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24Preventing Ultimate Harm as the Justification for Biomoral ModificationBioethics 29 (5): 369-377. 2014.Most advocates of biogenetic modification hope to amplify existing human traits in humans in order to increase the value of such traits as intelligence and resistance to disease. These advocates defend such enhancements as beneficial for the affected parties. By contrast, some commentators recommend certain biogenetic modifications to serve social goals. As Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu see things, human moral psychology is deficient relative to the most important risks facing humanity as …Read more
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23Acts and omissions doctrine and abortion: reply to Dr. ToonJournal of Medical Ethics 12 (1): 53-54. 1986.
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23When It Comes to HIV Infection, Some Are More Equal Than OthersHastings Center Report 39 (5): 49-49. 2012.
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22Medical Ethics in Antiquity (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 25 (4): 434-435. 1985.
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21Genetic modifications for personal enhancement: a defenceJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (4): 242-245. 2014.Bioconservative commentators argue that parents should not take steps to modify the genetics of their children even in the name of enhancement because of the damage they predict for values, identities and relationships. Some commentators have even said that adults should not modify themselves through genetic interventions. One commentator worries that genetic modifications chosen by adults for themselves will undermine moral agency, lead to less valuable experiences and fracture people's sense o…Read more
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20Justice in Residency Placement: Is the Match System an Offense to the Values of Medicine?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 12 (1): 66-77. 2003.Medical residency—specialty training after the completion of medical school—is an essential component of medical education and is required in order to be a licensed, independent medical practitioner in most jurisdictions. As things currently stand in the United States, the match between medical school graduates and residency programs is governed by a match between rank-order lists prepared by candidates and residencies alike. An applicant picks a number of residency programs and ranks them accor…Read more
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20First Come, First Served in the Intensive Care Unit: Always?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 27 (1): 52-61. 2018.
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20Response to "May a Woman Clone Herself" by Jean ChambersCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 11 (1): 83-86. 2002.For many commentators in bioethics and the law, safety is the fulcrum for evaluating the ethics of human reproductive cloning. Carson Strong has argued that if cloning were effective and safe it should be available to married couples who have tried to have children through various assisted reproductive technologies but been unable to do so. On his view, cloning should be available only as reproductive last resort. I challenged that limited use by trying to show that the arguments Strong adduces …Read more
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19Sperm Harvesting and Postmortem FatherhoodBioethics 9 (4): 380-398. 1995.The motives and consequences of harvesting sperm from brain dead males for the purpose of effecting post mortem fatherhood are examined. I argue that sperm harvesting and post mortem fatherhood raise no harms of a magnitude that would justify forbidding the practice outright. Dead men are not obviously harmed by the practice; children need not be harmed by this kind of birth; and the practice enlarges rather than diminishes the reproductive choices of surviving partners. Certain ethical and lega…Read more
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19Sperm harvesting and postmortem fatherhoodBioethics 9 (4). 1995.The motives and consequences of harvesting sperm from brain dead males for the purpose of effecting post mortem fatherhood are examined. I argue that sperm harvesting and post mortem fatherhood raise no harms of a magnitude that would justify forbidding the practice outright. Dead men are not obviously harmed by the practice; children need not be harmed by this kind of birth; and the practice enlarges rather than diminishes the reproductive choices of surviving partners. Certain ethical and lega…Read more
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18Extending Health Insurance for Body Modifications for Gender TransitionsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (12): 19-21. 2018.
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17Sex ReduxAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (7). 2010.What sex is permissible, if any, in non-clinical research relationships? In reply to my call for a code of conduct for non-clinical research, some commentators have called for more training in such matters, but this kind of training will not go very far without some kind of governing standards yet to be determined. It is not enough to assume that unarticulated opinions will suffice. Neither will approaches that involve even greater scrutiny over research, as if to divide research into two catego…Read more
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16Biogenetic ties and parent‐child relationships: The misplaced critiqueBioethics 33 (9): 1029-1034. 2019.According to an almost axiomatic standard in bioethics, moral commitment should ground parents’ relationship with their children, rather than biogenetic relatedness. This standard has been used lately to express skepticism about extending existing assisted reproductive treatments (ARTs) to same‐sex couples and to research into novel fertility interventions for those couples, but this skepticism is misplaced on several grounds. As a matter of access and equity, same‐sex couples seem presumptively…Read more
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16Bioethics, children, and the environmentBioethics 32 (1): 3-9. 2017.Queer perspectives have typically emerged from sexual minorities as a way of repudiating flawed views of sexuality, mischaracterized relationships, and objectionable social treatment of people with atypical sexuality or gender expression. In this vein, one commentator offers a queer critique of the conceptualization of children in regard to their value for people's identities and relationships. According to this account, children are morally problematic given the values that make them desirable,…Read more
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16The meaning of synthetic gametes for gay and lesbian people and bioethics tooJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (11): 762-765. 2014.
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14Case Studies in Biomedical Research EthicsMIT Press. 2004.An overview of the key debates in biomedical researchethics, presented through a wide-ranging selection of casestudies.
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14Gaming the transplant systemAmerican Journal of Bioethics 4 (1): 28. 2004.This Article does not have an abstract
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14Surrogate Health Care Decisions and Same‐Sex RelationshipsHastings Center Report 41 (3): 24-27. 2011.
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14Supervaluation of pregnant women is reductive of womenJournal of Medical Ethics 50 (1): 29-30. 2023.Robinson argues that by certain threshold criteria, pregnant women qualify for a higher moral status by reason of their pregnancies. While her intention is to make this a status upgrade for women, we worry that it may result in a status downgrade for women as a class, by presupposing and reinforcing women’s value in relation to their reproductive labour. Historically, central to feminist analysis is resistance to reductive accounts of women in relation to their reproductivity. For example, de Be…Read more
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14Perspective: The Ethics of Multiple Vital Organ TransplantsHastings Center Report 32 (2): 47. 2002.
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13Ethical justifications for moratoriums on vanguard scientific researchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 5 (6). 2005.This Article does not have an abstract
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12Justice and the Human Genome Project (edited book)University of California Press. 1994.The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affec…Read more
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12No Time for an AIDS BacklashHastings Center Report 21 (2): 7-11. 1991.In the face of growing public sentiment that AIDS is getting more than its share of media attention, resources, and social indulgence, we do well to remember that HIV remains a highly lethal, communicable virus.
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11Theorizing Religion in Its Meanings for BioethicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (12): 47-49. 2020.H. Tristram Engelhardt has said that “in the 1960s and 1970s... religious bioethics fell into the shadow of established secular bioethics. I don't think that religious bioethics has ever really...
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Value Theory |