Anthony Wrigley

Mitochondrial replacement techniques have the potential to allow prospective parents who are at risk of passing on debilitating or even life-threatening mitochondrial disorders to have healthy children to whom they are genetically related. Ethical concerns have however been raised about these techniques. This article focuses on one aspect of the ethical debate, the question of whether there is any moral difference between the two types of MRT proposed: Pronuclear Transfer and Maternal Spindle Transfer. It examines how questions of identity impact on the ethical evaluation of each technique and argues that there is an important difference between the two. PNT, it is argued, is a form of therapy based on embryo modification while MST is, instead, an instance of selective reproduction. The article's main ethical conclusion is that, in some circumstances, there is a stronger obligation to use PNT than MST

The concept of vulnerability has been subject to numerous different interpretations but accounts are still beset with significant problems as to their adequacy, such as their contentious application or the lack of genuine explanatory role for the concept. The constant failure to provide a compelling conceptual analysis and satisfactory definition leaves the concept open to an eliminativist move whereby we can question whether we need the concept at all. I highlight problems with various kinds of approach and explain why a satisfactory account of vulnerability is unlikely ever to be offered if we wish the concept to play a genuinely explanatory role in bioethical contexts. I outline why an eliminativist position should be taken with regard to this concept in light of these concerns but mitigate some of the severity of this position by arguing that we can still make sense of retaining our widespread use of the term by viewing it as nothing more than a useful pragmatic linguistic device that acts as a marker to draw attention to certain kinds of issue. These issues will be entirely governed by other, better understood ethical concepts and theories

This volume forms part of a series exploring key issues in ethics, law and society, published in association with the Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law and Society. The collection is a celebration of the approach and values embraced within previous volumes in the series. The works collectively address new technological, social, and regulatory developments and the fresh ethical dilemmas these pose, but quite critically, also compel an urgent revisiting of social and legal issues that were once the subject of controversy but which have fallen out of the line of sight of academics, politicians and policy-makers. Bringing together selected papers, the editors seek to make apparent the thematic links between contributions in presenting works written by a group of international experts in response to specific ethical issues, including topics on the ethics of care, theorising ethics, body politics and governance; as such, the collection is multidisciplinary in approach, seeks to appeal to a broad audience and provides a valuable resource for all those concerned with contemporary ethical issues. This fifth and final volume bring the series to a close and is dedicated to the memory of Dr Jennifer Gunning.

The standard by which we apply decision-making for those unable to do so for themselves is an important practical ethical issue with substantial implications for the treatment and welfare of such individuals. The approach to proxy or surrogate decision-making based upon substituted judgement is often seen as the ideal standard to aim for but suffers from a need to provide a clear account of how to determine the validity of the proxy's judgements. Proponents have responded to this demand by providing the truth-conditions for the substituted judgement in terms of counterfactual reasoning using a possible worlds semantics. In this paper, I show how these underpinnings fail to support the substituted judgement approach as a reasonable standard for decision-making. Firstly, I show how this counterfactual element has been poorly interpreted. I then explain how various accounts have failed to reflect problems and limitations associated with providing an interpretation of their truth-conditions using counterfactuals. Finally, I argue that, even when we attend to the initial problems of providing a counterfactual analysis, it still deeply problematic as a means of determining the validity of substituted judgements for two main reasons. Firstly, making determinate judgements as to the truth-value of these judgements will often not be possible and, secondly, there is a strong requirement when interpreting many counterfactual claims to charitably accede to their being true. I conclude that substituted judgements, as interpreted through counterfactual reasoning and possible worlds semantics, do not therefore provide an adequate standard for surrogate decision-making.