David M Shaw Universität Basel
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  • Faculty, Universität Basel
  • PhD, Université de Lausanne, 2006.

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About me
I'm interested in all areas of applied ethics, most particularly medical ethics and bioethics.
My works
42 items found.
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  1. Bernice Elger & David Shaw (forthcoming). Confidentiality in Prison Health Care – A Practical Guide. In Bernice Elger, Catherine Ritter & Heino Stöver (eds.), Emerging Issues in Prison Health. Springer.
    The importance of medical confidentiality is obvious to anyone who has ever been a patient, and protecting private information about patients is one of the key responsibilities of healthcare professionals. However, maintaining the confidentiality of patients who are incarcerated in prisons poses several ethical challenges. In this chapter we explain the importance of confidentiality in general, and the dilemmas that sometimes face doctors with regard to it, before describing some of the specific difficulties faced by prison doctors. Although healthcare professionals (...)
     
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  2. Bernice Elger & David Shaw (forthcoming). Preventing Human Rights Violations in Prison – the Role of Guidelines. In Bernice Elger, Catherine Ritter & Heino Stöver (eds.), Emerging Issues in Prison Health. Springer.
    It is well known that prisoners’ human rights are often violated. In this chapter we examine whether guidelines can be effective in preventing such violations and in helping physicians resolve the significant conflicts of interest that they often face in trying to protect prisoners’ rights. We begin by explaining the role of clinical and ethical guidelines outside prisons, in the context of healthcare for non-incarcerated prisoners, and then the specific role of such guidelines within prisons, where the main concerns are (...)
     
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  3. David Shaw (forthcoming). Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: Legal and Ethical Issues in the UK. In Jörg P. Halter Peter Bürkli (ed.), The Legal and Ethical Challenges of Present and Future Stem-Cell Transplantation. Schwabe Verlag.
    Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a widely accepted practice in the United Kingdom (UK). The relatively liberal UK law permits donation both within families and from strangers, and even allows the creation of “saviour siblings” who are brought into being with the specific intent of having them donate stem cells to save other members of their family. This chapter describes the regulation of HSCT in the UK and highlights some ethical issues related to discrimination against some categories of potential donors, (...)
     
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  4. David Shaw & Bernice Elger (forthcoming). The Relevance of Relevance in Research. Swiss Medical Weekly.
    A new Swiss law requires that any research involving humans must aim to answer "a relevant research question". This paper explains the relevance of the relevance criterion in research, analyses the Swiss and British guidelines on relevance, and proposes a framework for researchers and REC members that enables a clearer conception of the role of relevance in research. We conclude that research must be either scientifically or societally beneficial in order to qualify as relevant, and RECs therefore cannot avoid reviewing (...)
     
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  5. David Shaw & Alex McMahon (forthcoming). Ethicovigilance in Clinical Trials. Bioethics:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2012.01967.x.
    This article provides an ethical critique of the Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) documents. While the previous criticisms of GCP are entirely correct, there is much more wrong with the document than has previously been acknowledged, including a circular definition and an astonishing vagueness about ethical principles. In addition to its failure to provide adequate ethical protection of participants, the procedurally dense nature of GCP lends itself to a box-ticking culture where important ethical issues are overlooked (...)
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  6. Thomas Erren, Michael Erren & David Shaw (2013). Peer Reviewers Can Meet Journals’ Criteria for Authorship. British Medical Journal 346:f166.
    This article argues that some reviewers contribute more to research than many authors, and suggests that reviewers meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship in many cases.
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  7. David Shaw (2013). Cryoethics. In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopaedia of Ethics. Blackwell.
    Cryoethics is a new theme within bioethics (see bioethics) concerned with the ethics of cryonic storage. Cryonics, which is also erroneously referred to as “cryogenic” technology, offers people the option of having their bodies or brain-stems preserved at very low temperatures after death in order to be revived at some point in the future when technology is sufficiently advanced to enable reanimation, and possibly immortality. The main issues in cryoethics center around whether it is ethical to use this technology, and (...)
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  8. David Shaw & Bernice Elger (2013). Evidence-Based Persuasion: An Ethical Imperative. Journal of the American Medical Association 309 (16):1689-90.
    The primacy in modern medical ethics of the principle of respect for autonomy has led to the widespread assumption that it is unethical to change someone’s beliefs, because doing so would constitute coercion or paternalism., In this Viewpoint we suggest that persuasion is not necessarily paternalistic and is an essential component of modern medical practice.
     
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  9. D. M. Shaw (2012). Neuroenhancers, Addiction and Research Ethics. Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (10):605-608.
    In their recent paper in this journal, Heinz and colleagues accuse proponents of cognitive enhancement of making two unjustified assumptions. The first of these is the assumption that neuroenhancing drugs will be safe; the second is that research into cognitive enhancement does not pose particular ethical problems. Heinz and colleagues argue that both these assumptions are false. Here, I argue that these assumptions are in fact correct, and that Heinz and colleagues themselves make several assumptions that undermine their argument. Neuroenhancement (...)
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  10. D. M. Shaw & J. Busch (2012). Rawls and Religious Paternalism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 37 (4):373-386.
    MacDougall has argued that Rawls’s liberal social theory suggests that parents who hold certain religious convictions can legitimately refuse blood transfusion on their children’s behalf. This paper argues that this is wrong for at least five reasons. First, MacDougall neglects the possibility that true freedom of conscience entails the right to choose one’s own religion rather than have it dictated by one’s parents. Second, he conveniently ignores the fact that children in such situations are much more likely to die than (...)
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  11. D. Shaw, K. McCluskey, W. Linden & C. Goodall (2012). Reducing the Harmful Effects of Alcohol Misuse: The Ethics of Sobriety Testing in Criminal Justice. Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (11):669-671.
    Alcohol use and abuse play a major role in both crime and negative health outcomes in Scotland. This paper provides a description and ethical and legal analyses of a novel remote alcohol monitoring scheme for offenders which seeks to reduce alcohol-related harm to both the criminal and the public. It emerges that the prospective benefits of this scheme to health and public order vastly outweigh any potential harms.
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  12. David Shaw (2012). We Should Not Let Relatives Veto Organ Donation From Their Dead Relatives. British Medical Journal 34:e5275.
    This article highlights the often overlooked fact that doctors who respect a bereaved family's veto of a deceased patient's organ donation are complicit in the deaths of those who would have benefited from the organs in question. Respecting the veto violates the dying wish of the patient, is against the spirit of the law and contributes to the deaths of other patients.
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  13. David Shaw (2012). Unethical Framework: Red Card for the REF. Times Higher Education.
    Almost all academics sigh at any mention of the REF. Preparing submissions for the Research Excellence Framework takes up a lot of effort, but is important because the REF determines a department's funding allocation from a finite pot of cash. As such, it is seen as a necessary evil by most staff. However, the REF poses ethical problems in addition to the stress it causes. As it stands, the REF is exacerbating a schism between research and teaching staff, encouraging deceptive (...)
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  14. David Shaw (2012). No Remedy for Homeopathy "Research". Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies 17 (4):209-10.
    The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is a major complementary and alternative medicine journal, with an an 18-year history and an impact factor of almost 1.5. This paper examines an article and accompanying editorial from the August 2011 issue of the journal and finds a severe lack of scientific and academic rigour.
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  15. David Shaw (2012). The Swiss Report on Homeopathy: A Case Study of Research Misconduct. Swiss Medical Weekly 142:w13594.
    In 2011 the Swiss government published a report on homeopathy. This report was commissioned following a 2009 referendum in which Swiss people decided that homeopathy and other alternative therapies should be covered by private medical insurance; before implementing this decision, the government wanted to establish whether homeopathy actually works. In February 2012 the report was published in English and was immediately proclaimed by proponents of homeopathy to be conclusive proof that homeopathy is effective. This paper analyses the report and concludes (...)
     
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  16. David Shaw (2012). Weeping and Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth: The Legal Fiction of Water Fluoridation. Medical Law International 12 (1):11-27.
    This paper examines the legal justification for water fluoridation (WF) in the United Kingdom. While current legislation clearly permits WF, there is a degree of obfuscation concerning whether the practice amounts to medication, and were it to be acknowledged that fluoridated water constitutes a medicine, the legality of the practice would not be so obvious. It is concluded that an accurate and honest interpretation of the law would result in the conclusion that fluoridation does constitute medication, as it seeks to (...)
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  17. David Shaw (2011). A Direct Advance on Advance Directives. Bioethics 26 (5):267-274.
    Advance directives (ADs), which are also sometimes referred to as ‘living wills’, are statements made by a person that indicate what treatment she should not be given in the event that she is not competent to consent or refuse at the future moment in question. As such, ADs provide a way for patients to make decisions in advance about what treatments they do not want to receive, without doctors having to find proxy decision-makers or having recourse to the doctrine of (...)
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  18. David Shaw (2011). A Defence of a New Perspective on Euthanasia. Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (2):123-125.
    In two recent papers, Hugh McLachlan, Jacob Busch and Raffaele Rodogno have criticised my new perspective on euthanasia. Each paper analyses my argument and suggests two flaws. McLachlan identifies what he sees as important points regarding the justification of legal distinctions in the absence of corresponding moral differences and the professional role of the doctor. Busch and Rodogno target my criterion of brain life, arguing that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition and that it is not generalisable. In (...)
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  19. David Shaw (2011). Homeopathy and Medical Ethics. Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies 16 (1):17-21.
    Homeopathy has been the subject of intense academic, media and public debate in recent months. Those opposed to the practice, which treats like with like by using ultra-dilute remedies, argue that it is an ineffective non-treatment that is not supported by evidence and should not be funded on the National Health Service. Its proponents claim that it is effective (although they disagree about whether it is more effective than placebo) and argue its use is appropriate for certain conditions. This paper (...)
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  20. David Shaw (2011). Justice and the Fetus: Rawls, Children and Abortion. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 20 (1):93-101.
    In a footnote to the first edition of Political Liberalism, John Rawls introduced an example of how public reason could deal with controversial issues. He intended this example to show that his system of political liberalism could deal with such problems by considering only political values, without the introduction of comprehensive moral doctrines. Unfortunately, Rawls chose “the troubled question of abortion” as the issue that would illustrate this. In the case of abortion, Rawls argued, “the equality of women as equal (...)
     
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  21. David Shaw (2011). The Authorless Paper: The ICMJE’s Definition of Authorship is Illogical and Unethical. British Medical Journal 343 (7831):999.
    In recent years there have been many revelations about ghost authors, who contribute to publications but are not credited, and guest authors, who do not contribute but are credited. Most medical and many other journals adhere to the authorship standards set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which were designed in part to combat the phenomena of ghost and guest authorship. However, the current criteria set for authorship by the ICMJE have their own problems. This brief paper (...)
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  22. David Shaw (2011). The Ethics Committee as Ghost Author. Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (12):706-706.
    Ethics committees have a bad reputation for impeding, rather than facilitating research. Here, I argue that many committees actually improve the quality of the research proposal to such an extent that they deserve credit as authors in any resulting publications, or at least an acknowledgement of the contribution made.
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  23. David Shaw (2011). The Ethics of Spoilers. Ethical Space 8 (1).
    It is highly probable that you have fallen victim to a spoiler at some point in your life. Perhaps you heard what the twist was in The Sixth Sensei before you saw it, or perhaps you have come across one of the now near-ubiquitous references in the media to Keyzer Soze, and thus had much of your enjoyment of The Usual Suspectsii ruined. Put simply, a spoiler is a piece of information that spoils your enjoyment of a film, usually by (...)
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  24. Justine Shaw & David Shaw (2011). Evidence and Ethics in Occupational Therapy. British Journal of Occupational Therapy 74 (5):254-256.
    Reagon, Bellin and Boniface argue that traditional models of evidence-based practice focus too much on randomised controlled trials and neglect 'the multiple truths of occupational therapy'. This opinion piece points out several flaws in their argument, and suggests that it is unethical to rely on weaker evidence sources when higher quality evidence exists. Ironically, the evidence that they provide to support their argument regarding different types of evidence is itself very weak.
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  25. David Shaw (2010). An Extra Reason to Roll the Dice: Balancing Harm, Benefit and Autonomy in 'Futile' Cases. Clinical Ethics 5 (217):219.
    Oncologists frequently have to break bad news to patients. Although they are not normally the ones who tell patients that they have cancer, they are the ones who have to tell patients that treatment is not working, and they are almost always the ones who have to tell them that they are going to die and that nothing more can be done to cure them. Perhaps the most difficult cases are those where further treatment is almost certainly futile, but there (...)
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  26. David Shaw (2010). Homeopathy Is Where the Harm Is: Five Unethical Effects of Funding Unscientific Remedies. Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (3):130-131.
    Homeopathic medicine is based on the two principles that “like cures like” and that the potency of substances increases in proportion to their dilution. In November 2009 the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee heard evidence on homeopathy, with several witnesses arguing that homeopathic practice is “unethical, unreliable, and pointless”. Although this increasing scepticism about the merits of homeopathy is to be welcomed, the unethical effects of funding homeopathy on the NHS are even further-reaching than has been acknowledged.
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  27. David Shaw (2010). Unethical Aspects of Homeopathic Dentistry. British Dental Journal 209 (10):493-496.
    In the last year there has been a great deal of public debate about homeopathy. The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology concluded in November that there is no evidence base for homeopathy, and agreed with some academic commentators that homeopathy should not be funded by the NHS.i ii While homeopathic doctors and hospitals are quite commonplace, some might be surprised to learn that there are also many homeopathic dentists practicing in the UK. This paper examines some (...)
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  28. David Shaw (2010). Transatlantic Issues: Report From Scotland. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 19 (3):310-320.
    Several bioethical topics received a great deal of news coverage here in Scotland in 2009. Three important issues with transatlantic connections are the swine flu outbreak, which was handled very differently in Scotland, England and America; the US debate over healthcare reform, which drew the British NHS into the controversy; and the release to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber, which at first glance might not seem particularly bioethical, but which actually hinged on the very public discussion of the prisoner’s medical (...)
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  29. David Shaw & David Conway (2010). Pascal’s Wager, Infective Endocarditis and the “No-Lose” Philosophy in Medicine. Heart 96 (1):15-18.
    Doctors and dentists have traditionally used antibiotic prophylaxis in certain patient groups in order to prevent infective endocarditis (IE). New guidelines, however, suggest that the risk to patients from using antibiotics is higher than the risk from IE. This paper analyses the relative risks of prescribing and not prescribing antibiotic prophylaxis against the background of Pascal’s Wager, the infamous assertion that it is better to believe in God regardless of evidence, because of the prospective benefits should He exist. Many doctors (...)
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  30. David Shaw (2009). Cryoethics: Seeking Life After Death. Bioethics 23 (9):515-521.
    Cryonic suspension is a relatively new technology that offers those who can afford it the chance to be 'frozen' for future revival when they reach the ends of their lives. This paper will examine the ethical status of this technology and whether its use can be justified. Among the arguments against using this technology are: it is 'against nature', and would change the very concept of death; no friends or family of the 'freezee' will be left alive when he is (...)
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  31. David Shaw (2009). Cutting Through Red Tape: Non-Therapeutic Circumcision and Unethical Guidelines. Clinical Ethics 4 (4):181-186.
    Current General Medical Council guidelines state that any doctor who does not wish to carry out a non-therapeutic circumcision (NTC) on a boy must invoke conscientious objection. This paper argues that this is illogical, as it is clear that an ethical doctor will object to conducting a clinically unnecessary operation on a child who cannot consent simply because of the parents’ religious beliefs. Comparison of the GMC guidelines with the more sensible British Medical Association guidance reveals that both are biased (...)
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  32. David Shaw (2009). Euthanasia and Eudaimonia. Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (9):530-533.
    This paper re-evaluates euthanasia and assisted suicide from the perspective of eudaimonia, the ancient Greek conception of happiness across one’s whole life. It is argued that one cannot be said to have fully flourished or had a truly happy life if one’s death is preceded by a period of unbearable pain or suffering that one cannot avoid without assistance in ending one’s life. While death is to be accepted as part of life, it should not be left to nature to (...)
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  33. David Shaw (2009). Ethics, Professionalism and Fitness to Practice: Three Concepts, Not One. British Dental Journal 207 (2):59-62.
    The GDC’s recent third edition (interim) of The First Five Years places renewed emphasis on the place of professionalism in the undergraduate dental curriculum. This paper provides a brief analysis of the concepts of ethics, professionalism and fitness to practice, and an examination of the GDC’s First Five Years and Standards for Dental Professionals guidance, as well as providing an insight into the innovative ethics strand of the BDS course at the University of Glasgow. It emerges that GDC guidance is (...)
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  34. David Shaw (2009). Prescribing Placebos Ethically: The Appeal of Negatively Informed Consent. Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (2):97-99.
