James Stacey Taylor

In ‘Three Arguments Against Prescription Requirements’, Jessica Flanigan argues that ‘prescription drug laws violate patients' rights to self-medication’ and that patients ‘have rights to self-medication for the same reasons they have rights to refuse medical treatment according to the doctrine of informed consent , claiming that the strongest of these reasons is grounded on the value of autonomy. However, close examination of the moral value of autonomy shows that rather than being the strongest justification for the DIC, respect for the value of autonomy is actually the weakest, and it is dependent upon the first two well-being-based justifications for the DIC. Recognising this has important implications for Flanigan's argument against prescription requirements

It is widely accepted that a person can be harmed by events that occur after her death. The most influential account of how persons can suffer such posthumous harm has been provided by George Pitcher and Joel Feinberg. Yet, despite its influence (or perhaps because of it) the Feinberg-Pitcher account of posthumous harm has been subject to several well-known criticisms. Surprisingly, there has been no attempt to defend this account of posthumous harm against these criticisms, either by philosophers who work on the metaphysics of death or by those who draw upon this account of posthumous harm in their work in other philosophical fields. This paper will rectify this omission, by defending this view against the criticisms it has been subject to—a defense that will both be of intrinsic interest to those who work on the metaphysics of death and that will remedy the lacunae in the wide-ranging philosophical literature that draws upon this account of how posthumous harm is possible.

A common argument used to defend markets in ‘contested commodities’ is based on the value of personal autonomy. Autonomy is of great moral value; removing options from a person's choice set would compromise her ability to exercise her autonomy; hence, there should be a prima facie presumption against removing options from persons’ choice sets; thus, the burden of proof lies with those who wish to prohibit markets in certain goods. Christopher Freiman has developed a version of this argument to defend markets in votes. I argue that Freiman's argument fails, and that its failure illustrates the falsity of the widespread claim that the more options a person has available to her the better able she will be to exercise her autonomy. In Part 1, I outline Freiman's argument from ‘the presumption of voter liberty’ for legalising markets in votes. In Part 2, I argue that the option to sell one's vote in a legal market for them would be a ‘constraining option’ – an option which, if chosen, would be likely to lead to a diminution in a person's future ability to exercise her autonomy. In Part 3, I respond to objections to my arguments.

Many still oppose legalizing markets in human organs on the grounds that they are morally repugnant. I will argue in this paper that the repugnance felt by some persons towards sales of human organs is insufficient to justify their prohibition. Yet this rejection of the view that markets in human organs should be prohibited because some persons find them to be morally repugnant does not imply that persons’ feelings of distress at the possibility of organ sales are irrational. Eduardo Rivera-Lopez argues that such instinctive distress is an appropriate response to the perception that certain kinds of arguments that are offered in favor of legalizing organ sales are “in an important sense, illegitimate.” Having argued that repugnance should not ground the prohibition of markets in human organs, I will also argue that the moral distress that some feel towards certain arguments that favor such markets is not rationally defensible, either

One of the most widespread objections to legalizing a market in human organs is that such legalization would stimulate the black market in human organs. Unfortunately, the proponents of this argument fail to explain how such stimulation will occur. To remedy thus, two accounts of how legalizing markets in human organs could stimulate the black market in them are developed in this paper. Yet although these accounts remedy the lacuna in the anti-market argument from the black market neither of them provide reason to believe that legalizing an organ markets would stimulate the black market in organs. Despite its prevalence, then, the argument from the black market should be rejected.

In 1998, The Lancet published a research paper by Andrew Wakefield that provided support to the formerly-discredited theory that the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine could cause colitis and autism spectrum disorders (Wakefield et al. 1998). Although this paper was fully retracted in 2010 after being exposed as fraudulent, it served as a catalyst for concerns about the safety of vaccination, both the MMR vaccine in particular and vaccination in general. While the scientific consensus concerning both the MMR vaccine and others that are routinely provided to persons in developed Western countries is that the benefits of receiving them far outweigh the risks, there is still serious concern on the part of some parents about the safety of vaccinating their children. Moreover, in addition to concerns about the safety of vaccination some parents are concerned about the effects that receiving certain vaccinations will have upon their childrens’ volitional actions. For example, the possibil

Although the standard objections to Harry Frankfurt's early hierarchical analysis of identification and its variants are well known, more recent work on identification has yet to be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny. To remedy this I develop in this paper objections to Frankfurt's most recent analysis of identification as satisfaction that he first outlined in his paper ?The Faintest Passion?. With such objections in place I show that they demonstrate that Frankfurt's analysis fails because it is based on the attitudes that the person whose identification with his desires is in question adopts towards them. I then develop a new (objective and cognitive) analysis that avoids the difficulties that Frankfurt's subjective approach is prey to. I conclude by considering and rebutting some preliminary objections to this new analysis

