Medical Ethics Evening

Join us for an evening of medical ethics where we will be discussing current medical issues and their ethical implications.

Join us for an evening of medical ethics, with free drinks and food!

Due to the popularity of our Autumn Medical Ethics Evening, the IDEA Centre, at the University of Leeds, will be holding another one on Wednesday 19th February, 6-8.30pm, where we will be discussing current medical issues and their ethical implications. We are welcoming two recent IDEA intercalating alumni to present short talks on their dissertation research in Medical Ethics. Both are related to ethical issues related to drugs, but in different contexts

After the speakers have presented, we then welcome you to join us for food and drinks, and a chance to discuss medical ethics, and our Biomedical and Healthcare Ethics programme, available as an MA, PGDip, or BA for intercalators, if you are interested, more generally.

This is a free event, open to anyone interested in medical ethics, but it will be particularly relevant to people who are potentially interested in studying Biomedical and Healthcare Ethics with us.

Location:

Seminar Room 2, IDEA Centre, 17 Blenheim Terrace, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT

Tickets:

To book your place please visit this eventbrite link and book a ticket.

Talk titles:

Karina O'Flynn: Is It Morally Acceptable to Prescribe Addictive Drugs?

This talk critically examines the moral acceptability of prescribing addictive pain medications. The relevance of this discussion is underscored by the ongoing opioid crisis, which has seen a dramatic rise in opioid prescriptions, addiction, and overdose deaths globally. I establish that it is the addictive nature of opioids that make their prescription morally controversial. This crisis has forced the medical community to re-evaluate prescribing practices, particularly regarding opioids, and has raised critical ethical questions about the role of healthcare providers in managing pain while preventing harm. The intersection of addiction and pain management thus represents a crucial area of inquiry, with significant implications for both clinical practice and broader societal outcomes.

Joe Ruddy: Multi-Agency Safety Testing: Can This Innovative Harm Reduction Strategy Meet Modern Biomedical Ethical Standards?

Multi-Agency Safety Testing (MAST) is a “face to face” harm reduction strategy that has been trialled in recent years as a response to increasing substance use and overdose deaths amongst young people at largescale events such as festivals (Fisher and Measham, 2018: p.32). Introduced in 2015 in the United Kingdom by charity The Loop, MAST services test drug samples for festival goers in the United Kingdom with the aim of identifying the constituent ingredients. The service model has faced operational issues due to the need to handle illicit substances which technically requires a Home Office license. In addition, there is currently little discussion of this type of harm reduction within biomedical ethical literature due to its novel nature.

In this talk, I hope to fill this gap by demonstrating that MAST can be compatible with modern biomedical ethical standards (namely Beauchamp and Childress’ Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics (2001)), and therefore it should be carried out across large scale events and festivals. I will discuss each in turn, concluding that provided certain securities are in place, all can be met. This provides a contemporary contribution to the literature whilst also providing evidence that this useful harm reduction tool can be ethically permitted and thus utilised.