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32Losing One’s Head or Gaining a New Body?Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (2): 189-209. 2022.A surgical head-transplant technique, HEAVEN, promises to offer significantly improved quality of life for quadriplegics and others whose minds are functional, but whose bodies require artificial support to continue living. HEAVEN putatively actualizes a thought-experiment long debated by philosophers concerning the definition of personhood and criterion of personal identity through time and change. HEAVEN’s advocates presume to preserve the identity of the person whose head is transplanted onto…Read more
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42Enhancing the Imago Dei: Can a Christian Be a Transhumanist?Christian Bioethics 28 (1): 76-93. 2022.Transhumanism is an ideology that embraces the use of various forms of biotechnology to enhance human beings toward the emergence of a “posthuman” kind. In this article, I contrast some of the foundational tenets of Transhumanism with those of Christianity, primarily focusing on their respective anthropologies—that is, their diverse understandings of whether there is an essential nature shared by all human persons and, if so, whether certain features of human nature may be intentionally altered …Read more
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1Enhancement Technologies and ChildrenIn Nico Nortjé & Johan C. Bester (eds.), Pediatric Ethics: Theory and Practice, Springer Verlag. pp. 329-341. 2021.The advent of current and emerging biotechnologies has placed greater levels of control in the hands of parentsParents and prospective parentsParents to shape their children’s physical, cognitiveCognitive, and emotive traits. Ethical questions initially formulated around the selection of embryos or fetuses that have certain desirable versus undesirable traits are now being applied, alongside novel questions, to whether parentsParents have an ethical obligationObligation, or at least a rightRight…Read more
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32Cultivating the Virtue of Acknowledged ResponsibilityProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 82 249-261. 2008.In debates over issues such as abortion, a primary principle on which the Roman Catholic outlook is based is the natural law mandate to respect human life rooted in the Aristotelian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. This principle, however, is limited by focusing on the obligation not to kill innocent humans and thereby neglects another important facet of the Aristotelian-Thomistic ethical viewpoint—namely, obligations that bind human beings in relationships of mutual dependence and responsibility. …Read more
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61The Metaphysics of ResurrectionProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 215-230. 2000.Thomas Aquinas was concerned with developing a metaphysical account of the article of Christian faith which asserts that a human person will experience a bodily resurrection at some point after death. This article of faith is prima facie in line with Aquinas’ Aristotelian assertions that a human soul is incorruptible per se and that it is in its natural state only when it is united to a material body of which it is the informing principle. But how is personal identity maintained between the pr…Read more
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14Review of Not Even a Sparrow Falls: The Philosophy of Stephen R. L. Clark by Daniel A. Dombrowski (review)Review of Metaphysics 55 (1): 131-131. 2001.Stephen R. L. Clark has authored twelve books covering three philosophical themes: religion, duties toward animals, and politics—“Unfortunately, however, those familiar with one realm of his work, tend not to be familiar with what he has done in other areas”. Even those who may be familiar with the whole of Clark’s corpus may find it difficult to discern a coherent philosophical message among these disparate themes. Dombrowski seeks to present a comprehensive overview of Clark’s thought, and to …Read more
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13Review of Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action by Stephen L. Brock (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75 (4): 625-628. 2001.
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24The Metaphysics of ResurrectionProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 215-230. 2000.Thomas Aquinas was concerned with developing a metaphysical account of the article of Christian faith which asserts that a human person will experience a bodily resurrection at some point after death. This article of faith is prima facie in line with Aquinas’ Aristotelian assertions that a human soul is incorruptible per se and that it is in its natural state only when it is united to a material body of which it is the informing principle. But how is personal identity maintained between the pr…Read more
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15What Makes Conscientious Refusals Concerning Abortion DifferentAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (8): 62-64. 2021.Fritz argues that there is an “unjustified asymmetry” in legislation that allows physicians and health care institutions to refuse to provide elective abortions and other morally contested l...
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31Metaphysics, Reason, and Religion in Secular Clinical EthicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (6): 17-18. 2021.I support Abram Brummett’s contention that there is a need for secular clinical ethics to acknowledge that various positions typically advocated for by ethicists, concerning bedside decision-making and broader policy-making, rely upon metaphysical commitments that are not often explicit. I further note that calls for “neutrality” in debates concerning conscientious refusals to provide legal health care services—such as elective abortion or medical aid-in-dying—may exhibit biases against specific…Read more
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26When First We Practice to DeceiveAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (5): 15-17. 2021.We argue against Christopher Meyers’s call for clinical ethicists to participate in deceiving patients, surrogate decision-makers, or family members. While we acknowledge that some forms of deception may be ethically appropriate in highly circumscribed situations, the type of case Meyers describes as involving justifiable deception differs in at least two important ways. First, Meyers fails to distinguish acts of deception based on the critical feature of who is being deceived—patient, surrogate…Read more
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31Actual Human Persons Are Sexed, Unified BeingsEthics and Medics 42 (10): 1-3. 2017.Recently, Edward Furton commented on an article that we published in Health Care Ethics USA concerning the philosophical and theological anthropology informing the discussion of appropriate care for individuals with gender dysphoria and intersex conditions. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify the points we made in that article, particularly the metaphysical mechanics underlying our contention that, as part of a unified human person, the human rational soul is sexed. We hope this more in-dep…Read more
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23Visions of the Common Good: Engelhardt’s Engagement with Catholic Social TeachingChristian Bioethics 27 (1): 30-49. 2021.In this paper, I confront Engelhardt’s views—conceptualized as a cohesive moral perspective grounded in a combination of secular and Christian moral requirements—on two fronts. First, I critique his view of the moral demands of justice within a secular pluralistic society by showing how Thomistic natural law theory provides a content-full theory of human flourishing that is rationally articulable and defensible as a canonical vision of the good, even if it is not universally recognized as such. …Read more
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29Surviving Corruptionist Arguments: Response to NevittQuaestiones Disputatae 10 (2): 145-160. 2020.Turner Nevitt’s elucidates and critically engages with what he describes as the “deeper and more problematic disagreements between survivalists and corruptionists about how to understand some of the most basic principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics,” his goal being to “advance some more systematic reasons for thinking that corruptionists are right and survivalists are wrong—both about how to understand the basic principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics, and about how to apply them to the question about …Read more
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12Addressing Vulnerability Due to Cognitive Impairment through Catholic Social TeachingThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 20 (2): 243-250. 2020.Meeting the needs of individuals who experience vulnerability due to cognitive impairment presents significant challenges to caregivers. Primary caregiver responsibility is often relegated to professionals in hospitals or long-term care facilities, while proxy decision-making responsibility lies with families. The complex relationship among patients, professional caregivers, and families may be further complicated by the relative cognitive capacity of different patients. While some experience di…Read more
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17Purely Faith-Based vs. Rationally-Informed Theological BioethicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (12): 14-16. 2020.Commentary on re-opening dialogue between theological and secular voices in bioethics.
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22Conscience, Compromise, and ComplicityProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 92 161-174. 2018.Debate over whether health care institutions or individual providers should have a legally protected right to conscientiously refuse to offer legal services to patients who request them has grown exponentially due to the increasing legalization of morally contested services. This debate is particularly acute for Catholic health care providers. We elucidate Catholic teaching regarding the nature of conscience and the intrinsic value of being free to act in accord with one’s conscience. We then ou…Read more
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16Ethics as Usual? Unilateral Withdrawal of Treatment in a State of ExceptionAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (7): 210-211. 2020.Do extraordinary crisis situations requiring life-and-death decisions create a “state of exception” in which ordinary social, political, and ethical norms must be altered or suspended altogether? Daniel Sulmasy contends that the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic do not require abandoning or altering ethical values and principles. Rather, “ethics as usual” ought to guide policy formation and clinical decision-making. One critical question raised by the current pandemic, and which stresses…Read more
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50Protecting reasonable conscientious refusals in health careTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (6): 565-581. 2019.Recently, debate over whether health care providers should have a protected right to conscientiously refuse to offer legal health care services—such as abortion, elective sterilization, aid in dying, or treatments for transgender patients—has grown exponentially. I advance a modified compromise view that bases respect for claims of conscientious refusal to provide specific health care services on a publicly defensible rationale. This view requires health care providers who refuse such services t…Read more
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22Conscientious objection in health careTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (6): 483-486. 2019.Introduction to a special issue of _Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics_ on whether health care professionals should have a legally-protected right to conscientiously refuse to provide legal services that are autonomously requested by patients. Outlines the parameters of the current debate in the bioethics literature and orients readers to the articles the special issue comprises.
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23A Bioethical VisionJournal of Catholic Social Thought 16 (2): 279-293. 2019.Pope Francis has not put himself at the forefront of tendentious issues in bioethics, such as abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, cloning, contraception, and euthanasia. Nevertheless, his various addresses and magisterial documents such as Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’ make clear that Pope Francis affirms the Church’s teaching on these issues. He has, though, proffered an additional moral lens through which to view such issues, namely, how they factor into the “culture of waste” th…Read more
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2Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics, and Human EnhancementIn Jason T. Eberl (ed.), Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics, Springer. 2017.I approach the subject of human enhancement—whether by genetic, pharmacological, or technological means—from the perspective of Thomistic/Aristotelian philosophical anthropology, natural law theory, and virtue ethics. Far from advocating a restricted or monolithic conception of “human nature” from this perspective, I outline a set of broadly-construed, fundamental features of the nature of human persons that coheres with a variety of historical and contemporary philosophical viewpoints. These fe…Read more
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IntroductionIn Jason T. Eberl (ed.), Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics, Springer. 2017.
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42Can Prudence Be Enhanced?Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (5): 506-526. 2018.Some bioethicists have argued that moral bioenhancement, complementing traditional means of enhancing individuals’ moral dispositions, is essential if we are to survive as a species. Traditional means of moral enhancement have historically included civil legislation, socially recognized moral exemplars, religious teachings and disciplines, and familial upbringing. I explore the necessity and feasibility of pursuing methods of moral bioenhancement as a complement to such traditional means, ground…Read more
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45Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics (edited book)Springer. 2017.This volume comprises various viewpoints representing a Catholic perspective on contemporary practices in medicine and biomedical research. The Roman Catholic Church has had a significant impact upon the formulation and application of moral values and principles to a wide range of controversial issues in bioethics. Catholic leaders, theologians, and bioethicists have elucidated and marshaled arguments to support the Church’s definitive positions on several bioethical issues, such as abortion, eu…Read more
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60The beginning of personhood: A thomistic biological analysisBioethics 14 (2). 2000.‘When did I, a human person, begin to exist?’ In developing an answer to this question, I utilize a Thomistic framework, which holds that the human person is a composite of a biological organism and an intellective soul. Eric Olson and Norman Ford both argue that the beginning of an individual human biological organism occurs at the moment when implantation of the zygote in the uterus occurs and the ‘primitive streak’ begins to form. Prior to this point, there does not exist an individual human …Read more
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37Dombrowski, Daniel A. Not Even a Sparrow Falls: The Philosophy of Stephen R. L. Clark (review)Review of Metaphysics 55 (1): 131-132. 2001.
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43Whose Head, Which Body?American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 8 (4): 221-223. 2017.Response to human head transplant proposal and pertinent personal identity questions.