•  90
    Ethics and genetics: Susceptibility testing in the workplace
    Journal of Business Ethics 35 (3): 235-241. 2002.
    Genetic testing in the workplace is a technology both full of promise and fraught with ethical peril. Though not yet common, it is likely to become increasingly so. We survey the key arguments in favour of such testing, along with the most significant ethical worries. We further propose a set of pragmatic criteria, which, if met, would make it permissible for employers to offer (but not to require) workplace genetic testing.
  •  101
    Principles for Incorporating Farmers in the Ethical Assessment of Genetically Modified Crops
    with Jason Behrmann
    Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 1 (2): 83-99. 2010.
    A current advance within the agricultural industry is the use of genetic engineering to produce novel crops for food production. This technology raises questions about how societies should position themselves with respect to genetically modified (GM) crop development and implementation; namely, how should the potentials and risks of this technology be evaluated? We argue that current methods to evaluate the risks and benefits of GM crops are inadequate and not conducive to the strategic developm…Read more
  •  68
    Managing Antimicrobial Resistance In Food Production: Conflicts Of Interest And Politics In The Development Of Public Health Policy
    with Béatrice Doize
    Les ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 5 (1): 156-169. 2010.
    Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health concern and is associated with the over - or inappropriate use of antimicrobials in both humans and agriculture. While there has been recognition of this problem on the part of agricultural and public health authorities, there has nonetheless been significant difficulty in translating policy recommendations into practical guidelines. In this paper, we examine the process of public health policy development in Quebec agriculture, with a focus on…Read more
  •  112
    Barriers to Research on Research Ethics Review and Conflicts of Interest
    with Marie-Josée Potvin, Ghislaine Mathieu, and Elise Smith
    IRB: Ethics & Human Research 35 (5): 14-20. 2013.
    Research on research ethics—regarding both the governance and practice of the ethical review of human subjects research—has a tumultuous history in North America and Europe. Much of the academic literature focuses on issues to do with regulating the conduct and quality of ethics review of research protocols by ethics committees (research ethics boards (REBs) in Canada and institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States). In addition, some of the literature attends to issues particular to…Read more
  •  79
    Genetic Testing for Sale: Implications of Commercial Brca Testing in Canada
    Dissertation, The University of British Columbia (Canada). 2002.
    Ongoing research in the fields of genetics and biotechnology hold the promise of improved diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases, and potentially the development of individually tailored pharmaceuticals and gene therapies. Difficulty, however, arises in determining how these services are to be evaluated and integrated equitably into public health care systems such as Canada's. The current context is one of increasing fiscal restraint on the part of governments, limited financial resources b…Read more
  •  111
    Pharmacogenetics: the bioethical problem of DNA investment banking
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (3): 550-565. 2004.
    Concern about the ethics of clinical drug trials research on patients and healthy volunteers has been the subject of significant ethical analysis and policy development—protocols are reviewed by Research Ethics Committees and subjects are protected by informed consent procedures. More recently attention has begun to be focused on DNA banking for clinical and pharmacogenetics research. It is, however, surprising how little attention has been paid to the commercial nature of such research, or the …Read more
  •  64
    Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health concern and is associated with the over- or inappropriate use of antimicrobials in both humans and agriculture. While there has been reco- gnition of this problem on the part of agricultural and public health authorities, there has none- theless been significant difficulty in translating policy recommendations into practical guidelines. In this paper, we examine the process of public health policy development in Quebec agriculture, with a focus…Read more
  •  122
    Promotion of prescription drugs may appear to be severely limited in some jurisdictions due to restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising. However, in most jurisdictions, strategies exist to raise consumer awareness about prescription drugs, notably through the deployment of direct-to-consumer information campaigns that encourage patients to seek help for particular medical conditions. In Canada, DTCI is presented by industry and regulated by Health Canada as being purely informational activ…Read more
  •  126
    How do medical device manufacturers' websites frame the value of health innovation? An empirical ethics analysis of five Canadian innovations
    with Pascale Lehoux, M. Hivon, Fiona A. Miller, and David R. Urbach
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 15 (1): 61-77. 2012.
    While every health care system stakeholder would seem to be concerned with obtaining the greatest value from a given technology, there is often a disconnect in the perception of value between a technology’s promoters and those responsible for the ultimate decision as to whether or not to pay for it. Adopting an empirical ethics approach, this paper examines how five Canadian medical device manufacturers, via their websites, frame the corporate “value proposition” of their innovation and seek to …Read more
  •  56
    Book review: Who Owns Life? (review)
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 25 (2): 165-169. 2004.
