Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Just Health Care?

Just Health Care? 2004

The VI Annual Swedish Symposium on Biomedicine, Ethics and Society was held on May 24-25 in Sandhamn.

The clinician's role in a resource-limited medical service?

Elisabeth Russell, Professor Emeritus in Social Medicine, University of Aberdeen. Elisabeth Russells research interests include health services research, especially health technology assessment and health economics. For the past 30 years, she has also worked in medical ethics, research ethics, privacy and consent.

Abstract of keynote lecture

There is evidence from the British NHS that older people receive fewer interventions for the same cancer than do younger people. This paper will discuss how this might arise and whether it is possible in any way to justify a difference that is, de facto, ageist. No politician in the UK would declare that older people should be less often treated, so any differential must arise at the point of care. If people of all ages have equal rights to medical care, do clinicians decide actively whom not to treat and, if so, how do they do that? Are they influenced by the values of the society in which they work - and should they be?

Biomedicine, Ethics and Society
Keynote speakers

Dan W. Brock Professor of Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School, Division of Medical Ethics, USA

Suzanne Holland Associate Professor of Religious and Social Ethics at the University of Puget Sound, USA

Eric Matthews Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Professor in Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Psychiatry, Department of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Anna T. Höglund Assistant Professor of Ethics, Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet & Uppsala University (Now Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics, Uppsala University)

Elisabeth M. Russell Emeritus Professor of Social Medicine, Department of Public Health, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Biomedicine, Ethics and Society