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769Age and Death: A Defence of GradualismUtilitas 27 (3): 279-297. 2015.According to standard comparativist views, death is bad insofar as it deprives someone of goods she would otherwise have had. In The Ethics of Killing, Jeff McMahan argues against such views and in favor of a gradualist account according to which how bad it is to die is a function of both the future goods of which the decedent is deprived and her cognitive development when she dies. Comparativists and gradualists therefore disagree about how bad it is to die at different ages. In this paper I ex…Read more
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625Are Indirect Benefits Relevant to Health Care Allocation Decisions?Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (5): 540-557. 2016.When allocating scarce healthcare resources, the expected benefits of alternative allocations matter. But, there are different kinds of benefits. Some are direct benefits to the recipient of the resource such as the health improvements of receiving treatment. Others are indirect benefits to third parties such as the economic gains from having a healthier workforce. This article considers whether only the direct benefits of alternative healthcare resource allocations are relevant to allocation de…Read more
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389The Ethics of Transactions in an Unjust WorldIn K. Zeiler & E. Malmqvist (eds.), Bioethics and Border Crossing: Perspectives on Giving, Selling and Sharing Bodies, Routledge: Oxon. pp. 185-196. 2016.In this paper I examine the ethics of benefit-sharing agreements between victims and beneficiaries of injustice in the context of trans-national bodily giving, selling, and sharing. Some obligations are the same no matter who the parties to a transaction are. Prohibitions on threats, fraud and harm apply universally and their application to transactions in unjust contexts is not disputed. I identify three sources of obligations that are affected by unjust background conditions. First, power disp…Read more
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337Introduction: Global Justice and BioethicsIn J. Millum & E. J. Emanuel (eds.), Global Justice and Bioethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-14. 2012.This introduction begins with two simple case studies that reveal a background of socio-economic complexities that hinder development. The availability of healthcare and the issue of cross-border justice are the key points to be addressed in this study. The chapters consider philosophy, economics, and bioethics in order to provide a global perspective. Two theories come into play in this book—the ideal and non-ideal—which offer insight on why and how things are done.
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120Sharing the benefits of research fairly: two approachesJournal of Medical Ethics 38 (4): 219-223. 2012.Research projects sponsored by rich countries or companies and carried out in developing countries are often described as exploitative. One important debate about the prevention of exploitation in research centres on whether and how clinical research in developing countries should be responsive to local health problems. This paper analyses the responsiveness debate and draws out more general lessons for how policy makers can prevent exploitation in various research contexts. There are two indepe…Read more
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122Consent Under Pressure: The Puzzle of Third Party CoercionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (1): 113-127. 2014.Coercion by the recipient of consent renders that consent invalid. But what about when the coercive force comes from a third party, not from the person to whom consent would be proffered? In this paper I analyze how threats from a third party affect consent. I argue that, as with other cases of coercion, we should distinguish threats that render consent invalid from threats whose force is too weak to invalidate consent and threats that are legitimate. Illegitimate controlling third party threats…Read more
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342The Global Forum for Bioethics in Research: Past present and futureSouth African Journal of Bioethics and Law 7 (1): 5. 2014.The Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR) served as a global platform for debate on ethical issues in international health research between 1999 and 2008, bringing together research ethics experts, researchers, policy makers and community members from developing and developed countries. In total, nine GFBR meetings were held on six continents. Work is currently underway to revive the GFBR. This paper describes the purpose and history of the GFBR and presents key elements for its reinstate…Read more
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971The Social Value of Health Research and the Worst OffBioethics 31 (2): 105-115. 2017.In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and in evaluating the eth…Read more
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11Why Adopt a Maximin Theory of Exploitation?American Journal of Bioethics 10 (6): 38-39. 2010.Angela Ballantyne (2010) argues that international research is exploitative when the transactions between researchers and participants who lack basic goods do not provide participants with the maxi...
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Ethical and Human Rights Concerns in Global HealthIn R. Skolnik (ed.), Global Health 101 2ed., Jones & Bartlett. pp. 71-86. 2012.
