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24The Social Conditions for Nanomedicine: Disruption, Systems, and Lock-inJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 34 (4): 733-740. 2006.Here we consider two ways that nanomedicine might be disruptive. First, low-end disruptions that are intrinsically unpredictable but limited in scope, and second, high end disruptions that involve broader societal issues but can be anticipated, allowing opportunity for ethical reflection
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8The domain of parental discretion in treatment of neonates: Beyond the impasse between a sanctity-of-life and quality-of-life ethicIn Julia Lai Po-Wah Tao (ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives on the (im) possibility of global bioethics, Kluwer Academic. pp. 277--298. 2002.
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37Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard commentary: Either/or, part I Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard commentary: Either/or, part II (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 46 (2): 122-125. 1999.
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40Hegel 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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24Bioethics in a Liberal Society (review)International Studies in Philosophy 30 (2): 124-125. 1998.
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15What is Unique about Nanomedicine? The Significance of the MesoscaleJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 40 (4): 780-794. 2012.In prominent funding and policy statements, a particle with at least one dimension in the 1-300 nm size range must have novel physicochemical properties to count as a “nanoparticle.” Size is thus only one factor. Novelty of a particle's properties is also essential to its “nano” classification. When particles in this size range are introduced into living systems, they often interact with their host in novel ways that require some modification of existing methods and models used by pharmaceutical…Read more
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59The Aesthetics of Clinical Judgment: Exploring the Link between Diagnostic Elegance and Effective Resource UtilizationMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 2 (2): 141-159. 1999.Many physicians assert that new cost-control mechanisms inappropriately interfere with clinical decision-making. They claim that high costs arise from poorly practiced medicine, and argue that effective utilization of resources is best promoted by advancing the scientific and ethical ideals of medicine. However, the claim is not warranted by empirical evidence. In this essay, I show how it rests upon aesthetic considerations associated with diagnostic elegance. I first consider scientific ration…Read more
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47The Institute of Medicine’s Reports on Quality and Safety: Paradoxes and Tensions (review)HEC Forum 20 (1): 1-14. 2008.
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29Struggling to understand and the nature of organizational ethicsHEC Forum 11 (4): 285-287. 1999.
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28Illness, the Problem of Evil, and the Analogical Structure of Healing: On the Difference Christianity Makes in BioethicsChristian Bioethics 1 (1): 102-120. 1995.A Christian bioethic needs to place the medical approach to sickness, suffering, and death within the context of redemption and the renewal of humanity in the image of God. This can be done by accounting for the way in which the disruptions of the human life-world that attend the illness experience manifest the structure of the problem of evil and point toward an answer that transcends the individual and the medical community. Further, the disease-oriented approach to medicine, when understood i…Read more
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82Expanding 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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22A 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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77Why 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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20The 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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110The 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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66Beware 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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