts and worries about colleagues who were exceedingly zealous about these surgical sterilisations -- especially Gustav Boeters from Saxony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role the British Ministry of Health played in the early development of Research Ethics Committees (RECs) to oversee clinical research within the National Health Service (NIH) during the 1960s in Great Britain. Particular attention is paid to the interests and forces that shaped the expansion of these critical organizations. It is argued that the Ministry of Health did not wish to formally set the rules for RECs, but maintained a measure of authority through indirect means that influenced ethics review policy. Details and reactions to a key report issued in July 1967 by the Royal College of Physician's Committee on the Ethical Supervision of Clinical Investigations in Institutions are discussed.

The article focuses on eugenic sterilization in Romania in the 20th century. Particular attention is given to the sterilization of the Roma in the Czech Republic and China's policies towards family planning. Information for why eugenic sterilization was accepted and the differing areas of the world where it was endorsed is provided.

The article reviews the book "The History and Future of Bioethics: A Sociological View," by John Evans. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]