•  439
    Synthetic biology and the ethics of knowledge
    Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (11): 687-693. 2010.
    Synthetic biologists aim to generate biological organisms according to rational design principles. Their work may have many beneficial applications, but it also raises potentially serious ethical concerns. In this article, we consider what attention the discipline demands from bioethicists. We argue that the most important issue for ethicists to examine is the risk that knowledge from synthetic biology will be misused, for example, in biological terrorism or warfare. To adequately address this c…Read more
  •  40
    Moral bioenhancement, freedom and reasoning
    Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (6): 359-360. 2014.
    This issue includes a number of papers on reproductive ethics, broadly construed. In a recent book, Anja Karnein proposed that embryos created in vitro should be offered up for adoption before being discarded or used in research;1 here Timothy Murphy offers a critical response . Elsewhere, Tak Chan and Stark & Delatycki debate the role of medical professionals in providing parentage determination. Chan argues that doctors are obliged to provide parentage tests when this is requested by parents, …Read more
  •  100
    A concise argument: on the wrongness of killing
    Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (1): 1-2. 2013.
    In this issue, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G. Miller argue that what makes killing wrong, when it is wrong, is not that it ends life, but that it causes complete and irreversible disability—what they call total disability. They hold that the wrongness of killing should be explained by reference to the harm that killing causes to the person who dies. And the only harm of this sort that killing causes, they argue, is the harm of being totally disabled: once one is totally disabled, there…Read more
  •  71
    The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices : extending the medical model
    with Hannah Maslen, Roi Cohen Kadosh, Neil Levy, and Julian Savulescu
    Journal of Law and the Biosciences 1 (1): 68-93. 2014.
    This article presents a model for regulating cognitive enhancement devices. Recently, it has become very easy for individuals to purchase devices which directly modulate brain function. For example, transcranial direct current stimulators are increasingly being produced and marketed online as devices for cognitive enhancement. Despite posing risks in a similar way to medical devices, devices that do not make any therapeutic claims do not have to meet anything more than basic product safety stand…Read more
  •  34
    Substituted judgment, procreative beneficence, and the Ashley treatment
    Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (9): 721-722. 2015.
    It is commonly thought that when a patient is unable to make a treatment decision for herself, patient autonomy should be respected by consulting the views of a patient surrogate, normally either the next-of-kin or a person previously designated by the patient. On one view, the task of this surrogate is to make the treatment decision that the patient would have made if competent. But this so-called ‘substituted judgment standard’ (SJS) has come in for has come in for a good deal of criticism re…Read more
  •  425
    In this issue, Elizabeth Shaw and Gulzaar Barn offer a number of replies to my arguments in ‘Criminal Rehabilitation Through Medical Intervention: Moral Liability and the Right to Bodily Integrity’, Journal of Ethics. In this article I respond to some of their criticisms.
  •  145
    Enhancing Moral Conformity and Enhancing Moral Worth
    Neuroethics 7 (1): 75-91. 2013.
    It is plausible that we have moral reasons to become better at conforming to our moral reasons. However, it is not always clear what means to greater moral conformity we should adopt. John Harris has recently argued that we have reason to adopt traditional, deliberative means in preference to means that alter our affective or conative states directly—that is, without engaging our deliberative faculties. One of Harris’ concerns about direct means is that they would produce only a superficial kind…Read more
  •  933
    The Morality of Moral Neuroenhancement
    In Levy Neil & Clausen Jens (eds.), Handbook on Neuroethics, Springer. 2014.
    This chapter reviews recent philosophical and neuroethical literature on the morality of moral neuroenhancements. It first briefly outlines the main moral arguments that have been made concerning moral status neuroenhancements. These are neurointerventions that would augment the moral status of human persons. It then surveys recent debate regarding moral desirability neuroenhancements: neurointerventions that augment that the moral desirability of human character traits, motives or conduct. This…Read more
  •  900
    Selecting Against Disability: The Liberal Eugenic Challenge and the Argument from Cognitive Diversity
    with Christopher Gyngell
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (2): 319-340. 2018.
    Selection against embryos that are predisposed to develop disabilities is one of the less controversial uses of embryo selection technologies. Many bio-conservatives argue that while the use of ESTs to select for non-disease-related traits, such as height and eye-colour, should be banned, their use to avoid disease and disability should be permitted. Nevertheless, there remains significant opposition, particularly from the disability rights movement, to the use of ESTs to select against disabili…Read more
  •  413
    Self-serving bias and the structure of moral status
    Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (3): 141-142. 2012.
    David DeGrazia tentatively defends what he calls the Interests Model of moral status (see page 135).1 On this model all sentient beings have the same moral status, though some are owed more than others in virtue of having more or stronger interests. The proponent of this model can accept, say, that one should normally save the life of a human in preference to that of a dog. But she denies that we should save the human because he has higher moral status. Instead, the human should be saved because…Read more
  •  415
    Moral enhancement
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (3): 228-245. 2008.
    Opponents of biomedical enhancement often claim that, even if such enhancement would benefit the enhanced, it would harm others. But this objection looks unpersuasive when the enhancement in question is a moral enhancement — an enhancement that will expectably leave the enhanced person with morally better motives than she had previously. In this article I (1) describe one type of psychological alteration that would plausibly qualify as a moral enhancement, (2) argue that we will, in the medium-t…Read more
  •  56
    Biosecurity and the division of cognitive labour
    Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (4): 193-194. 2013.
    The last 12 years have seen historically high levels of interest in biosecurity among life scientists, science policymakers, and academic experts on science and security policy. This interest was triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ‘anthrax letters’ attack of the same year, and two virology papers, published early last decade, that were thought to raise serious biosecurity concerns.1 Ethicists have come relatively late to the game, but, in recent years, a lively debate has developed on …Read more
  •  24
    Ethics committees and the legality of research
    Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (12): 732-736. 2007.
    One role of research ethics committees is to assess the ethics of proposed health research. In some countries, RECs are also instructed to assess its legality. However, in other countries they are explicitly instructed not to do so. In this paper, I defend the claim that public policy should instruct RECs not to assess the legality of proposed research . I initially defend a presumption in favour of the Claim, citing reasons for making research institutions solely responsible for assessing the l…Read more