Why a Military Global Health Ethics Special Issue of the Journal?

Against the background of the current military situation in the middle east readers might wonder why we have decided to publish this special issue. The purpose of this Editorial is to shed light on our decision-making. Substantively the justification for this topic is well made in Hunter Jackson Smith's Guest Editorial 1. Many military missions have significant global health ethics implications, affecting in particular countries of the global south. However, there is more to this. Hunter Jackson Smith had put great effort into guest editing this special issue, albeit for a different journal. The American Medical Association's ethics journal, AMA Journal of Ethics, had agreed to publish the compilation of articles you see in this issue of Developing World Bioethics. After this agreement was made the American Medical Association decided that it wasn't worth its resources to support an Open Access, free-to-publish journal in medical ethics. The association shut down the journal without advance warning and without any planned transition process. There has been some speculation among academics in the medical ethics fields that the decision to end the journal abruptly, with no consideration for already processed and accepted articles, is related to a desire by the association not to end up in the crosshairs of the current US government. I have no way of telling whether that is true. The journal certainly had no underlying business model and relied on permanent financial support from the American Medical Association. When Hunter Jackson Smith approached us as a possible venue for the articles he had commissioned for the AMA Journal of Ethics, we agreed to do so. All articles in this issue of the journal have undergone standard external peer review processes, and we are delighted to present them to you. The author declares no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.