ETHIK Logs

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

A lie told to be polite or to protect someone from a truth that would burden them; in dementia care, e.g. a nurse saying a daughter is coming to visit today to motivate the person to get up, when no visit is planned. A lie, following Sissela Bok, is "any intentionally deceptive m...

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

The macro level (society: health policy), the meso level (institutions such as hospitals and care homes) and the micro level (treatment decisions at the bedside). Each involves different people, criteria and questions, so mixing them up causes misunderstandings, e.g. in rationing...

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

Principlism holds that the moral aspects of medical practice can be identified, examined and resolved with four principles: respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice. They are mid-level because they sit between grand theories and concrete rules and are not ti...

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

(a) Force violates autonomy and damages trust; (b) the fake call deceives her, so she has no choice between reality and deception, and others may fear being deceived too; (c) the walk respects autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence, but costs the most staff time, which may be...

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