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29What can the lived experience of participating in risky HIV cure-related studies establish?Journal of Medical Ethics. 2018.This response to Gail Henderson et al argues that they were right that interviewees’ appraisals of cure study participation should inform protocol review decisions, but wrong to take these appraisals at face value.
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21The benefit/risk ratio challenge in clinical research, and the case of HIV cure: an introductionJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (2): 65-66. 2017.
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43How to keep high-risk studies ethical: classifying candidate solutionsJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (2): 74-77. 2017.
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21Paying for antiretroviral adherence: is it unethical when the patient is an adolescent?Journal of Medical Ethics 43 (3): 145-149. 2017.
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140Reframing Consent for Clinical Research: A Function-Based ApproachAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (12): 3-11. 2017.Although informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and …Read more
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21Vaccine testing for emerging infections: the case for individual randomisationJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (9): 625-631. 2017.
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82Is the Body Special? Review of Cécile Fabre, Whose Body is it Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person: Nir EyalUtilitas 21 (2): 233-245. 2009.Both left libertarians, who support the redistribution of income and wealth through taxation, and right libertarians, who oppose redistributive taxation, share an important view: that, looming catastrophes aside, the state must never redistribute any part of our body or our person without our consent. Cécile Fabre rejects that view. For her, just as the undeservedly poor have a just claim to money from their fellow citizens in order to lead a minimally flourishing life, the undeservedly ‘medical…Read more
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10Grounding Public Reasons in Rationality: The Conditionally-Compassionate Medical Student and Other ChallengesThe Law and Ethics of Human Rights 6 (1). 2012.
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3Identified versus Statistical Victims. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2015.
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17Grounding Public Reasons in Rationality: The Conditionally-Compassionate Medical Student and Other ChallengesLaw and Ethics of Human Rights 6 (1): 47-68. 2012.Gillian Hadfield and Stephen Macedo argue that late-Rawlsian stability for the right reasons, that is, stability based on participants’ reciprocal cooperation, can arise even if participants start out only economically rational and indifferent to justice. As they explain, even purely rational actors have an interest in having a neutral “shared logic” to coordinate decentralized enforcement of social cooperation and in internalizing that logic. Once developed and internalized, they add, that logi…Read more
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37Several contributions in this book tell of doctors' increasing emigration from developing countries where they are in critical shortage, especially from the underserved rural and public sectors of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia. They point out the severe harm from that migration to some of the world's poorest and sickest populations who have no other doctors to turn to, and gain little from their emigration. Since significant harm to the badly off is bad, decline in that mi…Read more
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35Precommitting to Serve the UnderservedAmerican Journal of Bioethics 12 (5): 23-34. 2012.In many countries worldwide, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, a shortage of physicians limits the provision of lifesaving interventions. One existing strategy to increase the number of physicians in areas of critical shortage is conditioning medical school scholarships on a precommitment to work in medically underserved areas later. Current practice is usually to demand only one year of service for each year of funded studies. We show the effectiveness of scholarships conditional on such precom…Read more
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72Justice, luck, and knowledge, by Susan L. Hurley. Harvard university press, 2003. VIII + 341 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 21 (1): 164-171. 2005.
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37Too Poor To Treat? The Complex Ethics of Cost-Effective Tobacco Policy in the Developing WorldPublic Health Ethics 4 (2): 109-120. 2011.The majority of deaths due to tobacco in the twenty-first century will occur in the developing world, where over 80% of current tobacco users live. In November 2010 guidelines were adopted for implementing Article 14 of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The guidelines call on all countries to promote tobacco treatment programs. Nevertheless, some experts argue for a strict focus, at least in developing countries, on population-based measures such as …Read more
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101Using informed consent to save trustJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (7): 437-444. 2014.Increasingly, bioethicists defend informed consent as a safeguard for trust in caretakers and medical institutions. This paper discusses an ‘ideal type’ of that move. What I call the trust-promotion argument for informed consent states:1. Social trust, especially trust in caretakers and medical institutions, is necessary so that, for example, people seek medical advice, comply with it, and participate in medical research.2. Therefore, it is usually wrong to jeopardise that trust.3. Coercion, dec…Read more
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Poverty : poverty-reduction, incentives, and the brighter side of false needsIn Jesper Ryberg, Thomas S. Petersen & Clark Wolf (eds.), New waves in applied ethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2007.
