Phantom Physicians and Medical Catfishing: A Narrative Ethics Approach to Ghost Surgery.

The concerns raised by ghost surgery, an unethical practice in which someone other than the surgeon who obtains consent performs an operative procedure without the patient's knowledge, have long been ignored by bioethics and other related disciplines. Indeed, ghost surgery is neither tracked nor studied in the United States, and the practice itself remains underreported. Ghost surgery represents a corporeal transgression as well as a relational rift: what was communicated by physicians is rendered null and void, and the surgical narrative that patients thought they knew is disrobed as a lie and revealed to be a catfish. In order to combat this practice and prevent any form of medical catfishing, physicians must guarantee effective communication and transparency and view themselves as storytellers alongside their patients. By following such a framework, physicians can ideally end the simulation and suture an ethic of accountability within a co-constructed narrative.

From Bodies to Borders and Beyond: Mutating Boundaries in Logan.

With its focus on genetics, the mutant body, and social discrimination, the X-Men franchise explores themes pertinent to the health humanities. The 2017 film Logan sharpens this focus and presents a world that echoes many current social, political, and bioethical anxieties. In the film, as a result of widescale eugenics, natural-born mutants are on the verge of extinction while genetically engineered mutants are secretly manufactured as weapons. In this paper, we explore the theme of boundaries in order to examine various intersections in Logan, including the corporeal boundlessness of dying mutants, the transgressive exploits of biotechnology, the permeability of national borders, and the unbounded potential embodied by the remnants of mutantkind. The multi-vocal nature of our approach reflects the respective perspectives of our authors as well as the rich array of topical interpretive lenses which Logan invites, offering a powerful pedagogical tool to the health humanities, bioethics, and other disciplines.