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54Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary ReadingsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2007.This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resou…Read more
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22ExploitationPrinceton University Press. 1996.What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine…Read more
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685Standing by our principles: Meaningful guidance, moral foundations, and multi-principle methodology in medical scarcityAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (4). 2010.In this short response to Kerstein and Bognar, we clarify three aspects of the complete lives system, which we propose as a system of allocating scarce medical interventions. We argue that the complete lives system provides meaningful guidance even though it does not provide an algorithm. We also defend the investment modification to the complete lives system, which prioritizes adolescents and older children over younger children; argue that sickest-first allocation remains flawed when scarcity …Read more
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27Non-completion and informed consentJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (2): 127-130. 2014.There is a good deal of biomedical research that does not produce scientifically useful data because it fails to recruit a sufficient number of subjects. This fact is typically not disclosed to prospective subjects. In general, the guidance about consent concerns the information required to make intelligent self-interested decisions and ignores some of the information required for intelligent altruistic decisions. Bioethics has worried about the ‘therapeutic misconception’, but has ignored the ‘…Read more
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397The Obligation to Participate in Biomedical ResearchJournal of the American Medical Association 302 (1): 67-72. 2009.The current prevailing view is that participation in biomedical research is above and beyond the call of duty. While some commentators have offered reasons against this, we propose a novel public goods argument for an obligation to participate in biomedical research. Biomedical knowledge is a public good, available to any individual even if that individual does not contribute to it. Participation in research is a critical way to support an important public good. Consequently, all have a duty to …Read more
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4On Being Freeby BergmannFrithjof. South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Pp. 238. $10.00Political Theory 6 (4): 561-564. 1978.
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158The fair transaction model of informed consent: An alternative to autonomous authorizationKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 21 (3): 201-218. 2011.Prevailing ethical thinking about informed consent to clinical research is characterized by theoretical confidence and practical disquiet. On the one hand, bioethicists are confident that informed consent is a fundamental norm. And, for the most part, they are confident that what makes consent to research valid is that it constitutes an autonomous authorization by the research participant. On the other hand, bioethicists are uneasy about the quality of consent in practice. One major source of th…Read more
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97Exploitation in clinical researchIn Ezekiel J. Emanuel (ed.), The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 201--10. 2008.
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312Consent and Sexual RelationsLegal Theory 2 (2): 89-112. 1996.This article has two broad purposes. First, as a political philosopher who has been interested in the concepts of coercion and exploitation, I want to consider just what the analysis of the concept of consent can bring to the question, what sexually motivated behavior should be prohibited through the criminal law? Put simply, I shall argue that conceptual analysis will be of little help. Second, and with somewhat fewer professional credentials, I shall offer some thoughts about the substantive q…Read more
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70Should 'nudge' be salvaged?Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (8): 498-499. 2013.Policy makers are understandably interested—for both political and moral reasons—in following Thaler and Sunstein's recommendation to use ‘choice architecture’ , or other ‘nudges’, to promote desirable behaviour in ways that are allegedly compatible with personal freedom.1 Yashar Saghai's intricate analysis shows that simply maintaining the target's choice-set is insufficient to preserve the target's freedom when the nudge bypasses the target's deliberative capacities—as it is specifically desig…Read more
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80Payment for research participation: a coercive offer?Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (5): 389-392. 2008.Payment for research participation has raised ethical concerns, especially with respect to its potential for coercion. We argue that characterising payment for research participation as coercive is misguided, because offers of benefit cannot constitute coercion. In this article we analyse the concept of coercion, refute mistaken conceptions of coercion and explain why the offer of payment for research participation is never coercive but in some cases may produce undue inducement
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5754The Right to Withdraw from ResearchKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 20 (4): 329-352. 2010.The right to withdraw from participation in research is recognized in virtually all national and international guidelines for research on human subjects. It is therefore surprising that there has been little justification for that right in the literature. We argue that the right to withdraw should protect research participants from information imbalance, inability to hedge, inherent uncertainty, and untoward bodily invasion, and it serves to bolster public trust in the research enterprise. Altho…Read more
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39Is payment a benefit?Bioethics 27 (2): 105-116. 2011.What I call ‘the standard view’ claims that IRBs should not regard financial payment as a benefit to subjects for the purpose of risk/benefit assessment. Although the standard view is universally accepted, there is little defense of that view in the canonical documents of research ethics or the scholarly literature. This paper claims that insofar as IRBs should be concerned with the interests and autonomy of research subjects, they should reject the standard view and adopt ‘the incorporation vie…Read more
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69Why 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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174Misconceptions about coercion and undue influence: Reflections on the views of irb membersBioethics 27 (9): 500-507. 2012.Payment to recruit research subjects is a common practice but raises ethical concerns relating to the potential for coercion or undue influence. We conducted the first national study of IRB members and human subjects protection professionals to explore attitudes as to whether and why payment of research participants constitutes coercion or undue influence. Upon critical evaluation of the cogency of ethical concerns regarding payment, as reflected in our survey results, we found expansive or inco…Read more
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364Two questions about surrogacy and exploitationPhilosophy and Public Affairs 21 (3): 211-239. 1992.
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221ExploitationMind. 1996.What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine…Read more
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ConsentIn Alan Soble (ed.), Sex From Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press. pp. 1--184. 2006.
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38Against autonomy?Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (5): 351-352. 2014.As Sarah Conly notes in the précis of her important new book, there is considerable evidence that human beings are prone to make decisions that do not advance their own ends.1 Whereas some have argued for forms of libertarian paternalism such as ‘nudges,’2 ,3 Conly defends a more expansive use of straightforwardly coercive paternalism beyond such uncontroversial policies such as seat belt laws and requiring prescriptions for drugs. We should seriously consider banning trans fats and large portio…Read more
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135The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.This book assembles the contributions of a distinguished group of scholars concerning the ethics of consent in theory and practice.