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172Natural goodness and natural evilRatio 19 (2). 2006.In Natural Goodness Philippa Foot gives an analysis of the concepts we use to describe the characteristics of living things. She suggests that we describe them in functional terms, and this allows us to judge organisms as good or defective depending on how well they perform their distinctive functions. Foot claims that we can judge intentional human actions in the same way: the virtues contribute in obvious ways to good human functioning, and this provides us with grounds for making moral judgem…Read more
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76A Biological Alternative to Moral ExplanationsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 46 (3): 385-407. 2008.Some moral realists claim that moral facts are a species of natural fact, amenable to scientific investigation. They argue that these moral facts are needed in the best explanations of certain phenomena and that this is evidence that they are real. In this paper I present part of a biological account of the function of morality. The account allows the identification of a plausible natural kind that could play the explanatory role that a moral kind would play in naturalist realist theories. It is…Read more
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109The tortured patient: a medical dilemmaHastings Center Report 41 (3): 38-47. 2011.Torture is unethical and usually counterproductive. It is prohibited by international and national laws. Yet it persists: according to Amnesty International, torture is widespread in more than a third of countries. Physicians and other medical professionals are frequently asked to assist with torture. Medical complicity in torture, like other forms of involvement, is prohibited both by international law and by codes of professional ethics. However, when the victims of torture are also patients i…Read more
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534The Ethics of Placebo-controlled Trials: Methodological JustificationsContemporary Clinical Trials 36 (2): 510-14. 2013.The use of placebo controls in clinical trials remains controversial. Ethical analysis and international ethical guidance permit the use of placebo controls in randomized trials when scientifically indicated in four cases: (1) when there is no proven effective treatment for the condition under study; (2) when withholding treatment poses negligible risks to participants; (3) when there are compelling methodological reasons for using placebo, and withholding treatment does not pose a risk of serio…Read more
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636Introduction: International Research Ethics EducationJournal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics: An International Journal 9 (2): 1-2. 2014.NIH's fogarty international Center has provided grants for the development of training programs in international research ethics for low- and middle-income (LMIC) professionals since 2000. Drawing on 12 years of research ethics training experience, a group of Fogarty grantees, trainees, and other ethics experts sought to map the current capacity and need for research ethics in LMICs, analyze the lessons learned about teaching bioethics, and chart a way forward for research ethics training in a r…Read more
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709The Foundation of the Child's Right to an Open FutureJournal of Social Philosophy 45 (4): 522-538. 2014.It is common to cite the child’s “right to an open future” in discussions of how parents and the state may and should treat children. However, the right to an open future can only be useful in these discussions if we have some method for deriving the content of the right. In the paper in which he introduces the right to an open future Joel Feinberg seems to provide such a method: he derives the right from the content of adult autonomy rights. In this paper I argue that his argument fails. If it …Read more
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390Comparing the Understanding of Subjects receiving a Candidate Malaria Vaccine in the United States and MaliAmerican Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 83 (4): 868-72. 2010.Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participant…Read more
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257How do we acquire parental responsibilities?Social Theory and Practice 34 (1): 71-93. 2008.It is commonly believed that parents have special duties toward their children—weightier duties than they owe other children. How these duties are acquired, however, is not well understood. This is problematic when claims about parental responsibilities are challenged; for example, when people deny that they are morally responsible for their biological offspring. In this paper I present a theory of the origins of parental responsibilities that can resolve such cases of disputed moral parenthood.
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100Manipulation in the Enrollment of Research ParticipantsHastings Center Report 43 (2): 38-47. 2013.In this paper we analyze the non-coercive ways in which researchers can use knowledge about the decision-making tendencies of potential participants in order to motivate them to consent to research enrollment. We identify which modes of influence preserve respect for participants’ autonomy and which disrespect autonomy, and apply the umbrella term of manipulation to the latter. We then apply our analysis to a series of cases adapted from the experiences of clinical researchers in order to develo…Read more
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10Disclosure and Consent to Medical Research ParticipationJournal of Moral Philosophy 11 (4). 2014.Most regulations and guidelines require that potential research participants be told a great deal of information during the consent process. Many of these documents, and most of the scholars who consider the consent process, assume that all this information must be disclosed because it must all be understood. However, a wide range of studies surveying apparently competent participants in clinical trials around the world show that many do not understand key aspects of what they have been told. Th…Read more
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365Streamlining Ethical ReviewAnnals of Internal Medicine 153 (10): 655-72. 2010.The U.S. review system for human subjects research has been widely criticized in recent years for requirements that delay research without improving human subjects protections. Any major reformulation of regulations may take some time to implement. In the meantime, current regulations often allow for streamlined ethics review without jeopardizing—and possibly improving—protections for research participants. We discuss underutilized options, including research that need not be classified as “hum…Read more
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2102Global Bioethics and Political TheoryIn J. Millum & E. J. Millum (eds.), Global Justice and bioethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 17-42. 2012.Most bioethicists who address questions to which global justice matters have not considered the significance of the disputes over the correct theory of global justice. Consequently, the significance of the differences between theories of global justice for bioethics has been obscured. In this paper, I consider when and how these differences are important. I argue that certain bioethical problems can be resolved without addressing disagreements about global justice. People with very different vie…Read more
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18Norvin Richards , The Ethics of Parenthood . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 32 (2): 130-132. 2012.
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99Are pharmaceutical patents protected by human rights?Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (11). 2008.The International Bill of Rights enshrines a right to health, which includes a right to access essential medicines. This right frequently appears to conflict with the intellectual property regime that governs pharmaceutical patents. However, there is also a human right that protects creative works, including scientific productions. Does this right support intellectual property protections, even when they may negatively affect health? This article examines the recent attempt by the Committee on E…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Biomedical Ethics |
Political Ethics |