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482The concept of the person and the value of lifeKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9 (4): 293-308. 1999.: The concept of the person has come to be intimately connected with questions about the value of life. It is applied to those sorts of beings who have some special value or moral importance and where we need to prioritize the needs or claims of different sorts of individuals. "Person" is a concept designating individuals like us in some important respects, but possibly including individuals who are very unlike us in other respects. What are these respects and why are they important? This paper …Read more
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7Stem cell research is of ethical significance for threeIn Stephen Holland (ed.), Arguing About Bioethics, Routledge. pp. 42. 2012.
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83On CloningRoutledge. 2004.Cloning - few words have as much potential to grip our imagination or grab the headlines. No longer the stuff of science fiction or Star Wars - it is happening now. Yet human cloning is currently banned throughout the world, and therapeutic cloning banned in many countries. In this highly controversial book, John Harris does a lot more than ask why we are so afraid of cloning. He presents a deft and informed defence of human cloning, carefully exposing the rhetorical and highly dubious arguments…Read more
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Part IV: Bioethics and beyond. Humanity and hyper-regulation : from Nuremberg to Helsinki / Onora O'Neill ; Transhumanity : a moral vision of the twenty-first centuryIn N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen & Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and humanity: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Glover, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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70Moral Blindness – The Gift of the God MachineNeuroethics 9 (3): 269-273. 2016.The continuing debate between Persson and Savulescu and myself over moral enhancement concerns two dimensions of a very large question. The large question is: what exactly makes something a moral enhancement? This large question needs a book length study and this I provide in my How to be Good, Oxford 2016.. In their latest paper Moral Bioenhancement, Freedom and Reason take my book as their point of departure and the first dimension of the big question they address is one that emphasizes a dist…Read more
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223Germline Manipulation and Our Future WorldsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 15 (12): 30-34. 2015.Two genetic technologies capable of making heritable changes to the human genome have revived interest in, and in some quarters a very familiar panic concerning, so-called germline interventions. These technologies are: most recently the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to edit genes in non-viable IVF zygotes and Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy the use of which was approved in principle in a landmark vote earlier this year by the United Kingdom Parliament. The possibility of using either of these techniques…Read more
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2Intimations of immortality: the ethics and justice of life-extending therapiesInternational Longevity Center-USA. 2002.
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34... How Narrow the Strait!Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 23 (3): 247-260. 2014.This article explores the consequences of interventions to secure moral enhancement that are at once compulsory and inescapable and of which the subject will be totally unaware. These are encapsulated in an arresting example used by Ingmar Perrson and Julian Savulescu concerning a “God machine” capable of achieving at least three of these four objectives. This article demonstrates that the first objective—namely, moral enhancement—is impossible to achieve by these means and that the remaining th…Read more
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AbortionIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The Oxford handbook of practical ethics, Oxford University Press. 2003.
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75Moral enhancement and pro-social behaviourJournal of Medical Ethics 37 (3): 130-131. 2011.Moral enhancement is a topic that has sparked much current interest in the world of bioethics. The possibility of making people ‘better,’ not just in the conventional enhancement sense of improving health and other desirable qualities and capacities, but by making them somehow more moral, more decent, altogether better people, has attracted attention from both advocates 1 2 and sceptics 3 alike. The concept of moral enhancement, however, is fraught with difficult questions, theoretical and pract…Read more
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184The ambiguity of the embryo: Ethical inconsistency in the human embryonic stem cell debateMetaphilosophy 38 (2-3). 2007.We argue in this essay that (1) the embryo is an irredeemably ambiguous entity and its ambiguity casts serious doubt on the arguments claiming its full protection or, at least, its protection against its use as a means fo research, (2) those who claim the embryo should be protected as "one of us" are committed to a position even they do not uphold in their practices, (3) views that defend the protection of the embryo in virtue of its potentiality to become a person fail, and (4) the embryo does…Read more
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47William Andereck, MD, is Chair of the Ethics Committees at California Pacific Medical Center and the Pacific Fertility Center, San Francisco, California. Lori B. Andrews, JD, is Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law and Senior Scholar at the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, Illinois (review)Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 117-118. 1998.
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505Multiplex parenting: IVG and the generations to comeJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (11): 752-758. 2014.Recent breakthroughs in stem cell differentiation and reprogramming suggest that functional human gametes could soon be created in vitro. While the ethical debate on the uses of in vitro generated gametes (IVG) was originally constrained by the fact that they could be derived only from embryonic stem cell lines, the advent of somatic cell reprogramming, with the possibility to easily derive human induced pluripotent stem cells from any individual, affords now a major leap in the feasibility of I…Read more
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21Personal or Public Health?In Michael Boylan (ed.), International Public Health Policy & Ethics, Dordrecht. pp. 15--29. 2008.Intuitively we feel that we ought (to attempt) to save the lives, or ameliorate the suffering, of identifiable individuals where we can. But this comes at a price. It means that there may not be any resources to save the lives of others in similar situations in the future. Or worse, there may not be enough resources left to prevent others from ending up in similar situations in the future. This chapter asks whether this is justifiable or whether we would be better served focusing on public healt…Read more
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151Stem Cells, Sex, and ProcreationCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 12 (4): 353-371. 2003.Sex is not the answer to everything, though young men think it is, but it may be the answer to the intractable debate over the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research. In this paper, I advance one ethical principle that, as yet, has not received the attention its platitudinous character would seem to merit. If found acceptable, this principle would permit the beneficial use of any embryonic or fetal tissue that would, by default, be lost or destroyed. More important, I make two appeals to c…Read more
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44The age-indifference principle and equalityCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 14 (1): 93-99. 2005.The question of whether or not either elderly people or those whose life expectancy is short have commensurately reduced claims on their fellows, have, in short, fewer or less powerful rights than others, is of vital importance but is one that has seldom been adequately examined. Despite ringing proclamations of justice and equality for all, the fact is that most societies discriminate between citizens on the basis both of age and life expectancy
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140The Creation Lottery: Final Lessons from Natural Reproduction: Why Those Who Accept Natural Reproduction Should Accept Cloning and Other Frankenstein Reproductive TechnologiesCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 13 (1): 90-95. 2004.Opponents of destructive embryo research, such as embryo rightists, as well as proponents accept that natural reproduction is permissible. There is an alternative to natural reproduction—to remain childless. John Harris began this series of articles by asking, what does a commitment to the permissibility of natural reproduction entail? Harris has argued that a commitment to the permissibility of natural reproduction entails a commitment to the permissibility of destructive embryo research. Julia…Read more
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48Cloning and Human DignityCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (2): 163-167. 1998.The panic occasioned by the birth of Dolly sent international and national bodies and their representatives scurrying for principles with which to allay imagined public anxiety. It is instructive to note that principles are things of which such people and bodies so often seem to be bereft. The search for appropriate principles turned out to be difficult since so many aspects of the Dolly case were unprecedented. In the end, some fascinating examples of more or less plausible candidates for the s…Read more
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116Should we presume moral turpitude in our children? – Small children and consent to medical researchTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 24 (2): 121-129. 2003.When children are too young to make their ownautonomous decisions, decisions have to be madefor them. In certain contexts we allow parentsand others to make these decisions, and do notinterfere unless the decision clearly violatesthe best interest of the child. In othercontexts we put a priori limits on whatkind of decisions parents can make, and/or whatkinds of considerations they have to take intoaccount. Consent to medical research currentlyfalls into the second group mentioned here. Wewant t…Read more
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41Sparrows, hedgehogs and castrati: reflections on gender and enhancementJournal of Medical Ethics 37 (5): 262-266. 2011.In a number of papers, including the one published in this journal, Robert Sparrow has mounted attacks on consequentialism using principally what he takes to be an important fact, which he believes constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of consequentialism in its many forms and of this author's approach to enhancement and disability in particular (see page 276). This fact is the current longer life expectancy of women when compared with men. Here the author argues that Sparrow's arguments and entire…Read more
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599Moral enhancement and freedomBioethics 25 (2): 102-111. 2010.This paper identifies human enhancement as one of the most significant areas of bioethical interest in the last twenty years. It discusses in more detail one area, namely moral enhancement, which is generating significant contemporary interest. The author argues that so far from being susceptible to new forms of high tech manipulation, either genetic, chemical, surgical or neurological, the only reliable methods of moral enhancement, either now or for the foreseeable future, are either those tha…Read more
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399Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better PeoplePrinceton University Press. 2007.In Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes an ethical case for biotechnology that is both forthright and rigorous. Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing--good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. Enhancing Evolution defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer…Read more
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97Extending human lifespan and the precautionary paradoxJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 27 (3). 2002.This paper argues that a precautionary approach to scientific progress of the sort advocated by Walter Glannon with respect to life-extending therapies involves both incoherence and irresolvable paradox. This paper demonstrates the incoherence of the precautionary approach in many circumstances and argues that with respect to life-extending therapies we have at present no persuasive reasons for a moratorium on such research.
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13BiobankingIn Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford handbook of bioethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.This article looks at some of the chance discoveries and elegant ideas that were borne out through the availability of archived tissue samples. It then discusses some of the planned changes to the method and purpose of tissue storage and collection. The changes are in the form of new types of tissue bank, or biobank as they are conceived. These banks are part of a trend to move towards a preventative approach to public health rather than the current costly interventionist model. This approach is…Read more
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |