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Biomedical subjects

Michael M Burgess

Publications and source records attributed to Michael M Burgess.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Democratising access to genetic services.

Professional and policy discussions about the appropriate funding and allocation of health cares services are an essential part of the management of public and private health care insurance plans. However, the ability of governments and health professionals to equitably decide on the distribution of health care is being challenged by the increasing drive to patent health care technologies. Referring to the case of genetic testing for hereditary breast cancer (and Myriad Genetics' patenting of the BRCA1 & BRCA2 genes), this paper applies some concepts from moral philosophy to think through the effects of the commercialisation of genetic technologies, and what would constitute a more just and rational approach to health care decision-making, in the context of the Canadian health insurance system.

Breast Neoplasms↗
PubMed2004

Public consultation in ethics: an experiment in representative ethics.

Genome Canada has funded a research project to evaluate the usefulness of different forms of ethical analysis for assessing the moral weight of public opinion in the governance of genomics. This paper will describe a role of public consultation for ethical analysis and a contribution of ethical analysis to public consultation and the governance of genomics/biotechnology. Public consultation increases the robustness of ethical analysis with a more diverse set of moral experiences. Consultation must be carefully and respectfully designed to generate sufficiently diverse and rich accounts of moral experiences. Since dominant groups tend to define ethical or policy issues in a manner that excludes some interests or perspectives, it is important to identify the range of interests that diverse publics hold before defining the issue and scope of the discussion and the premature foreclosure of ethical dialogue. Consequently, a significant contribution of ethical dialogue strengthened by social analysis is to consider the context and non-policy use of power to govern genomics and to sustain social debate on enduring ethical issues.

Bioethical Issues↗
PubMed2004

Social contract theory and just decision making: lessons from genetic testing for the BRCA mutations.

Decisions about funding health services are crucial to controlling costs in health care insurance plans, yet they encounter serious challenges from intellectual property protection--e.g., patents--of health care services. Using Myriad Genetics' commercial genetic susceptibility test for hereditary breast cancer (BRCA testing) in the context of the Canadian health insurance system as a case study, this paper applies concepts from social contract theory to help develop more just and rational approaches to health care decision making. Specifically, Daniel's and Sabin's "accountability for reasonableness" is compared to broader notions of public consultation, demonstrating that expert assessments in specific decisions must be transparent and accountable and supplemented by public consultation.

Breast Neoplasms↗
PubMed2003

Ethical review of health promotion program evaluation proposals.

Some policies state that program evaluation falls within the domain of administrative research that does not require review by an ethics review board. We propose that some health promotion program evaluations include at least one element of research and can be distinguished from quality assurance. Although American and Canadian evaluation societies provide important guidelines and standards for evaluation practitioners, processes for accountability to the public are provided by research ethics boards. The field of health promotion is, by its nature, replete with challenges to existing research ethics boards. Given the dearth of published literature on the ethics of health promotion evaluation or practice, the field could benefit from the open debate that reviews of proposals would encourage.

Canada↗
PubMed1991

A survey of Calgary paediatricians' attitudes regarding the treatment of defective newborns: a report from Canada.

... Premature infants and those born with severe abnormalities have stimulated the creation of neonatal units, but advances in medicine have created the dilemma of whether to sustain life in neonates who would otherwise die from their abnormalities. Often these methods are sophisticated and costly, and carry their own share of iatrogenic complications... It is crucial that the infant -- unable to be directly involved -- have an advocate, whose role it is to act in the best interests of the patient in determinations of the latter's treatment. Under most circumstances that role is occupied by the child's physician and family... For this reason, it is imperative to discern physicians' -- and specifically pediatricians' -- attitudes towards the treatment of defective newborns. To accomplish this, a survey was taken in Calgary... It is the purpose of this paper to provide information regarding local physicians' views and how they compare with the opinions of their colleagues from other countries.

Anencephaly↗