This is the first volume in which an account of personal autonomy is developed that both captures the contours of this concept as it is used in social philosophy and bioethics, and is theoretically grounded in, and a part of, contemporary autonomy theory. James Stacey Taylor’s account is unique as it is explicitly a political one, recognizing that the attribution of autonomy to agents is dependent in part on their relationships with others and not merely upon their own mental states. The volume is distinctive in its examples, which touch on the ethics of using inducements to encourage persons to participate in medical research, the ethical issues associated with the use of antibiotics, and the ethical basis for both patient confidentiality and informed consent

A common criticism of plurality voting is that it fails to reflect the degree of intensity with which voters prefer the candidate or policy that they vote for. To rectify this, many critics of plurality voting have argued that vote buying should be allowed. Persons with more intense preferences for a candidate could buy votes from persons with less intense preferences for the opposing candidate and then cast them for the candidate that they intensely support. This paper argues that instead of better reflecting voters’ weighted preferences, vote buying will lead to electoral outcomes that reflect them less accurately.

Some of the most difficult ethical issues that arise in clinical bioethics concern the practice of medicine upon children. Unlike adults, children are incapable of providing informed consent either to undergoing the procedures that might be performed upon them, or to taking the drugs that might benefit them. Since this is so, children—like impaired adults—often have decisions made for them by competent adults who can consent on their behalf. This leads to a series of well-known philosophical problems concerning the basis upon which such decisions should be made. While it might seem clear that such decisions should be made to secure the best interests of the child, difficulties arise when there is disagreement between parents and others as to what those best interests would be. This might occur in the context of parents’ decisions being guided by their religious beliefs: For example, should a child whose parents are devout Jehovah’s Witnesses have a life-saving blood transfusion withhel

For the past three decades philosophical discussions of both personal autonomy and what it is for a person to “identify” with her desires have been dominated by the “hierarchical” analyses of these concepts developed by Gerald Dworkin and Harry Frankfurt. The longevity of these analyses is owed, in part, to the intuitive appeal of their shared claim that the concepts of autonomy and identification are to be analyzed in terms of hierarchies of desires, such that it is a necessary condition for a person to be autonomous with respect to a desire that moves her to act, that she desires that this desire so move her. Despite the intuitive appeal of these analyses, however, Irving Thalberg has argued that they should be rejected. This is because, he argues, a person who is forced to perform an action by being subjected to duress of a certain degree of harshness will desire to be moved by her desire to submit. Thus, he continues, the proponents of hierarchical analyses of autonomy and identification will be forced to hold that such a person acted willingly, and did not suffer from any impairment in her autonomy. This, Thalberg concludes, is so counterintuitive as to justify rejecting hierarchical analyses

How can healthcare systems gain self-sufficiency in their procurement and distribution of blood and blood products efficiently while maintaining a degree of relatively equitable access for patients? This is a question that, at first look, the World Health Organization has answered in detail by advocating for self-sufficiency through non-remunerated blood donation. This essay serves two purposes. First, it illustrates key differences between the WHO’s policy recommendations and the realities of healthcare. For example, it can be readily demonstrated that the WHO has no empirical foundation for their claim that blood and blood products from unpaid donors is safer or more efficient than other, more commercial, avenues of procurement. Indeed, the WHO appears to take an ideological stand against compensation for blood products, which the empirical data does not support. Whether donation for blood and blood products should be compensated is a pressing ethical issue of practical import, especially if it can be shown that more market-oriented procedures leads to greater self-sufficiency, as well as safer and easier access to blood products than other alternatives. Such policy decisions should be based on the best available empirical data and ethical argumentation, rather than on political ideological grounds. Second, this essay serves as an Introduction to a special thematic issue of HEC Forum, which aims critically to explore ethical arguments in light of the best available empirical data so as to orient the blood industry towards more efficient and effective, and morally honest, procurement procedures

Petersen and Lippert-Rasmussen argue that persons who decide to be organ donors should receive a tax break, and then defend their view against eight possible objections. However, they misunderstand the Titmuss-style concerns that might be raised against their proposal. This does not mean that it should be rejected, but, instead, that when it is reconfigured to meet the Titmuss-style charges against it, they should support legalizing markets in human organs rather than merely offering tax breaks to encourage their donation

In 2013 the World Health Organization published a Report in which it was argued that countries should become self-sufficient in safe blood and blood products, and that these should be secured through voluntary non-remunerated donation. These two claims were putatively supported by a wealth of citations to peer-reviewed academic papers, the results of Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and data collected from Non-Government Organizations. Yet not only do many of the sources cited by the authors of this WHO Report fail to support their conclusions, many support conclusions that are the opposite of those that they draw. The aim of this paper is not, however, to argue against the conclusions of this Report. Instead, it is to argue that its authors were culpably negligent in its writing, in that they failed to take reasonable care to ensure that their conclusions were supported by the evidence, and in so doing exposed third parties to risks of harm to which they had not consented.