ETHIK Logs

(1) It violates her dignity, (2) she is exploited, (3) she is reified (reduced to a womb). None justifies a ban in principle: dignity is respected if she gives valid consent, and exploitation and reification depend on the pay, the working conditions and how the arrangement is des...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Informed consent is the minimum of patient autonomy: without it, any medical intervention is a (punishable) bodily injury. Paternalism puts the patient's well-being above their will; shared decision-making combines the doctor's medical knowledge with the patient's own goals and v...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Strengths: open to different moral convictions and to the specifics of each case, a search matrix for spotting conflicts, a structure for working through them, broad acceptance in a pluralistic society, and more transparency. Weakness: limited problem-solving power, since it rare...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Information becomes more symmetrically distributed (apps, electronic patient records) and expectations rise ("Dr. Google"), but informed consent needs good-quality information, and knowledge alone does not create autonomy. The doctor's role shifts towards explaining (coach, inter...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

The arguments are not sufficient for a ban in principle. The suffering of involuntary childlessness weighs heavily, the harm to the child is not empirically proven, and the objections from the surrogate's side depend on how and where surrogacy is arranged. This suggests a regulat...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Stem cells may in Switzerland only be taken from "surplus" IVF embryos that have no chance of survival anyway; therapeutic cloning aims to grow the patient's "own" replacement tissue; research with children is problematic, but so is doing no research with them at all; and globali...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Laws, guidelines (e.g. from the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, SAMW), statements of ethics commissions, internal guidelines and directives, forums for ethical discussion such as an ethics committee, case discussions, and procedures for ethical decisions in acute situations su...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Whether everyone will have equal access to it (the lesson of the digital divide), whether stronger monitoring of frail elderly people needs safeguards for their privacy and dignity, and how far technology may substitute for being there in person. The scenario "Angels in the Floor...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Medical ethics is an applied ethics (Bereichsethik) that asks what is morally required, permitted and acceptable in dealing with human illness and health, both in medicine as the art of healing and as a science. It is needed because patients are vulnerable, dependent on others, w...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026

Gene therapy treats a disease by correcting a genetic defect; enhancement uses medical or biotechnological interventions whose goal is not primarily therapy or prevention but improving a healthy person; transhumanism is a school of thought whose central aim is transforming the hu...

Quiz: ETHIK / Medical and Care Ethics: Principles, Rationing and Digital Health | updated: Oct 22, 2026