-
1065Why and How to Compensate Living Organ Donors: Ethical Implications of the New Australian SchemeBioethics 29 (4): 283-290. 2014.The Australian Federal Government has announced a two-year trial scheme to compensate living organ donors. The compensation will be the equivalent of six weeks paid leave at the rate of the national minimum wage. In this article I analyse the ethics of compensating living organ donors taking the Australian scheme as a reference point. Considering the long waiting lists for organ transplantations and the related costs on the healthcare system of treating patients waiting for an organ, the 1.3 mil…Read more
-
730EuthanasiaInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 27 (1): 35-46. 2013.The current impasse in the old debate about the morality of euthanasia is mainly due to the fact that the actual source of conflict has not been properly identified—or so I shall argue. I will first analyse the two different issues involved in the debate, which are sometimes confusingly mixed up, namely: (a) what is euthanasia?, and (b) why is euthanasia morally problematic? Considering documents by physicians, philosophers and the Roman Catholic Church, I will show that (a) ‘euthanasia’ is defi…Read more
-
954Don't mind the gap: intuitions, emotions, and reasons in the enhancement debateHastings Center Report 45 (5): 39-47. 2015.Reliance on intuitive and emotive responses is widespread across many areas of bioethics, and the current debate on biotechnological human enhancement is particularly interesting in this respect. A strand of “bioconservatives” that has explicitly drawn connections to the modern conservative tradition, dating back to Edmund Burke, appeals explicitly to the alleged wisdom of our intuitions and emotions to ground opposition to some biotechnologies or their uses. So-called bioliberals, those who in …Read more
-
16Teaching and Learning Guide for: the Ethics of Human EnhancementPhilosophy Compass 10 (6): 424-426. 2015.
-
1072After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (5): 261-263. 2013.Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the…Read more
-
106What in the World Is Moral Disgust?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (2): 227-242. 2016.I argue that much philosophical discussion of moral disgust suffers from two ambiguities: first, it is not clear whether arguments for the moral authority of disgust apply to disgust as a consequence of moral evaluations or instead to disgust as a moralizing emotion; second, it is not clear whether the word ‘moral’ is used in a normative or in a descriptive sense. This lack of clarity generates confusion between ‘fittingness’ and ‘appropriateness’ of disgust. I formulate three conditions that ar…Read more
-
28Harms to Vendors: We Should Discourage, Not Prohibit Organ SalesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 14 (10): 25-27. 2014.No abstract
-
44Normality, therapy, and enhancement - What should bioconservatives say about the medicalization of love?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24 (3): 347-354. 2015.According to human enhancement advocates, it is morally permissible (and sometimes obligatory) to use biomedical means to modulate or select certain biological traits in order to increase people’s welfare, even when there is no pathology to be treated or prevented. Some authors have recently proposed to extend the use of biomedical means to modulate lust, attraction, and attachment. I focus on some conceptual implications of this proposal, particularly with regard to bioconservatives’ understand…Read more
-
364The Ethics of Human EnhancementPhilosophy Compass 10 (4): 233-243. 2015.Ethical debate surrounding human enhancement, especially by biotechnological means, has burgeoned since the turn of the century. Issues discussed include whether specific types of enhancement are permissible or even obligatory, whether they are likely to produce a net good for individuals and for society, and whether there is something intrinsically wrong in playing God with human nature. We characterize the main camps on the issue, identifying three main positions: permissive, restrictive and c…Read more
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |