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12Should Whole Genome Sequencing be Publicly Funded for Everyone as a Matter of Healthcare Justice?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 31 (1): 5-15. 2022.
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12The Dobbs Decision: Can It Be Justified by Public Reason?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (3): 310-322. 2023.John Rawls has held up as a model of public reason the U.S. Supreme Court. I argue that the Dobbs Court is justifiably criticized for failing to respect public reason. First, the entire opinion is governed by an originalist ideological logic almost entirely incongruent with public reason in a liberal, pluralistic, democratic society. Second, Alito’s emphasis on “ordered liberty” seems completely at odds with the “disordered liberty” regarding abortion already evident among the states. Third, des…Read more
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11Justice, HMOs, and the invisible rationing of health care resourcesBioethics 4 (2): 97-120. 1990.If we accept the premise that some sort of rationing of access to health care resources is necessary to contain escalating health care costs effectively, then we need to ask how that rationing might be accomplished most fairly. Calabresi and Bobbitt have argued in their book Tragic Choices that there is no 'perfectly fair' or even 'reasonably fair' way to bring this about.
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11Teaching Bioethics Today: Waking from Dogmatic Curricular SlumbersCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1-8. forthcoming.The Dobbs decision has precipitated renewed medical, political, and professional interest in the issue of abortion. Because this decision handed responsibility for regulation of abortion back to the states, and because the states are enacting or have enacted policies that tend to be very permissive or very restrictive, the result has been legal and professional confusion for physicians and their patients. Medical education cannot resolve either the legal or ethical issues regarding abortion. How…Read more
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11Public Reason, Bioethics, and Public Policy: A Seductive Delusion or Ambitious Aspiration?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1-15. forthcoming.Can Rawlsian public reason sufficiently justify public policies that regulate or restrain controversial medical and technological interventions in bioethics (and the broader social world), such as abortion, physician aid-in-dying, CRISPER-cas9 gene editing of embryos, surrogate mothers, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of eight-cell embryos, and so on? The first part of this essay briefly explicates the central concepts that define Rawlsian political liberalism. The latter half of this essay t…Read more
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10Precision medicine and the fragmentation of solidarity (and justice)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 25 (2): 191-206. 2022.Solidarity is a fundamental social value in many European countries, though its precise practical and theoretical meaning is disputed. In a health care context, I agree with European writers who take solidarity normatively to mean roughly equal access to effective health care for all. That is, solidarity includes a sense of justice. Given that, I will argue that precision medicine represents a potential weakening of solidarity, albeit not a unique weakening. Precision medicine includes 150 targe…Read more
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10Abortion and “Zombie” Laws: Who Is Accountable?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (3): 307-308. 2023.
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10Some Lives Matter: The Dirty Little Secret of the U.S. Health Care SystemHastings Center Report 50 (5): 3-4. 2020.Our health care system in the United States reflects the inequities that are part of the larger society, which is why our system for financing access to needed and effective health care is so complicated and unfair.
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9Bioethics and Public Policy: Is There Hope for Public Reason?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1-6. forthcoming.
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9Commentary: Medical Ethics: A Distinctive Species of EthicsCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 29 (3): 421-425. 2020.
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9Precision Public Health Equity: Another Utopian Mirage?American Journal of Bioethics 24 (3): 98-100. 2024.Galasso calls for “the actualization of the public health potential of precision medicine….as the best realistic contribution to health equity” (Galasso 2024, 83). Unfortunately, this is wishful th...
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8Alzheimer's and Aducanumab: Unjust Profits and False HopesHastings Center Report 51 (4): 9-11. 2021.Accelerated approval of aducanumab for mild Alzheimer's by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 7, 2021, has generated substantial medical, scientific, and ethical controversy. That approval was contrary to the nearly unanimous judgment of the FDA's Advisory Committee that little reliable evidence existed of significant benefit, even though the drug did reduce β‐amyloid. Three major ethical problems were created by this approval: (1) Medicare resources would be unjustly squandered, give…Read more
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8Friedman Howard Steven. Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on LifePublic Health Ethics 14 (2): 218-220. 2021.
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5JUST Rationing or just Rationing? THE Challenge of Health ReformJurisprudence 6 (1): 131-137. 2015.
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4Just Caring: The Challenges of Priority‐Setting in Public HealthIn Rosamond Rhodes, Leslie P. Francis & Anita Silvers (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics, Blackwell. 2007.The prelims comprise: The Scope of Public Health: Challenges and Choices Health Care Justice and Public Health: When Is Enough Enough? Setting Public Health Priorities Justly: The Limits of Moral Theory References.
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1Book Review: Rationing America’s Medical Care: The Oregon Plan and Beyond (review)Journal of Clinical Ethics 4 (4): 362-365. 1993.
East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |