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27The Accidental BioethicistCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 11 (4): 359-368. 2002.Albert Jonsen in The Birth of Bioethics notes that his career in bioethics began with a phone call to him from soon-to-be colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. Bioethics didn't begin with a bang but as an accident in the root sense—something that happened, not by necessity, but rather by chance. Indeed, the opening chapters of Jonsen's book chronicle a series of accidents that helped to create the field of bioethics. Principal among these was the fact that p…Read more
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27Responsibly counselling women about the clinical management of pregnancies complicated by severe fetal anomaliesJournal of Medical Ethics 38 (7): 397-398. 2012.Heuser, Eller and Byrne provide important descriptive ethics data about how physicians counsel women on the clinical management of pregnancies complicated by severe fetal anomalies. The authors present an account of what such counselling ought to be based on, the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient and the professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics. When there is certainty about the diagnosis and either a very high probability of either death as the outcome of the anomaly or sur…Read more
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26A transcultural, preventive ethics approach to critical-care medicine: Restoring the critical care physician's power and authorityJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 23 (6). 1998.This article comments on the treatment of critical-care ethics in four preceding articles about critical-care medicine and its ethical challenges in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the Philippines. These articles show how cultural values can be in both synchrony and conflict in generating these ethical challenges and in the constraints that they place on the response of critical-care ethics to them. To prevent ethical conflict in critical care the author proposes a two-step approach to the…Read more
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26Ethical considerations in the treatment of chronic psychosis in a periviable pregnancyClinical Ethics 18 (1): 113-119. 2023.Background: Treatment of psychotic disorders in pregnancy is often ethically and clinically challenging, especially when psychotic symptoms impair decision-making capacity. There are several competing ethical obligations to consider: the ethical obligation to maternal autonomy, the maternal and fetal beneficence-based obligations to treat peripartum psychosis, and the fetal beneficence-based obligation to minimize teratogenic exposure. Objective: This article outlines an ethical framework for cl…Read more
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26The nature and limits of the physician's professional responsibilities: Surgical ethics, matters of conscience, and managed careJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (1). 2004.The nature and limits of the physician's professional responsibilities constitute core topics in clinical ethics. These responsibilities originate in the physician's professional role, which was first examined in the modern English-language literature of medical ethics by two eighteenth-century British physician-ethicists, John Gregory and Thomas Percival. The papers in this annual clinical ethics number of the Journal explore the physician's professional responsibilities in the areas of surgica…Read more
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26The Professional Responsibility Model of Respect for Autonomy in Decision Making About Cesarean DeliveryAmerican Journal of Bioethics 12 (7). 2012.The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 1-2, July 2012
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25Deliberative Clinical Ethics: Getting Back to Basics in the Work of Clinical Ethics and Clinical EthicistsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (1): 1-7. 2014.The six papers in the 2014 clinical ethics number of the Journal get us back to the basics in the work of clinical ethics and clinical ethicists: getting clear about concepts that should be used in achieving deliberative clinical ethics. The papers explore the concepts of the best interests of the patient, health and disease understood in their proper relationship to autonomy in our species, the therapeutic obligation, and the therapeutic imperative. The final paper appraises the systematic revi…Read more
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25Professional Responsibility to and for Patients and the Ethics of Health PolicyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 13 (8): 16-18. 2013.Nancy Jecker (2013) mounts a sustained and formidable critique of Norman Daniels's prudential lifespan account (PLA) as a reliable basis for justice between age groups in the responsible allocation...
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25Medicine as a Profession: A Hypothetical Imperative in Clinical EthicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 40 (1): 1-7. 2015.
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25Tracking the Variability of Authority and Power in the Physician-Patient RelationshipJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (1): 1-5. 2009.
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24Laying medicine open: Understanding major turning points in the history of medical ethicsKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9 (1): 7-23. 1999.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Laying Medicine Open: Understanding Major Turning Points in the History of Medical EthicsLaurence B. McCullough (bio)AbstractAt different times during its history medicine has been laid open to accountability for its scientific and moral quality. This phenomenon of laying medicine open has sometimes resulted in major turning points in the history medical ethics. In this paper, I examine two examples of when the laying open of medicin…Read more
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24Going against the grain: In praise of contrarian clinical ethicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (1). 2003.Contrarian ways of thinking are generally good for the intellectual life and clinical ethics is no exception. This essay introduces the papers in the 2003 issue on clinical ethics of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , each of which goes against the grain in interesting and important ways. Considerations of identity predominate, in discussions of cloning, separation of conjoined twins, and the coming into existence of human beings. Whether viewing organ donation as admirable sacrifice is an…Read more
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24In Response to COVID-19 Pandemic Physicians Already Know What to DoAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (7): 9-12. 2020.Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 9-12.