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111Egalitarian justice and innocent choiceJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2 (1): 1-19. 2006.This article argues that, in its standard formulation, luck-egalitarianism is false. In particular, I show that disadvantages that result from perfectly free choice can constitute egalitarian injustice. I also propose a modified formulation of luck-egalitarianism that would withstand my criticism. One merit of the modification is that it helps us to reconcile widespread intuitions about distributive justice with equally widespread intuitions about punitive justice.
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31Translational Research Beyond Approval: A Two-Stage Ethics ReviewAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (8). 2010.Commentators on the ethics of translational research find it morally problematic. Types of translational research are said to involve questionable benefits, special risks, additional barriers to informed consent, and severe conflicts of interest. Translational research conducted on the global poor is thought to exploit them and increase international disparities. Some commentators support especially stringent ethical review. However, such concerns are grounded only in pre-approval translational …Read more
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45Reconciling informed consent with prescription drug requirementsJournal of Medical Ethics 38 (10): 589-591. 2012.
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25Afterword: returning to philosophical foundations in research ethicsJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (2): 132-133. 2017.
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1What is it like to be a bird? : Wikler and Brock on the ethics of population healthIn Ronald Michael Green, Aine Donovan & Steven A. Jauss (eds.), Global bioethics: issues of conscience for the twenty-first century, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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Poverty reduction and equality with strong incentives: the brighter side of false needsIn Ryberg Jesper & Petersen Thomas (eds.), New Waves in Applied Ethics, Palgrave. pp. 130--141. 2008.
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50Informed consent, the value of trust, and hedonsJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (7): 447-447. 2014.Sissela Bok's1 and Torbjörn Tännsjö's2 writings on trust and informed consent were sources of inspiration for my article.3 It is gratifying to have a chance to respond to their thoughtful comments.Bok concurs with my scepticism that the ‘trust-promotion argument for informed consent’ can successfully generate commonsense morality's full set of informed consent norms. But she finds that argument even more wanting, perhaps so wanting as to be unworthy of critical attention. What she seems to find …Read more
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53Nudges and Noodges: The Ethics of Health Promotion—New York StylePublic Health Ethics 6 (3). 2013.Michael Bloomberg's three terms in New York City's mayoral office are coming to a close. His model of governance for public health influenced cities and governments around the world. What should we make of that model? This essay introduces a symposium in which ethicists Sarah Conly, Roger Brownsword and Alex Rajczi discuss that legacy
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43The Diverse Ethics of Translational ResearchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (8): 19-30. 2010.Commentators on the ethics of translational research find it morally problematic. Types of translational research are said to involve questionable benefits, special risks, additional barriers to informed consent, and severe conflicts of interest. Translational research conducted on the global poor is thought to exploit them and increase international disparities. Some commentators support especially stringent ethical review. However, such concerns are grounded only in pre-approval translational …Read more
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90Physician brain drain: Can nothing be done?Public Health Ethics 1 (2): 180-192. 2008.Next SectionAccess to medicines, vaccination and care in resource-poor settings is threatened by the emigration of physicians and other health workers. In entire regions of the developing world, low physician density exacerbates child and maternal mortality and hinders treatment of HIV/AIDS. This article invites philosophers to help identify ethical and effective responses to medical brain drain. It reviews existing proposals and their limitations. It makes a case that, in resource-poor countrie…Read more
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53Why Treat Noncompliant Patients? Beyond the Decent Minimum AccountJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (6): 572-588. 2011.Patients’ medical conditions can result from their own avoidable risk taking. Some lung diseases result from avoidable smoking and some traffic accidents result from victims’ reckless driving. Although in many nonmedical areas we hold people responsible for taking risks they could avoid, it is normally harsh and inappropriate to deny patients care because they risked needing it. Why? A popular account is that protecting everyone’s "decent minimum," their basic needs, matters more than the benefi…Read more
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Harvard UniversityRegular Faculty
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |