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Parental love pills: some ethical considerationsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
It may soon be possible to develop pills that allow parents to induce in themselves more loving behaviour, attitudes and emotions towards their children. In this paper, I consider whether pharmacologically induced parental love can satisfy reasonable conditions of authenticity; why anyone would be interested in taking such parental love pills at all, and whether inducing parental love pharmacologically promotes narcissism or results in self-instrumentalization. I also examine how the availability of such pills may affect the duty to love a child. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - February 3, 2010 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: S. MATTHEW LIAO Source Type: journals

Triangular reflective equilibrium: a conscience-based method for bioethical deliberationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Following a discussion of some historical roots of conscience, we offer a systematized version of reflective equilibrium. Aiming at a comprehensive methodology for bioethical deliberation, we develop an expanded variant of reflective equilibrium, which we call 'triangular reflective equilibrium' and which incorporates insights from hermeneutics, critical theory and narrative ethics. We focus on a few distinctions, mainly between methods of justification in ethics and the social practice of bioethical deliberation, between coherence in ethical reasoning, personal integrity and consensus formation, and between political and ...
Source: Bioethics - February 3, 2010 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Y. MICHAEL BARILAN, MARGHERITA BRUSA Source Type: journals

Abortion counselling and the informed consent dilemmaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
An obstacle to abortion exists in the form of abortion 'counselling' that discourages women from terminating their pregnancies. This counselling involves providing information about the procedure that tends to create feelings of guilt, anxiety and strong emotional reactions to the recognizable form of a human fetus. Instances of such counselling that involve false or misleading information are clearly unethical and do not prompt much philosophical reflection, but the prospect of truthful abortion counselling draws attention to a delicate issue for healthcare professionals seeking to respect patient autonomy. This is the fa...
Source: Bioethics - February 3, 2010 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SCOTT WOODCOCK Source Type: journals

Respect for autonomy, advance directives, and minimally conscious stateEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this article, I consider whether the advance directive of a person in minimally conscious state ought to be adhered to when its prescriptions conflict with her current wishes. I argue that an advance directive can have moral significance after its issuer has succumbed to minimally conscious state. I also defend the view that the patient can still have a significant degree of autonomy. Consequently, I conclude that her advance directive ought not to be applied. Then I briefly assess whether considerations pertaining to respecting the patient's autonomy could still require obedience to the desire expressed in her advance ...
Source: Bioethics - February 3, 2010 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JUKKA VARELIUS Source Type: journals

Organ sales needn't be exploitative (but it matters if they are)Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper considers two arguments that are common in the literature on organ sales. First, organ sales are exploitative and therefore should not be permitted. Second, it doesn't matter whether organ sales are exploitative or not; the only thing that matters is that we do what is in the interests of those who need to be protected. In this paper, I argue that both of these arguments are too simplistic. My intention, however, is not to argue for or against organ sales. My conclusion, rather, is simply that we cannot hope to address the issue of organ sales if we lack a good understanding of exploitation. We should not attemp...
Source: Bioethics - February 2, 2010 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ROB LAWLOR Source Type: journals

Competence, practical rationality and what a patient valuesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
According to the principle of patient autonomy, patients have the right to be self-determining in decisions about their own medical care, which includes the right to refuse treatment. However, a treatment refusal may legitimately be overridden in cases where the decision is judged to be incompetent. It has recently been proposed that in assessments of competence, attention should be paid to the evaluative judgments that guide patients' treatment decisions. In this paper I examine this claim in light of theories of practical rationality, focusing on the difficult case of an anorexic person who is judged to be competent and ...
Source: Bioethics - December 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JILLIAN CRAIGIE Source Type: journals

PROCREATIVE BENEFICENCE – CUI BONO?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recently, Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane have defended the Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB), according to which prospective parents ought to select children with the view that their future child has 'the best chance of the best life'. I argue that the arguments Savulescu and Kahane adduce in favour of PB equally well support what I call the Principle of General Procreative Beneficence (GPB). GPB states that couples ought to select children in view of maximizing the overall expected value in the world, not just the welfare of their future child. I further argue that Savulescu and Kahane's claim that PB has signifi...
Source: Bioethics - December 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JAKOB ELSTER Source Type: journals

Predictive testing and existential absurdity: resonances between experiences around genetic diagnosis and the philosophy of albert camusEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In conclusion, we will draw out some normative consequences of our narrative approach. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - December 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ROUVEN PORZ, GUY WIDDERSHOVEN Source Type: journals

The contributions of empirical evidence to socio-ethical debates on fresh embryo donation for human embryonic stem cell researchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article is a response to McLeod and Baylis (2007) who speculate on the dangers of requesting fresh 'spare' embryos from IVF patients for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, particularly when those embryos are good enough to be transferred back to the woman. They argue that these embryos should be frozen instead. We explore what is meant by 'spare' embryos. We then provide empirical evidence, from a study of embryo donation and of embryo donors' views, to substantiate some of their speculations about the problems associated with requesting fresh embryos. However, we also question whether such problems are resolv...
Source: Bioethics - December 27, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ERICA HAIMES, KEN TAYLOR Source Type: journals

Will biomedical enhancements undermine solidarity, responsibility, equality and autonomy?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should...
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ORI LEV Source Type: journals

Surrogacy: donor conception regulation in japanEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As of 2008, surrogacy is legal and openly practised in various places; Japan, however, has no regulations or laws regarding surrogacy. This paper reports the situation of surrogacy in Japan and in five other regions (the USA, the UK, Taiwan, Korea and France) to clarify the pros and cons of prohibiting surrogacy, along with the problems and issues relating to surrogacy compensation. Not only in a country such as France that completely prohibits surrogacy within the country, but also in a country such as the UK that allows non-commercial surrogacy, infertile couples travel overseas for the purpose of surrogacy. In addition,...
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: YUKARI SEMBA, CHIUNGFANG CHANG, HYUNSOO HONG, MINORI KOKADO, KAORI MUTO, AYAKO KAMISATO Source Type: journals

Undignified bioethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The concept of dignity is pervasive in bioethics. However, some bioethicists have argued that it is useless on three grounds: that it is indeterminate; that it is reactionary; and that it is redundant. In response, a number of defences of dignity have recently emerged. All of these defences claim that when dignity is suitably clarified, it can be of great use in helping us tackle bioethical controversies. This paper rejects such defences of dignity. It outlines the four most plausible conceptions of dignity: dignity as virtuous behaviour; dignity as inherent moral worth; Kantian dignity; and dignity as species integrity. I...
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ALASDAIR COCHRANE Source Type: journals

The ongoing charity of organ donation. contemporary english sunni fatwas on organ donation and blood transfusionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: Our findings are very much in line with the international literature on the subject. We found two new elements: debates on the definition of the moment of death are hardly mentioned in the English Sunni fatwas and organ donation and blood transfusion are presented as an ongoing form of charity. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: STEF VAN DEN BRANDEN, BERT BROECKAERT Source Type: journals

Navigating the murky intersection between clinical and organizational ethics: a hybrid case taxonomyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Ethical challenges that arise within healthcare delivery institutions are currently categorized as either clinical or organizational, based on the type of issue. Despite this common binary issue-based methodology, empirical study and increasing academic dialogue indicate that a clear line cannot easily be drawn between organizational and clinical ethics. Disagreement around end-of-life treatments, for example, often spawn value differences amongst parties at both organizational and clinical levels and requires a resolution to address both the case at hand and large-scale underlying system-level confounders. I refer to issu...
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SALLY BEAN Source Type: journals

The race toward 'ethically universally acceptable' human pluripotent (embryonic-like) stem cells: only a problem of sources?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article focuses on a basic aspect of the debate, namely the plausibility of one or more of these new proposals being able to meet the ethical requirements that those who regard the human embryo as sacred have tried to impose on stem cells research in the last ten years. The thesis of the article is that focusing the discussion only on the sources of stem cells has prevented a full understanding of the foundation, meaning and scope of these ethical requirements. To substantiate this thesis, the article takes into consideration two issues: the first has to do with the potential of the cells obtained through some of the ...
Source: Bioethics - November 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DEMETRIO NERI Source Type: journals

COUNTERFACTUAL REASONING IN SURROGATE DECISION MAKING – ANOTHER LOOKEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Incompetent patients need to have someone else make decisions on their behalf. According to the Substituted Judgment Standard the surrogate decision maker ought to make the decision that the patient would have made, had he or she been competent. Objections have been raised against this traditional construal of the standard on the grounds that it involves flawed counterfactual reasoning, and amendments have been suggested within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper shows that while this approach may circumvent the alleged problem, the way it has so far been elaborated reflects insufficient understanding of ...
Source: Bioethics - October 29, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MATS JOHANSSON, LINUS BROSTRÖM Source Type: journals

The dead donor rule, voluntary active euthanasia, and capital punishmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We argue that the dead donor rule, which states that multiple vital organs should only be taken from dead patients, is justified neither in principle nor in practice. We use a thought experiment and a guiding assumption in the literature about the justification of moral principles to undermine the theoretical justification for the rule. We then offer two real world analogues to this thought experiment, voluntary active euthanasia and capital punishment, and argue that the moral permissibility of terminating any patient through the removal of vital organs cannot turn on whether or not the practice violates the dead donor ru...
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CHRISTIAN COONS, NOAH LEVIN Source Type: journals

Current functions of italian ethics committees: a cross-sectional studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: A common European model should be developed, defining EC functions, member selection modalities, necessary member competences, decision-making criteria and measures for work verification. In the absence of sound empirical evidence, it would be interesting to study the effectiveness and efficiency of the different existing models. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CATERINA CAMINITI, FRANCESCA DIODATI, ARIANNA GATTI, SAVERIO SANTACHIARA, SANDRO SPINSANTI Source Type: journals

Deeper problems for noonan's probability argument against abortion: on a charitable reading of noonan's conception criterion of humanityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 'An Almost Absolute Value in History' John T. Noonan criticizes several attempts to provide a criterion for when an entity deserves rights. These criteria, he argues are either arbitrary or lead to absurd consequence. Noonan proposes human conception as the criterion of rights, and justifies it by appeal to the sharp shift in probability, at conception, of becoming a being possessed of human reason. Conception, then, is when abortion becomes immoral. The article has an historical and a philosophical goal. The historical goal is to carefully present the probability argument in a charitable manner. The philosophical goal ...
Source: Bioethics - October 26, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ALAN CLUNE Source Type: journals

Racist appearance standards and the enhancements that love them: norman daniels and skin-lightening cosmeticsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines whether medical interventions of this sort should be permitted, subsidized, or restricted, using Norman Daniels's framework for determining what justice requires in terms of protecting health. I argue that Daniels's expansive view of the requirements of justice in meeting health needs offers some support for recognizing a societal obligation to provide this kind of 'enhancement,' in light of the strong connections between skin tone and health outcomes. On balance, however, Daniels's framework offers compelling reasons to reject insurance coverage for skin-lightening medical interventions, including th...
Source: Bioethics - September 10, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MATT LAMKIN Source Type: journals

Balancing liberation and protection: a moderate approach to adolescent health care decision-makingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper I examine the debate between 'protectionists' and 'liberationists' concerning the appropriate role of minors in decision-making about their health care, focusing particularly on disagreements between the two sides regarding adolescents. Protectionists advocate a more traditional, paternalistic approach in which minors have relatively little input into the healthcare decision-making process, and decisions are made for them by parents or other adults, guided by a commitment to the patient's best interests. Liberationists, on the other hand, argue in favour of expanded participation by minors in treatment decisi...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ANDY PIKER Source Type: journals

Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials – By Jill A. Fisher When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects – By Adriana PetrynaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SERGIO SISMONDO Source Type: journals

Applying the four-principle approachEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The four-principle approach to biomedical ethics is used worldwide by practitioners and researchers alike but it is rather unclear what exactly people do when they apply this approach. Ranking, specification, and balancing vary greatly among different people regarding a particular case. Thus, a sound and coherent applicability of principlism seems somewhat mysterious. What are principlists doing? The article examines the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the applicability of this approach. The most important result is that a sound and comprehensible application of the four principles is additionally ensured by mak...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JOHN-STEWART GORDON, OLIVER RAUPRICH, JOCHEN VOLLMANN Source Type: journals

The virtue ethics approach to bioethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper discusses the viability of a virtue-based approach to bioethics. Virtue ethics is clearly appropriate to addressing issues of professional character and conduct. But another major remit of bioethics is to evaluate the ethics of biomedical procedures in order to recommend regulatory policy. How appropriate is the virtue ethics approach to fulfilling this remit? The first part of this paper characterizes the methodology problem in bioethics in terms of diversity, and shows that virtue ethics does not simply restate this problem in its own terms. However, fatal objections to the way the virtue ethics approach is ty...
Source: Bioethics - August 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: STEPHEN HOLLAND Source Type: journals

Commentary on psychiatry in a battle zoneEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - August 5, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: STEVEN H. MILES Source Type: journals

Authorizing psychiatric research: principles, practices and problemsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Psychiatric research is advancing rapidly, with studies revealing new investigative tools and technologies that are aimed at improving the treatment and care of patients with psychiatric disorders. However, the ethical framework in which such research is conducted is not as well developed as we might expect. In this paper we argue that more thought needs to be given to the principles that underpin research in psychiatry and to the problems associated with putting those principles into practice. In particular, we comment on some of the difficulties posed by the twin imperatives of ensuring that we respect the autonomy and i...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SIOW ANN CHONG, RICHARD HUXTABLE, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL Source Type: journals

Psychiatry in a battle zoneEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. discuss this article 1 CommentDiscuss or comment on this article.
The authors describe the arrival and treatment of 164 severe chronic psychiatric patients who were displaced from the Serbian army-controlled Jakes psychiatric hospital and off-loaded on the afternoon of 28th of May, 1992 at the gates of the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla. Through analysis of their incomplete medical records, which arrived with the patients in Tuzla, and analysis of their activities during and after the war, they found that 83 of the patients (50%) were males and 147 (89.6%) were admitted to the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla. Of the patients, 86 (58.5%) were found to be Serbs. The majority of them were incapable ...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IZET PAJEVIĆ, MEVLUDIN HASANOVIĆ, ALINA KOPRIĆ Source Type: journals

Going from principles to rules in research ethics1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In research ethics there is a canon regarding what ethical rules ought to be followed by investigators vis-à-vis their treatment of subjects and a canon regarding what fundamental ethical principles apply to the endeavor. What I aim to demonstrate here is that several of the rules find no support in the principles. This leaves anyone who would insist that we not abandon those rules in the difficult position of needing to establish that we are nevertheless justified in believing in the validity of the rules. I conclude by arguing that this is not likely to be accomplished. The rules I call into question are the rules requi...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: BENJAMIN SACHS Source Type: journals

Inductive risk and justice in kidney allocationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
How should UNOS deal with the presence of scientific controversies on the risk factors for organ rejection when designing its allocation policies? The answer I defend in this paper is that the more undesirable the consequences of making a mistake in accepting a scientific hypothesis, the higher the degree of confirmation required for its acceptance. I argue that the application of this principle should lead to the rejection of the hypothesis that 'less than perfect' Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) matches are an important determinant of kidney graft survival. The scientific community has been divided all along on the signifi...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: ANDREA SCARANTINO Source Type: journals

'early terminal sedation' is a distinct entityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There has been much discussion regarding the acceptable use of sedation for palliation. A particularly contentious practice concerns deep, continuous sedation given to patients who are not imminently dying and given without provision of hydration or nutrition, with the end result that death is hastened. This has been called 'early terminal sedation'. Early terminal sedation is a practice composed of two legally and ethically accepted treatment options. Under certain conditions, patients have the right to reject hydration and nutrition, even if these are life-sustaining. Patients are also entitled to sedation as palliation ...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: VICTOR CELLARIUS Source Type: journals

Why moral philosophers are not and should not be moral expertsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the a...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DAVID ARCHARD Source Type: journals

Reconsidering the value of consent in biobank researchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Biobanks for long-term research pose challenges to the legal and ethical validity of consent to participate. Different models of consent have been proposed to answer some of these challenges. This paper contributes to this discussion by considering the meaning and value of consent to participants in biobanks. Empirical data from a qualitative study is used to provide a participant view of the consent process and to demonstrate that, despite limited understanding of the research, consent provides the research participants with some level of control and a form of self determination that they value. Participation is framed as...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JUDY ALLEN, BEVERLEY MCNAMARA Source Type: journals

Equality and the treatment-enhancement distinctionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In From Chance to Choice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler propose a new way of defending the moral significance of the distinction between genetic treatments and enhancements. They develop what they call a 'normal function model' of equality of opportunity and argue that it offers a 'limited' defence of this distinction. In this article, I critically assess their model and the support it (allegedly) provides for the treatment-enhancement distinction. First, I argue that there is a troubling tension in the normal function model. Secondly, I argue that neither of the rationales invoked by Buchanan...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: NILS HOLTUG Source Type: journals

A reply to karey harwoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: UTA BITTNER Source Type: journals

In defence of priority review vouchersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Infectious and parasitic diseases cause enormous health problems in the developing world whereas they leave the developed one relatively unscathed. Research and development (R&D) of drugs for diseases that mainly affect people in developing countries is limited. The problem that relatively few drugs are available for diseases that cause an enormous burden of disease in the developing world is called the 'availability problem'. In recent years, the availability problem has received quite a bit of attention. A number of proposals have been fielded as to how this problem might be minimized. Wild-card patent extensions, advanc...
Source: Bioethics - July 28, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JORN SONDERHOLM Source Type: journals

On the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafnessEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper demonstrates that accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness is not as simple or obvious as the widespread negative response from the hearing community would suggest. The central questions addressed by the paper are whether our moral disquiet with regard to selecting for deafness can be adequately defended, and if so, what this might entail. The paper considers several different strategies for accounting for the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness and concludes that the deaf case cannot be treated in isolation. Accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness necessarily entails mor...
Source: Bioethics - July 19, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: MELISSA SEYMOUR FAHMY Source Type: journals

Post-trial access to antiretrovirals: who owes what to whom?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Many recent articles argue that participants who seroconvert during HIV prevention trials deserve treatment when they develop AIDS, and there is a general consensus that the participants in HIV/AIDS treatment trials should have continuing post-trial access. As a result, the primary concern of many ethicists and activists has shifted from justifying an obligation to treat trial participants, to working out mechanisms through which treatment could be provided. In this paper I argue that this shift frequently conceals an important assumption: that if there is an obligation to supply treatment, then any party who could provide...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: JOSEPH MILLUM Source Type: journals

Human dignity in international policy documents: a useful criterion for public policy?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Current developments in biomedicine are presenting us with difficult ethical decisions and raising complex policy questions about how to regulate these new developments. Particularly vexing for governments have been issues related to human embryo experimentation. Because some of the most promising biomedical developments, such as stem cell research and nuclear somatic transfer, involve such experimentation, several international bodies have drafted documents aimed to provide guidance to governments when developing biomedical science policy. Here I focus on two such documents: the Council of Europe's Convention for the Prot...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: INMACULADA DE MELO-MARTÍN Source Type: journals

Moral fictions and medical ethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices is based on a series of moral fictions [ndash] m...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: FRANKLIN G. MILLER, ROBERT D. TRUOG, DAN W. BROCK Source Type: journals

Post-abortion syndrome: creating an afflictionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The contention that abortion harms women constitutes a new strategy employed by the pro-life movement to supplement arguments about fetal rights. David C. Reardon is a prominent promoter of this strategy. Post-abortion syndrome purports to establish that abortion psychologically harms women and, indeed, can harm persons associated with women who have abortions. Thus, harms that abortion is alleged to produce are multiplied. Claims of repression are employed to complicate efforts to disprove the existence of psychological harm and causal antecedents of trauma are only selectively investigated. We argue that there is no such...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: E.M. DADLEZ, WILLIAM L. ANDREWS Source Type: journals

A precautionary principle for dual use research in the life sciencesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines whether the principle, so far mainly used in environmental and public health issues, is applicable and suitable to the field of dual-use life science research. Four central elements of the principle are examined: threat, uncertainty, prescription and action. Although charges against the principle exist [ndash] for example that it stifles scientific development, lacks practical applicability and is poorly defined and vague [ndash] the analysis concludes that a Precautionary Principle is applicable to the field. Certain factors such as credibility of the threat, availability of information, clear prescr...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: FRIDA KUHLAU, ANNA T. HÖGLUND, KATHINKA EVERS, STEFAN ERIKSSON Source Type: journals

Defending the duty to research?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 2005, John Harris published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics in which he claimed that there was a duty to support scientific research. With Sarah Chan, he defended his claims against criticisms in this journal in 2008. In this paper I examine the defence, and claim that it is not powerful. Although he has established a slightly stronger position, it is not clear that the defence is sufficiently strong to show that there is a duty to support scientific research. Important questions about fairness, about rescue, and about the relationship between reasons and obligations to act can still be raised; and these questi...
Source: Bioethics - July 6, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: IAIN BRASSINGTON Source Type: journals

Rehabilitating human natureEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I review the main models of disability and introduce a line of reasoning that has been neglected in the debate concerning disability and disadvantage. My reasoning suggests that while disablism can and should be combated, success will require more challenging transformations than those featured in the literature. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CHRISOULA ANDREOU Source Type: journals

Virtue ethics and the selection of children with impairments: a reply to rosalind mcdougallEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 'Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions' Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In 'Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,' she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairme...
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: CARLA SAENZ Source Type: journals

Paternalism and self-interest: a rejoinderEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: THOMAS SCHRAMME Source Type: journals

An inquiry into the principles of needs-based allocation of health careEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The concept of need is often proposed as providing an additional or alternative criterion to cost-effectiveness in making allocation decisions in health care. If it is to be of practical value it must be sufficiently precisely characterized to be useful to decision makers. This will require both an account of how degree of need for an intervention is to be determined and a prioritization rule that clarifies how degree of need and the cost of the intervention interact in determining the relative priority of the intervention. Three common features of health care interventions must be accommodated in a comprehensive theory of...
Source: Bioethics - June 8, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: TONY HOPE, LARS PETER ØSTERDAL, ANDREAS HASMAN Source Type: journals

Privacy, the individual and genetic information: a buddhist perspectiveEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Bioinformatics is a new field of study whose ethical implications involve a combination of bioethics, computer ethics and information ethics. This paper is an attempt to view some of these implications from the perspective of Buddhism. Privacy is a central concern in both computer/information ethics and bioethics, and with information technology being increasingly utilized to process biological and genetic data, the issue has become even more pronounced. Traditionally, privacy presupposes the individual self but as Buddhism does away with the ultimate conception of an individual self, it has to find a way to analyse and ju...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SORAJ HONGLADAROM Source Type: journals

Exploitation in payments to research subjectsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method but there is significant debate about whether and in what amount such payments are appropriate. This paper is concerned with exploitation and whether there should be a lower limit on the amount researchers can pay their subjects. When subjects participate in research as a way to make money, fairness requires that researchers pay them a fair wage. This call for the establishment of a lower limit meets resistance in two places: (1) denial that the payments offered by researchers are wages for participation; and (2) concern about undue inducement. This ...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: TRISHA PHILLIPS Source Type: journals

The insignificance of personal identity for bioethicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
It has long been thought that certain key bioethical views depend heavily on work in personal identity theory, regarding questions of either our essence or the conditions of our numerical identity across time. In this paper I argue to the contrary, that personal identity is actually not significant at all in this arena. Specifically, I explore three topics where considerations of identity are thought to be essential [ndash] abortion, definition of death, and advance directives [ndash] and I show in each case that the significant work is being done by a relation other than identity. (Source: Bioethics)
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: DAVID SHOEMAKER Source Type: journals

What 'empirical turn in bioethics'?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines three different ways in which we could understand 'empirical turn'. Using real facts in normative reasoning is trivial and would not represent a 'turn'. Becoming an empirical discipline through a shift to the social and neurosciences would be a turn away from normative thinking, which we should not take. Conducting empirical research to inform normative reasoning is the usual meaning given to the term 'empirical turn'. In this sense, however, the turn is incomplete. Bioethics has imported methodological tools from empirical disciplines, but too often it has not imported the standards to which research...
Source: Bioethics - April 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: SAMIA HURST Source Type: journals