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12Thoughtful doctors: Not immune, but resistant to danger: Response to ‘Medicine in Danger?’ by Gerben Meyer and Jacco P.H. Verburgt, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 2007Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (4): 479-480. 2007.
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Norberto Bobbio, In Praise of Meekness: Essays on Ethics and Politics (review)Philosophy in Review 21 162-164. 2001.
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20Body art and medical needJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (1): 13-16. 2006.A company called Biojewellery has proposed to take a sample of bone tissue from a couple and to grow this sample into wedding rings. One of the ethical problems that such a proposal faces is that it implies surgery without medical need. To this end, only couples with a prior need for surgery are being considered. This paper examines the question of whether such a stipulation is necessary. It is suggested that, though medical need and the provision of health and wellbeing is overwhelmingly the wa…Read more
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21The case for a duty to research: not yet provenJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (5): 329-330. 2014.In this commentary on ‘Why participating in scientific research is a moral duty’, I take issue with a number of Stjernschantz Forsberg et al's claims. Though abiding by the terms of a contract might be obligatory, this won't show that those terms themselves indicate a duty—even allowing that there's a contract to begin with. Meanwhile, though we might have reasons to participate, not all reasons are moral reasons, and the paper does not establish that the reasons here are moral in character
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76Is there a duty to remain in ignorance?Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 32 (2): 101-115. 2011.Questions about information inform many debates in bioethics. One of the reasons for this is that at least some level of information is taken by many to be a prerequisite of valid consent. For others, autonomy in the widest sense presupposes information, because one cannot be in control of one’s life without at least some insight into what it could turn out to contain. Yet not everyone shares this view, and there is a debate about whether or not there is a right to remain in ignorance of one’s m…Read more
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37Defending the duty to research?Bioethics 25 (1): 21-26. 2010.In 2005, John Harris published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics in which he claimed that there was a duty to support scientific research. With Sarah Chan, he defended his claims against criticisms in this journal in 2008. In this paper I examine the defence, and claim that it is not powerful. Although he has established a slightly stronger position, it is not clear that the defence is sufficiently strong to show that there is a duty to support scientific research. Important questions abo…Read more
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98The 2012 report of the Commission on Assisted Dying: providing assistance in the debate that will not die?Clinical Ethics 7 (1): 28-32. 2012.The Commission on Assisted Dying was an unofficial body set up to investigate the legal position on assisted dying in the UK in the autumn of 2010. Its report was published to some degree of media attention in the first week of January 2012; its most headline-grabbing suggestion provided a framework setting out how British law might be reformed to allow assisted dying for the terminally ill. In this paper, I analyse some of the key points of the report and argue that it adds little that could se…Read more
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37On Heidegger, medicine, and the modernity of modern medical technologyMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (2): 185-195. 2006.This paper examines medicine’s use of technology in a manner from a standpoint inspired by Heidegger’s thinking on technology. In the first part of the paper, I shall suggest an interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking on the topic, and attempt to show why he associates modern technology with danger. However, I shall also claim that there is little evidence that medicine’s appropriation of modern technology is dangerous in Heidegger’s sense, although there is no prima facie reason why it mightn’t …Read more
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191Killing people: what Kant could have said about suicide and euthanasia but did notJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (10): 571-574. 2006.An agent who takes his own life acts in violation of the moral law, according to Kant; suicide, and, by extension, assisted suicide are therefore wrong. By a similar argument, and with a few important exceptions, killing is wrong; implicitly, then, voluntary euthanasia is also wrong. Kant's conclusions are uncompelling and his argument in these matters is undermined on considering other areas of his thought. Kant, in forbidding suicide and euthanasia, is conflating respect for persons and respec…Read more
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87The Concept of Autonomy and Its Role in Kantian EthicsCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (2): 166-176. 2012.Among bioethicists, and perhaps ethicists generally, the idea that we are obliged to respect autonomy is something of a shibboleth. Appeals to autonomy are commonly put to work to support legal and moral claims about the importance of consent, but they also feed a wider discourse in which the patient’s desires are granted a very high importance and medical paternalism is regarded as almost self-evidently indefensible
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University of ManchesterRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |