PMDs and the Moral Specialness of Medicine: An Analysis of the ‘Keepsake Ultrasound’

PMDs raise questions about the relationship between morality and medicine, threatening the conceptual discreteness of medicine itself. Everyday items such as phones or watches are increasingly used for quasi-medical purposes. Conversely, products designed for medical use are entering marketplaces and being used in ways that serve users’ values and interests without mapping neatly onto established paradigms of medical need and authority. One example of this is the so-called keepsake ultrasound. When sought outside routine medical care, our lack of ability to monitor and regulate these scans raises ethical challenges. Devices or procedures such as keepsake ultrasounds, which can have both medical and non-medical applications and which can be used by both medical professionals and members of the public, thus raise new questions for regulatory authorities.