As a humanitarian medical organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) intervenes in places around the world affected by conflict and crisis. Although we are guided by humanitarian principles, our medical teams are often confronted with complicated dilemmas. In a chapter from a new book called Humanitarian Action and Ethics (Zed Books), current and former MSF field workers consider some of the ethical challenges that form an inevitable part of MSF's medical humanitarian action, and how the organization can better enable our staff and front-line field workers to address them.

Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin invite us to join their insightful ‘conversation’ on complicity and compromise. Their book makes a dense, utterly precise and rewarding reading, as one proceeds stepwise through the logic of their philosophical arguments. For those unfamiliar with the relatively new discipline of ‘humanitarian ethics’, it might be disconcerting at first to see humanitarian actions brought to illustrate theories on complicity, with the Rwandan refugees crisis of 1994 and the tortured patient taken as two exemplary cases.

On Oct 10, 2015, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) rejected Pfizer's proposed donation of 1 million doses of its branded pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The news caused a stir in the global health community; after all, free essential health goods might be considered something to be celebrated.

The West African Ebola epidemic has set in motion a collective endeavour to conduct accelerated clinical trials, testing unproven but potentially lifesaving interventions in the course of a major public health crisis. This unprecedented effort was supported by the recommendations of an ad hoc ethics panel convened in August 2014 by the WHO.