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81Expanding the horizon of reflection on health and diseaseJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (5): 461-473. 1995.Last updated - 2020-01-06.
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21A hierarchical architecture for nano-scale science and technology: taking stock of the claims about science made by advocates of NBIC convergenceIn Baird D. (ed.), Discovering the Nanoscale, Ios. pp. 21--33. 2004.
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76Why bioethics needs the philosophy of medicine: Some implications of reflection on concepts of health and diseaseTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 18 (1-2): 145-163. 1997.Germund Hesslow has argued that concepts of health and disease serve no important scientific, clinical, or ethical function. However, this conclusion depends upon the particular concept of disease he espouses; namely, on Boorse's functional notion. The fact/value split embodied in the functional notion of disease leads to a sharp split between the science of medicine and bioethics, making the philosophy of medicine irrelevant for both. By placing this disease concept in the broader context of me…Read more
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19The Social Conditions for Nanomedicine: Disruption, Systems, and Lock-InJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 34 (4): 733-740. 2006.Many believe that nanotechnology will be disruptive to our society. Presumably, this means that some people and even whole industries will be undermined by technological developments that nanoscience makes possible. This, in turn, implies that we should anticipate potential workforce disruptions, mitigate in advance social problems likely to arise, and work to fairly distribute the future benefits of nanotechnology. This general, somewhat vague sense of disruption, is very difficult to specify –…Read more
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109The ethics of NBIC convergenceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (3). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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14Reflections on the Dignity of Guan Zhong: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Liberal Notions of SuicideConfucian Bioethics. forthcoming.
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12Hegel and the Spirit (review)The Owl of Minerva 26 (1): 71-77. 1994.In most of the philosophy of the last 150 years, theological concerns have been increasingly marginalized. This does not mean that the issues that were addressed theologically in the past are no longer addressed. Rather, the perennial concerns have been reconstructed so that they are no longer tied to a religious context. Ecclesiology has become political theory, moral theology has become ethics, and doctrines of revelation have become epistemology. Such a list could be made fairly exhaustive, a…Read more
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65Beware of mereologists bearing gifts: prolegomena to a medical metaphysicsTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (5): 385-408. 2013.This essay considers implications of formal mereologies and ontologies for medical metaphysics. Edward Fried’s extensional mereological account of the human body is taken as representative of a prominent strand in analytic metaphysics that has close affinities with medical positivism. I show why such accounts fail. First, I consider how Fried attempts to make sense of the medical case of Barney Clark, the first recipient of an artificial heart, and show that his analytic metaphysical categories …Read more
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83An agenda for future debate on concepts of health and diseaseMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (1): 19-27. 2007.The traditional contrast between naturalist and normativist disease concepts fails to capture the most salient features of the health concepts debate. By using health concepts as a window on background notions of medical science and ethics, I show how Christopher Boorse (an influential naturalist) and Lennart Nordenfelt (an influential normativist) actually share deep assumptions about the character of medicine. Their disease concepts attempt, in different ways, to shore up the same medical mode…Read more
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20The case for managed care: Reappraising medical and socio-political idealsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 24 (5). 1999.The arguments against managed care can be divided into two general clusters. One cluster concerns the way managed care undermines the ethical ideals of medical professionalism. Since those ideals largely focus on the physician-patient relation, the first cluster comes under the rubric of micro-ethics; namely, the ethics of individual-individual relations. The second cluster of criticisms focuses on macro-ethical issues, primarily on issues of justice and policy. By reviewing these arguments, it …Read more
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36Open questions in the ethics of convergenceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (3). 2007.After historically situating NBIC Convergence in the context of earlier bioethical debate on genetics, ten questions are raised in areas related to the ethics of Convergence, indicating where future research is needed.
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58A Matter of Respect: A Defense of the Dead Donor Rule and of a "Whole-Brain" Criterion for Determination of DeathJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (3): 330-364. 2010.Many accounts of the historical development of neurological criteria for determination of death insufficiently distinguish between two strands of interpretation advanced by advocates of a "whole-brain" criterion. One strand focuses on the brain as the organ of integration. Another provides a far more complex and nuanced account, both of death and of a policy on the determination of death. Current criticisms of the whole-brain criterion are effective in refuting the first interpretation, but not …Read more
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25What Hope for Reason? A Critique of New Natural Law TheoryChristian Bioethics 22 (2): 238-264. 2016.
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74An ethics discussion series for hospital administratorsHEC Forum 10 (2): 177-185. 1998.Peer Reviewed.
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15The ethics of nano/neuro convergenceIn Judy Illes & Barbara J. Sahakian (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 467--92. 2011.This article outlines a few representative areas of research in nano- and neuroscience and then considers the complex continuum of entangled research practices that results. The point of this review is to give a realistic sense of the distributed, opportunistic character of this research, and to show how such emergent practices challenge conventional assumptions about how ethics and science should be advanced. It evaluates the risk profile of research related to that type as if it designated som…Read more
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17Stem cells and the man on the moon: Should we go there from here?American Journal of Bioethics 2 (1). 2002.This Article does not have an abstract
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56Handbook of bioethics: taking stock of the field from a philosophical perspective (edited book)Kluwer Academic. 2004.This book is for those interested in an extensive review of the field of bioethics. It is for philosophers who wish to understand the core conceptual issues in health care ethics, and for bioethicists who wish to better understand classical problems in philosophy that have a bearing on health care ethics. The Handbook of Bioethics: Taking Stock of the Field from a Philosophical Perspective: -presents a comprehensive survey of bioethics in one volume; -has 27 of the most prominent scholars in the…Read more
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77Ethics, politics, and health care reformJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (5): 397-405. 1994.
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