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23Ethics in Obstetrics and GynecologyHastings Center Report 26 (2): 45. 1996.Book reviewed in this article: Ethics in Obstetrics and Gynecology. By Laurence B. McCullough and Frank A. Chervenak.
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23Finely crafted distinctions and the art of clinical ethicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 26 (1). 2001.Making finely crafted distinctions and deploying them in intellectually rigorous and clinically applicable judgments define, to a considerable degree, the art of clinical ethics. The papers in this Clinical Ethics number of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy demonstrate the art of clinical ethics in their consideration of respect for autonomy vs. respect for persons, the role of risk in triggering assessment of decisional capacity vs. the role of risk in the concept and assessment of decisio…Read more
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23Power, integrity, and trust in the managed practice of medicine: Lessons from the history of medical ethicsSocial Philosophy and Policy 19 (2): 180-211. 2002.Bioethics as a field began some years before it was finally named in the early 1970s. In many ways, bioethics originated in response to urgent matters of the moment, including the controversy over disconnecting Karen Quinlan's respirator, the egregious paternalism of Donald Cowart's doctors in the famous “Dax” case, the abuse of research subjects in the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the need to devise an intellectual framework for the development of federal regulations to protect human …Read more
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23Pediatric Cancer Genetics Research and an Evolving Preventive Ethics Approach for Return of Results after Death of the SubjectJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 43 (3): 529-537. 2015.The return of genetic research results after death in the pediatric setting comes with unique complexities. Researchers must determine which results and through which processes results are returned. This paper discusses the experience over 15 years in pediatric cancer genetics research of returning research results after the death of a child and proposes a preventive ethics approach to protocol development in order to improve the quality of return of results in pediatric genomic settings
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23Prescribing viagra in an ethically responsible fashionJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (6). 2004.Sildenafil citrate (Viagra) and other newly released pharmaceuticals that assist erectile dysfunction may be one of the most important categories of drugs released in the past decade. Sildenafil is distinctive because it creates a new therapeutic relationship not only between patient and physician, but also with sexual partner(s). Physicians must first evaluate the patient comprehensively, addressing not only erectile function and sexual performance, but overall physical and mental health. Since…Read more
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23Justified Limits on Refusing InterventionHastings Center Report 21 (2): 12-18. 1991.Physicians may justifiably limit patients' refusals of medical interventions when the refusal is based on a negative right to noninterference coupled with a request for an unreasonable alternative.
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22Rethinking the Conceptual and Empirical Foundations of Clinical EthicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 33 (1): 1-5. 2008.The five papers in the 2008 “Clinical Ethics” number of the journal address the conceptual and empirical foundations of clinical ethics. Three articles take up the concept of professionalism in medicine, exploring its possibilities and implications. The fourth article provides a distinctive, phenomenological account of the “placebo effect,” a vexing topic of surprising durability in the clinical setting. The final article, a systematic review of the qualitative literature on bedside rationing of…Read more
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22Clinical Management of Brain Death during PregnancyJournal of Clinical Ethics 4 (4): 349-350. 1993.
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20Methodological concerns in bioethicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 11 (1): 17-37. 1986.Methodological concerns are moving to the top of the bioethics agenda for the next decade. This paper examines some of those concerns: (1) medical ethics as a subset of bioethics versus medical ethics as a subset of professional ethics; (2) a more in-depth examination of some methodological problems in treating medical ethics as professional ethics; (3) the senses in which bioethics constitutes an inquiry into secular undertakings in a pluralistic society; (4) ‘federal ethics’, the emergence to …Read more
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20Beneficence and Wellbeing: A Critical AppraisalAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (3): 65-68. 2020.Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 65-68.
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20Holding the present and future accountable to the past: History and the maturation of clinical ethics as a field of the humanitiesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 25 (1). 2000.Clinical ethics, like bioethics more generally, until recently has tended to focus on the present and future, with little attention to the history of moral thought about health care that preceded bioethics. As a consequence, clinical ethics and bioethics lack maturity as fields of the humanities. The papers in this year's clinical ethics issue of the Journal put contemporary clinical ethics in critical dialogue with the past, making the former accountable to the latter. The six papers in this is…Read more
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20The abstract nature of anatomic construction and its advantages: Scientific medicine and human dignityAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (4). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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19Professionally Responsible Clinical Ethical Judgments of FutilityAmerican Journal of Bioethics 15 (8): 54-56. 2015.
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19Case Studies in Bioethics: Is a Crisis of Conscience a Medical Problem?Hastings Center Report 6 (3): 26. 1976.
Houston, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |