At the WMA GA 2026, Dr. C. Vinkers described moral distress as the gap between what good care needs and what doctors can do. Sometimes distress is an appropriate response to an unacceptable situation, so the question is when to help the person and when to change the system.

Prof. Dr. Katharina Bauer at the WMA GA 2026 on "technomoral distress": doctors need to work well with AI while still asking whether it is the right solution at all. Resilience should never shift the burden onto individual physicians or replace structural change.

More than half of Hungarian physicians surveyed scored above the clinical threshold for moral injury, said Dr. Péter Álmos at our WMA GA 2026 Scientific Session in Rotterdam. His message: defending medical autonomy is defending patients.

"Unprocessed moral distress accumulates." Prof. Cynda Rushton of Johns Hopkins at WMA GA on why moral resilience matters: integrity is foundational to health and wellbeing, and a focus on distress alone overlooks growth, meaning and moral action.

Closing the 4th Open Expert Meeting on the DOT in Oslo, Christofer Lindholm summed up two days. His takeaway: informed consent remains vital, but today's complexity may call for additional safeguards, principles that need to work worldwide.

Dr. Susan Bersoff-Matcha (FDA) at Oslo's DOT Meeting: FDA's authority follows the product, not the funding. Consent is the default, only IRBs can waive it, and even non-interventional studies using existing records aren't exempt from ethical oversight.

Dr. Natalie Klein (OHRP) at Oslo's DOT Meeting on the US Common Rule: consent is the default, broad consent is an option for secondary research, and if a person declines it, no waiver can override that for their data.

Karla Childers (J&J) at the Oslo DOT meeting: if crises and disruption are the new normal, does that change how Article 16 should work? Proposed guardrails include a high documented threshold, no inherited waivers, and ongoing independent review.

Dr. Jón Snædal, former WMA President spoke at Oslo's DOT Meeting on Paragraph 16, the emergency consent waiver. He walked through an Icelandic COVID-era court case that took five years to resolve, arguing consent requirements may need updating.

Sara Roda (CPME) compared the Declaration of Taipei with the EHDS at Oslo's Day 2: opt out rather than consent, with stricter opt in possible for sensitive data. Her key challenge: does autonomy hold up with public transparency instead of personalised information. 📍 Oslo 🗓️14–16 Sept