Synopsis:
Recent cases of conflict around medical treatment for seriously ill infants and young children have raised a number of questions about the nature, consequences and ethics of disagreement in neonatal intensive care.
How often do serious disagreements about treatment occur? Are they becoming more common? Why do disagreements occur? If there is disagreement between parents and health professionals about treatment for a child, what should the health care team do?
Speakers:
Professor Julian Savulescu has held the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford since 2002. He has degrees in medicine, neuroscience and bioethics. He directs the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics within the Faculty of Philosophy, and leads a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator award on Responsibility and Health Care. He directs the Oxford Martin Programme for Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He co-directs the interdisciplinary Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities in collaboration with Public Health, Psychiatry and History.
In 2017, he joined the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, spending four months per year as Visiting Professorial Fellow in Biomedical Ethics where he is working to establish a programme in biomedical ethics, and Melbourne University as Distinguished International Visiting Professor in Law.
He is a leader in medical and practical ethics, with more than 400 publications, an h index of 57 and over 12,300 citations in total. He recently completed his extended tenure as Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, the highest impact journal in the field, and is founding editor of Journal of Practical Ethics, an open access journal in Practical Ethics. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest in 2014.
Professor Dominic Wilkinson is Director of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medical Ethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. He is a consultant in newborn intensive care at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He also holds a health practitioner research fellowship with the Wellcome Trust and is a senior research fellow at Jesus College Oxford.
Dominic has published more than 120 academic articles relating to ethical issues in intensive care for adults, children and newborn infants. He is the author of ‘Death or Disability? The ‘Carmentis Machine’ and decision-making for critically ill children’. He is co-author (with Julian Savulescu) of “Ethics, Conflict and Medical treatment for children, from disagreement to dissensus”, and Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics from 2011-2018.