    Kihlbom has recently argued that a system of seeking negatively informed consent might be preferable in some cases to the ubiquitous informed consent model. Although this theory is perhaps not powerful enough to supplant informed consent in most settings, it lends strength to Evans’ and Hungin’s proposal that it can be ethical to prescribe placebos rather than "active" drugs. This paper presents an argument for using negatively informed consent for the specific purpose of authorising the use of placebos in clinical (...)
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  35. David Shaw, Lorna Macpherson & David Conway (2009). Tackling Socially Determined Dental Inequalities: Ethical Aspects of Childsmile, the National Child Oral Health Demonstration Programme in Scotland. Bioethics 23 (2):131-139.
    Many ethical issues are posed by public health interventions. Although abstract theorizing about these issues can be useful, it is the application of ethical theory to real cases which will ultimately be of benefit in decision-making. To this end, this paper will analyse the ethical issues involved in Childsmile, a national oral health demonstration programme in Scotland that aims to improve the oral health of the nation's children and reduce dental inequalities through a combination of targeted and universal interventions. With (...)
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  36. David Shaw (2008). Crocodile Tiers. Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (8):575.
    It is clearly unethical for the NHS to tell people that they will die sooner unless they pay for private treatment, and then to tell them that if they pay for private treatment they will have to pay the NHS for its insufficient service. This is all the more true if people in other parts of the country are receiving all the drugs they need for the same condition on the NHS. Patients who discover that the NHS care that they (...)
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  37. David Shaw (2008). Dentistry and the Ethics of Infection. Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (3):184-187.
    Currently, any dentist in the UK who is HIV-seropositive must stop treating patients. This is despite the fact that hepatitis B-infected dentists with a low viral load can continue to practise, and the fact that HIV is 100 times less infectious than hepatitis B. Dentists are obliged to treat HIV-positive patients, but are obliged not to treat any patients if they themselves are HIV-positive. Furthermore, prospective dental students are now screened for hepatitis B and C and HIV, and are not (...)
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  38. David Shaw (2008). Deaf by Design: Disability and Impartiality. Bioethics 22 (8):407-413.
    In 'Benefit, Disability and the Non-Identity Problem', Hallvard Lillehammer uses the case of a couple who chose to have deaf children to argue against the view that impartial perspectives can provide an exhaustive account of the rightness and wrongness of particular reproductive choices. His conclusion is that the traditional approach to the non-identity problem leads to erroneous conclusions about the morality of creating disabled children. This paper will show that Lillehammer underestimates the power of impartial perspectives and exaggerates the ethical (...)
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  39. David Shaw (2008). Moral Qualms, Future Persons, and Embryo Research. Bioethics 22 (4):218–223.
    Many people have moral qualms about embryo research, feeling that embryos must deserve some kind of protection, if not so much as is afforded to persons. This paper will show that these qualms serve to camouflage motives that are really prudential, at the cost of also obscuring the real ethical issues at play in the debate concerning embryo research and therapeutic cloning. This in turn leads to fallacious use of the Actions/Omissions Distinction and ultimately neglects the duties that we have (...)
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  40. David Shaw (2007). Continuous Consent and Dignity in Dentistry. British Dental Journal 203 (11):569-571.
    Despite the heavy emphasis on consent in the ethical code of the General Dental Council (GDC), it is often overlooked that communication difficulties between patient and dentist can cause problems in maintaining genuine consent during interventions. Inconsistencies in the GDC's Standards for dental professionals and Principles of patient consent guidelines are examined in this article, and it is concluded that more emphasis must be placed on continuous consent as an ongoing process essential to maintaining patients' dignity in dentistry.
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  41. David Shaw (2007). The Body as Unwarranted Life Support: A New Perspective on Euthanasia. Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (9):519-521.
    It is widely accepted in clinical ethics that removing a patient from a ventilator at the patient’s request is ethically permissible. This constitutes voluntary passive euthanasia. However, voluntary active euthanasia, such as giving a patient a lethal overdose with the intention of ending that patient’s life, is ethically proscribed, as is assisted suicide, such as providing a patient with lethal pills or a lethal infusion. Proponents of voluntary active euthanasia and assisted suicide have argued that the distinction between killing and (...)
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  42. David Shaw (2006). Genetic Morality. Peter Lang.
    This book will attempt to show that these and other problems are ultimately resolvable, given careful and unbiased application of established ethical principles ...
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