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Subcription.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Authors: PMID: 19920167 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - November 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Editorial Board.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Authors: PMID: 19920168 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - November 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Cover.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Authors: PMID: 19920169 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - November 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

A Litmus Test for Exploitation: James Stacey Taylor's Stakes and Kidneys.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
James Stacy Taylor advances a thorough argument for the legalization of markets in current (live) human kidneys. The market is seemly the most abhorrent type of market, a market where the least well-off sell part of their body to the most well off. Though rigorously defended overall, his arguments concerning exploitation are thin. I examine a number of prominent bioethicists' account of exploitation: most importantly, Ruth Sample's exploitation as degradation. I do so in the context of Taylor's argument, with the aim of buttressing Taylor's position that a regulated kidney market is morally allowable. I argue that Samp...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Kuntz JR Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Organ Markets and the Ends of Medicine.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As the gap between the need for and supply of human organs continues to widen, the aim of securing additional sources of these "gifts of the body" has become a seemingly overriding moral imperative, one that could-and some argue, should-override the widespread ban on organ markets. As a medical practice, organ transplantation entails the inherent risk that one human being, a donor, will become little more than a means to the end of healing for another human being and that he or she will come to have a purely instrumental value. With the establishment of organ markets, not only will the harms of instrumentalization be a...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Davis FD, Crowe SJ Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Autonomy and Organ Sales, Revisited.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper I develop and defend my arguments in favor of the moral permissibility of a legal market for human body parts in response to the criticisms that have been leveled at them by Paul M. Hughes and Samuel J. Kerstein. PMID: 19880548 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Taylor JS Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Constraint, Consent, and Well-Being in Human Kidney Sales.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper canvasses recent arguments in favor of commercial markets in human transplant kidneys, raising objections to those arguments on grounds of the role of injustice, exploitation, and coercion in compromising the autonomy of those most likely to sell a kidney, namely, the least well off members of society. PMID: 19880549 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hughes PM Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Introduction: Symposium on a Regulated Market in Transplantable Organs.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19846477 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hippen BE Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Why Should We Compensate Organ Donors When We Can Continue to Take Organs for Free? A Response to Some of My Critics.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market, I argued that the market is the most efficient and effective-and morally justified-means of procuring and allocating human organs for transplantation. This special issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy publishes several articles critical of this position and of my arguments mustered in its support. In this essay, I explore the core criticisms these authors raise against my conclusions. I argue that clinging to comfortable, but unfounded, notions that human body parts are not commodities, that the physician-patient relationship transce...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Cherry MJ Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Autonomy, Moral Constraints, and Markets in Kidneys.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article concerns the morality of establishing regulated kidney markets in an effort to reduce the chronic shortage of kidneys for transplant. The article tries to rebut the view, recently defended by James Taylor, that if we hold autonomy to be intrinsically valuable, then we should be in favor of such markets. The article then argues that, under current conditions, the buying and selling of organs in regulated markets would sometimes violate two Kantian principles that are seen as moral constraints. One principle forbids expressing disrespect for the dignity of humanity; the other forbids treating others merely as me...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 20, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Kerstein SJ Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Animal-Human Chimeras, Sexually Deviant Behavior, and Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An Introduction.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19717525 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 27, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hinkley AE Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

What They Mean by "Good Science': The Medical Community's Response to Boutique Fetal Ultrasounds.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Since 1994, when the first fetal imaging boutique appeared in Texas, many sites have been established around the country for parents to receive nonmedical fetal imaging using three- and four-dimensional ultrasound machines. These businesses boast the benefits they offer to parental-fetal bonding, but the medical community objects to the use of ultrasound machines for nonmedical purposes. In this article, I present the statements released by the medical community, highlighting the alarmist strategies used to paint boutique ultrasounds as bad science and elevate the medical use of ultrasounds. Through a close reading of ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 19, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Raucher MS Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Metaphysical and Ethical Perspectives on Creating Animal-Human Chimeras.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper addresses several questions related to the nature, production, and use of animal-human (a-h) chimeras. At the heart of the issue is whether certain types of a-h chimeras should be brought into existence, and, if they are, how we should treat such creatures. In our current research environment, we recognize a dichotomy between research involving nonhuman animal subjects and research involving human subjects, and the classification of a research protocol into one of these categories will trigger different ethical standards as to the moral permissibility of the research in question. Are a-h chimeras entitled to...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 18, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Eberl JT, Ballard RA Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

The Search for Reasons in a Unified Relationship.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The paternalism, autonomy debate was influenced by traditional ideas that reasons are either objective (based on values existing independent of any particular person) or subjective (based on values tied to individual's personal histories). This dichotomy has been rewarding for the health care community. However, the tenets of this debate have influenced the nature of deliberation in a way that seriously compromises the ability of health care professionals and patients to bring reflection (the search for justified reasons) to a successful end. It sets up the moral landscape not as one of unity and reciprocity, but as on...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 18, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Koppelman-White ER Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Evidence-Based Medicine Must Be ...Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Proponents of evidence-based medicine (EBM) provide the "hierarchy of evidence" as a criterion for judging the reliability of therapeutic decisions. EBM's hierarchy places randomized interventional studies (and systematic reviews of such studies) higher in the hierarchy than observational studies, unsystematic clinical experience, and basic science. Recent philosophical work has questioned whether EBM's special emphasis on evidence from randomized interventional studies can be justified. Following the critical literature, and in particular the work of John Worrall, I agree that many of the arguments put forward by advo...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 17, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: La Caze A Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Sex, Immorality, and Mental Disorders.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although the definition of a mental disorder has remained essentially the same from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-III-R) through DSM-IV to DSM-IV-TR, the account of the paraphilias has changed continually. Although the definition in all the DSMs explicitly rules out deviant sexual behavior as sufficient for labeling someone as having a mental disorder, deviant sexual behavior counts as sufficient for all the paraphilias in DSM-III-R. In DSM-IV, the account of all the paraphilias is made consistent with the definition. In DSM-IV-TR, mere deviant sexual behavior is not ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 17, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Gert B, Culver CM Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

A Regulatory Argument Against Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article explores the plausibility of an argument against embryonic stem cell research based on what the regulations already say about research on pregnant women and fetuses. The center of the argument is the notion of vulnerability and whether such a concept is applicable to human embryos. It is argued that such an argument can be made plausible. The article concludes by responding to several important objections. PMID: 19690326 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - August 17, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Napier S Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Who Can Resist Foucault?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Michel Foucault's analysis of "the birth of the clinic" describes the genesis of a unified discourse that, in retrospect, has shaped western medicine for two centuries. However, in looking prospectively toward a 21st century medicine, Foucault's analysis is necessary but not sufficient. To better critically address medicine and medical education in the era of simulation, we could draw on frameworks developed by futurists such as Jean Baudrillard. Foucault's analysis does not account for contemporary, complex developments of the clinical gaze as the gaze is distributed across practitioners in increasing use of sophistic...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 22, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bleakley A, Bligh J Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Docile Bodies: Transnational Research Ethics as Biopolitics.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This essay explores the claim that bioethics has become a mode of biopolitics. It seeks to illuminate one of the myriad of ways that bioethics joins other institutionalized discursive practices in the task of producing, organizing, and managing the bodies-of policing and controlling populations-in order to empower larger institutional agents. The focus of this analysis is the contemporary practice of transnational biomedical research. The analysis is catalyzed by the enormous transformation in the political economy of transnational research that has occurred over the past three decades and the accompanying increase in ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 22, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Lysaught MT Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Foucauldian Diagnostics: Space, Time, and the Metaphysics of Medicine.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This essay places Foucault's work into a philosophical context, recognizing that Foucault is difficult to place and demonstrates that Foucault remains in the Kantian tradition of philosophy, even if he sits at the margins of that tradition. For Kant, the forms of intuition-space and time-are the a priori conditions of the possibility of human experience and knowledge. For Foucault, the a priori conditions are political space and historical time. Foucault sees political space as central to understanding both the subject and objects of medicine, psychiatry, and the social sciences. Through this analysis one can see that ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bishop JP Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Governmentality, Biopower, and the Debate over Genetic Enhancement.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although Foucault adamantly refused to make moral pronouncements or dictate moral principles or political programs to his readers, his work offers a number of tools and concepts that can help us develop our own ethical views and practices. One of these tools is genealogical analysis, and one of these concepts is "biopower." Specifically, this essay seeks to demonstrate that Foucault's concept of biopower and his genealogical method are valuable as we consider moral questions raised by genetic enhancement technologies. First, it examines contemporary debate over the development, marketing, and application of such techno...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: McWhorter L Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Foucault, Genealogy, Ethics.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
By establishing the sciences of life while, at the same time, forming a certain self-knowledge, the human being altered itself as a living being by taking on the character of a rational subject acquiring the power to act on itself, changing its living conditions and its own life .... [There is a] kinship between the discourse on limit-experience, when it was a matter of the subject transforming itself, and the discourse on the transformation of the subject itself through the construction of a knowledge. (Foucault, 2000, 296)1. PMID: 19546147 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 21, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Scott CE Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Revisiting Foucault.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19541790 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 17, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bishop JP Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Human dignity and human rights as a common ground for a global bioethics.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The principle of respect for human dignity plays a crucial role in the emerging global norms relating to bioethics, in particular in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. This instrument, which is a legal, not merely an ethical document, can be regarded as an extension of international human rights law into the field of biomedicine. Although the Declaration does not explicitly define human dignity, it would be a mistake to see the emphasis put on this notion as a mere rhetorical strategy. Rather, the appeal to dignity reflects a real concern about the need to promote respect both for the intri...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Andorno R Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

UNESCO, "universal bioethics," and state regulation of health risks: a philosophical critique.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights announces a significant array of welfare entitlements--to personal health and health care, medicine, nutrition, water, improved living conditions, environmental protection, and so forth--as well as corresponding governmental duties to provide for such public health measures, though the simple expedient of announcing that such entitlements are "basic human rights." The Universal Declaration provides no argument for the legitimacy of the sweeping governmental authority, taxation, and regula...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Cherry MJ Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Solidarity and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent work has stressed the importance of the concept of solidarity to bioethics and social philosophy generally. But can and should it feature in documents such as the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights as anything more than a vague notion with multiple possible interpretations? Although noting the tension between universality and particularity that such documents have to deal with, and also noting that solidarity has a political content, the paper explores the suggestion that solidarity should feature more centrally in international regulations. The paper concludes with the view that when solidarity...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Gunson D Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Bioethics as public discourse and second-order discipline.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Bioethics is best viewed as both a second-order discipline and also part of public discourse. Since their goals differ, some bioethical activities are more usefully viewed as advancing public discourse than academic disciplines. For example, the "Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights" sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization seeks to promote ethical guidance on bioethical issues. From the vantage of philosophical ethics, it fails to rank or specify its stated principles, justify controversial principles, clarify key terms, or say what is meant by calling potential...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Kopelman LM Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

The UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: a canon for the ages?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights of 2005 purports to articulate universal norms for bioethics. However, this document has met with mixed reviews. Some deny that the elaboration of universal bioethics norms is needed; some deny that UNESCO has the expertise or authority to articulate such norms; some regard the content of the UNESCO document as too vague or general to be useful; and some regard the document as a cog in the effort of like-minded cosmopolitans to codify their particular moral intuitions in international law. This issue examines the potential merits and pitfalls of the Univers...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Trotter G Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Bioethics and self-governance: the lessons of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The following article analyzes the process of conception, elaboration, and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, and reflects on the lessons it might hold for public bioethics on the international level. The author was involved in the process at a variety of levels: he provided advice to the IBC on behalf of the President's Council of Bioethics; he served as the U.S. representative to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee; and led the U.S. Delegation in the multilateral negotiation of Government experts that culminated in the adoption of the declaration in its final form. The aut...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Snead OC Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Normative foundations of technology transfer and transnational benefit principles in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The United Nations Scientific, Education, and Cultural Organization Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) expresses in its title and substance a controversial linkage of two normative systems: international human rights law and bioethics. The UDBHR has the status of what is known as a "nonbinding" declaration under public international law. The UDBHR's foundation within bioethics (and association, e.g., with virtue-based or principlist bioethical theories) is more problematic. Nonetheless, the UDBHR contains socially important principles of technology transfer and transnational benefit (articles 1...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - June 1, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Faunce TA, Nasu H Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Introduction.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19276130 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - March 10, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bulcock JA Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, Reproductive Freedom, and Deliberative Democracy.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper I argue that the account of deliberative democracy advanced by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1996, 2004) is a useful normative theory that can help enhance our deliberations about public policy in morally pluralistic societies. More specifically, I illustrate how the prescriptions of deliberative democracy can be applied to the issue of regulating non-medical uses of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), such as gender selection. Deliberative democracy does not aim to win a philosophical debate among rival first-order theories, such as libertarianism, egalitarianism or feminism. Rather, it advances...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 27, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Farrelly C Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Children, ADHD, and Citizenship.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is a subject of controversy, for a host of reasons. This paper seeks to explore the manner in which children's interests may be subsumed to those of parents, teachers, and society as a whole in the course of diagnosis, treatment, and labeling, utilizing a framework for children's citizenship proposed by Elizabeth Cohen. Additionally, the paper explores aspects of discipline associated with the diagnosis, as well as distributional pathologies resulting from the application of the diagnosis in potentially biased ways. PMID: 19251776 [PubMed - as supplied by pu...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 27, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Cohen EF, Morley CP Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Tinkering with the Survival Lottery during a Public Health Crisis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A well-known thought experiment has us ponder a lottery system that selects one person as the source of transplantable organs for two others. The organs are forcibly harvested and the "donor" dies, whereas the other two patients live. The Survival Lottery is supposed to get at the distinction between killing and letting die, but it is also a challenge to beliefs about moral duties: what are my obligations if my life could be used to save yours and another person's as well? A less extreme version of this thought experiment might have us imagining that officials of the public healthcare system would devise a similar lott...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 25, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Herrera C Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Egalitarianism and Responsibility in the Genetic Future.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent discussions of genetic enhancement have argued that unregulated access to genetic enhancement technology will have a mainly negative impact on equality, a development that an egalitarian approach to distributive justice should be concerned with and seek to address. I argue that the extent to which egalitarians should be concerned about unequal access to genetic enhancement therapies has been overplayed. Many of the genetic differences that exist between people, including those that arise from differential access to genetic enhancement technology, are simply irrelevant to egalitarian concerns. I also argue that m...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 25, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Barclay L Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive Liberty.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Concern for "reproductive liberty" suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest that therapeutic cloning would be prima facie unethical unless it occurred with the consent of the parents of the person being cl...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 24, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Sparrow R Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

From a Genetic Predisposition to an Interactive Predisposition: Rethinking the Ethical Implications of Screening for Gene-Environment Interactions.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In a widely acclaimed study from 2002, researchers found a case of gene-environment interaction for a gene controlling neuroenzymatic activity (low vs. high), exposure to childhood maltreatment, and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Cases of gene-environment interaction are generally characterized as evincing a genetic predisposition; for example, individuals with low neuroenzymatic activity are generally characterized as having a genetic predisposition to ASPD. I first argue that the concept of a genetic predisposition fundamentally misconstrues these cases of gene-environment interaction. This misconstrual will...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 4, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tabery J Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Brain Damage and the Moral Significance of Consciousness.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range of notions of consciousness and that is unclear which of these is assumed by the principle. W...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 4, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Savulescu J, Kahane G Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Payments to Normal Healthy Volunteers in Phase 1 Trials: Avoiding Undue Influence While Distributing Fairly the Burdens of Research Participation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Clinical investigators must engage in just subject recruitment and selection and avoid unduly influencing research participation. There may be tension between the practice of keeping payments to participants low to avoid undue influence and the requirements of justice when recruiting normal healthy volunteers for phase 1 drug studies. By intentionally keeping payments low to avoid unduly influenced participation, investigators, on the recommendation or insistence of institutional review boards, may be targeting or systematically recruiting healthy adult members of lower socio-economic groups for participation in phase ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - February 3, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Iltis AS Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Theoretical and Practical Issues in the Definition of Health: Insights from Aboriginal Australia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper discusses attempts to define health within a public policy arena and practical and conceptual difficulties that arise. An Australian Aboriginal definition of health is examined. Although there are certain difficulties of translation, this definition is prominent in current Australian health policy and discourse about health. The definition can be seen as broadly holistic in comparison to other holistic definitions such as that of the World Health Organization. The nature of this holism and its grounding within the context of Aboriginal Australia is discussed. In particular, its implications for the phenomeno...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - January 30, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Boddington P, Räisänen U Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Tracking the Variability of Authority and Power in the Physician-Patient Relationship.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19179459 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - January 29, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: McCullough LB Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

"How Are We Defining Our Terms Here?": The Defining the Semantic Meaning of Terms in Bioethical Debates.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19147794 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - January 15, 2009 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hinkley AE Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

A Defining Analysis of the Life and Death Dyad: Paving the Way for an Ethical Debate.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We discuss the meaning of "being alive" and "being dead." Our primary aim is to pave the way for a sound and accurate ethical debate concerning these two concepts. In particular, we analyze a metabolic approach and a genetic one and discuss the reasons for their failure to constitute a good starting point for successive debates. We argue that any ethical or social discussion of topics involving life and death must introduce cultural constructs such as, on the one hand, the concept of clinical death and, on the other hand, the concept of existence. We argue that these two cultural constructs, although consistent with bi...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - December 24, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Boniolo G, Paolo Di Fiore P Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Medical Ethics Needs a New View of Autonomy.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The notion of autonomy commonly employed in medical ethics literature and practices is inadequate on three fronts: it fails to properly identify nonautonomous actions and choices, it gives a false account of which features of actions and choices makes them autonomous or nonautonomous, and it provides no grounds for the moral requirement to respect autonomy. In this paper I offer a more adequate framework for how to think about autonomy, but this framework does not lend itself to the kinds of practical application assumed in medical ethics. A general problem then arises: the notion of autonomy used in medical ethics is ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - December 24, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Walker RL Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Common Ground on Surgical Abortion?--Engaging Peter Singer on the Moral Status of Potential Persons.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The debate over surgical abortion is certainly one of the most divisive in ethical discourse and for many it seems interminable. However, this paper argues that a primary reason for this is confusion with regard to what issues are actually under dispute. When looking at an entrenched and articulate figure on one side of the debate, Peter Singer, and comparing his views with those of his opponents, one finds that the disputed issue is actually quite a narrow one: the moral status of potential persons. Finding this common ground clears the conceptual space for a fruitful argument: the thesis of which is that most, includ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - December 19, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Camosy CC Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Biopolitics, Terri Schiavo, and the Sovereign Subject of Death.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85) In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern government, the state became exceedingly concerned about the body politic, the bodies that make up the polis, including the health of ...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - December 11, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bishop JP Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Redefining Disability: Maleficent, Unjust and Inconsistent.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Disability activists' redefinition of "disability" as a social, rather than a medical, problem attempts to reassign causality. We explicate the untenable implications of this approach and argue this definition is maleficent, unjust, and inconsistent. Thus, redefining disability as a socially caused phenomenon is, from a moral point of view, ill-advised. PMID: 19074236 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - December 11, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Cox-White B, Boxall SF Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

First do no harm: critical analyses of the roads to health care reform.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Health care reform poses numerous challenges. A core challenge is to make health care more efficient and effective without causing more harm than benefit. Additionally, those fashioning health-care policy must encourage patients to exercise caution and restraint when expending scarce resources; restrict the ability of politicians to advance their careers by promising alluring but costly entitlements, many of which they will not be able to deliver; face the demographic challenges of an aging population; and avoid regulations that create significant inefficiencies and restrict access to health care. Given such real-world...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 1, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Iltis AS, Cherry MJ Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Public Health Insurance under a Nonbenevolent State.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper explores the consequences of the oft ignored fact that public health insurance must actually be supplied by the state. Depending how the state is modeled, different health insurance outcomes are expected. The benevolent model of the state does not account for many actual features of public health insurance systems. One alternative is to use a standard public choice model, where state action is determined by interaction between self-interested actors. Another alternative-related to a strand in public choice theory-is to model the state as Leviathan. Interestingly, some proponents of public health insurance us...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 1, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Lemieux P Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals

Patients, politics, and power: government failure and the politicization of u.k. Health care.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examines the consequences of the politicization of health care in the United Kingdom following the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948. The NHS is founded on the principle of universal access to health care free at the point of use but in reality charges exist for some services and other services are rationed. Not to charge and/or ration would create a common-pool resource with no means of conserving scarce resources. Taking rationing decisions in the political realm means that the values and priorities of individual patients are marginalized and the preferences of powerful organized groups a...
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - October 1, 2008 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Meadowcroft J Tags: J Med Philos Source Type: journals