    Genetics research and biotechnology development - while holding the promise of improved pharmaceuticals, medical treatments, and foods - is also raising concerns about the impact of market forces on scientific inquiry, product development, and the provision of health care.
  •  112
    Biopolitical Barriers to a Potterian Bioethics: The (Potentially) Missed Opportunity of Epigenetics
    with Charles Dupras and Vardit Ravitsky
    American Journal of Bioethics 17 (9): 15-17. 2017.
    Lee (2017) calls for greater attention to the shared epistemological and normative grounds of both public health ethics and environmental ethics, and to Potter’s original conception of bioethics, which, as she rightly observes, has been largely disregarded in contemporary North American bioethics scholarship and practice. In a previous publication we also argued in favor of reviving the Potterian approach to bioethics; we built a case grounded in “the relatively new field of molecular epigenetic…Read more
  •  63
    The case study presented by Winch and Sinnott (2011) shows not only how difficult it is for clinicians and researchers to identify conflicts of interest (COI), but also how damaging it can be when there are unin- formed and uncoordinated policy responses by senior administrators.
  •  100
    Imagining Truly Open Access Bioethics: From Dreams to Reality
    with Vincent Couture, Renaud Boulanger, and Charles Dupras
    American Journal of Bioethics 17 (10): 19-20. 2017.
    Imagine that you are part of the editorial board of a young bioethics journal committed to publishing open access (OA) and to ensuring accessibility to high quality and innovative scholarship. To support junior and interna- tional scholars who might not otherwise find places for their work in the leading Western bioethics journals, you do not charge author fees. Imagine also that you have no financial resources to pay for a professional website, auto- mated submissions manager, or even a part-ti…Read more
  •  190
    While there has been significant discussion in the health sciences and ethics literatures about problems associated with publication practices (e.g., ghost- and gift-authorship, conflicts of interest), there has been relatively little practical guidance developed to help researchers determine how they should fairly allocate credit for multi-authored publications. Fair allocation of credit requires that participating authors be acknowledged for their contribution and responsibilities, but it is n…Read more
  •  64
    Nanotechnology research is beginning to see widespread coverage in the media and popular science literatures, but discussions of hopes and fears about nanotechnology have already become polarised into utopian and dystopian visions. More moderate discussions focus on the near-term applications of nanotechnologies, and on potential benefits and harms. However, in exploring the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology, important lessons should be learned from experiences in other fields. I…Read more
  •  68
    The case of Andrew Gobea, the first child to receive experimental gene therapy for SCID, and a reflection on the associated ethical implications of gene therapy research.
  •  128
    Impacts of the Early COVID-19 Pandemic on the Work of Bioethicists in Canada
    with Marilou Charron, Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, Vincent Couture, Vardit Ravitsky, and Charles Dupras
    Canadian Journal of Bioethics / Revue canadienne de bioéthique 5 (4): 20-29. 2022.
    Bioethics experts played a key role in ensuring a coherent ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the fields of healthcare, public health, and scientific research in Canada. In the province of Quebec, a group of academic and practicing bioethicists met periodically in the early months of the pandemic to discuss approaches and solutions to ethical dilemmas encountered during the crisis. These meetings created the opportunity for a national survey of bioethics practitioners from different fi…Read more
  •  88
    10 Years On: Looking Back in Order to Move Forward into the Future
    with Aliya Affdal
    Canadian Journal of Bioethics/Revue canadienne de bioéthique 5 (4): 1-4. 2022.
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  •  9
    Ethical Issues in Research: Perceptions of Researchers, Research Ethics Board Members and Research Ethics Experts
    with Marie-Josée Drolet, Eugénie Rose-Derouin, Julie-Claude Leblanc, and Mélanie Ruest
    Journal of Academic Ethics 21 (2): 269-292. 2023.
    In the context of academic research, a diversity of ethical issues, conditioned by the different roles of members within these institutions, arise. Previous studies on this topic addressed mainly the perceptions of researchers. However, to our knowledge, no studies have explored the transversal ethical issues from a wider spectrum, including other members of academic institutions as the research ethics board (REB) members, and the research ethics experts. The present study used a descriptive phe…Read more
  •  2
    This case study examines the conflicts of interest that can arise in the selection of jury members to evaluate a PhD thesis, and the costs associated with trying to avoid COI.
  •  15
    Are Military and Medical Ethics Necessarily Incompatible? A Canadian Case Study
    with Christiane Rochon
    Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 44 (4): 639-651. 2016.
    Military physicians are often perceived to be in a position of ‘dual loyalty’ because they have responsibilities towards their patients but also towards their employer, the military institution. Further, they have to ascribe to and are bound by two distinct codes of ethics, each with its own set of values and duties, that could at first glance be considered to be very different or even incompatible. How, then, can military physicians reconcile these two codes of ethics and their distinct profess…Read more
  •  13
    Towards an Integration of PrEP into a Safe Sex Ethics Framework for Men Who Have Sex with Men
    with Julien Brisson and Vardit Ravitsky
    Public Health Ethics 12 (1): 54-63. 2019.
    The ethics of safe sex in the gay community has, for many years, been focused on debates surrounding the responsibility regarding the use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission, once the only tool available. With the development of Truvada as a pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, for the first time in the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic there is the potential to significantly reduce the risk of HIV transmission during sex without the use of condoms. The introduction of PrEP necessitates a renewed…Read more
  •  26
    A University Wide Model for the Ethical Review of Human Subjects Research
    with Søren Holm
    Research Ethics 1 (2): 39-44. 2005.
    In the United Kingdom, there are moves to extend formal ethical review of research involving human subjects beyond the traditional oversight by NHS local or multi-centre research ethics committees of medical or clinical research, to also encompass all ‘non-clinical’ research involving human subjects. This paper describes and analyses the development and implementation of a model for ethical review within the university sector. At Cardiff University, a devolved or two-tiered system of ethics revi…Read more
  •  17
    Ethics education in public health: where are we now and where are we going?
    with Victoria Doudenkova, Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, Louise Ringuette, and Vardit Ravitsky
    International Journal of Ethics Education 2 (2): 109-124. 2017.
    Over the last decade there has been a noticeable increase in attention, on the part of public health scholars and professionals, to the important ethical challenges that arise in the context of public health policy, practice and research. This has arguably been a driver for the development of public health ethics as both a specialized field of study in bioethics and a subject for professional education. But how is PHE taught in public health programs and schools? Are current educational approach…Read more
  •  5
    Conflicts of interest in the university context are receiving growing attention, but the focus has been largely on problematic financial COI arising from university-industry relations, which clearly need to be avoided. The result, unfortunately, is a pejorative perception of COI as being equivalent to fraud and thus an issue of academic misconduct. In this paper, the aim is to show that while some financial and non-financial COI are particularly problematic and so should be avoided, many are per…Read more
  •  28
    “Let’s Test Crazy Ideas!” A Laboratory for Experimental Bioethics
    with Sihem Neil Abtroun
    American Journal of Bioethics 21 (6): 57-58. 2021.
    In their article, Pavarani and colleagues offer a vision of evolutionary bioethics that focuses on innovation and empirical research as a means to enrich the field of bioethics. Empirical bi...
  •  10
    Conceptualising Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Research: Results from a Critical and Systematic Literature Review
    with Élie Beauchemin, Louis Pierre Côté, and Marie-Josée Drolet
    Journal of Academic Ethics 20 (3): 335-358. 2022.
    This article concerns the ways in which authors from various fields conceptualise the ethical issues arising in the conduct of research. We reviewed critically and systematically the literature concerning the ethics of conducting research in order to engage in a reflection about the vocabulary and conceptual categories used in the publications reviewed. To understand better how the ethical issues involved in conducting research are conceptualised in the publications reviewed, we 1) established a…Read more
  •  14
    Reproductive tourism in argentina: Clinic accreditation and its implications for consumers, health professionals and policy makers
    with Elise Smith, Jason Behrmann, and Carolina Martin
    Developing World Bioethics 10 (2): 59-69. 2009.
    A subcategory of medical tourism, reproductive tourism has been the subject of much public and policy debate in recent years. Specific concerns include: the exploitation of individuals and communities, access to needed health care services, fair allocation of limited resources, and the quality and safety of services provided by private clinics. To date, the focus of attention has been on the thriving medical and reproductive tourism sectors in Asia and Eastern Europe; there has been much less co…Read more
  •  3
    Au-delà de la bureaucratie obligatoire : comment bien travailler avec des comités d’éthique de la recherche
    with Marie-Pierre Bousquet
    Canadian Journal of Bioethics / Revue canadienne de bioéthique 1 (2): 84-88. 2018.
    University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on the e…Read more
  •  113
    Access to Personal Information for Public Health Research: Transparency Should Always Be Mandatory
    with Louise Ringuette, Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, and Victoria Doudenkova
    Canadian Journal of Bioethics/Revue canadienne de bioéthique 1 (2): 94-98. 2018.
    In Québec, the Act Respecting Access to Documents Held by Public Bodies and the Protection of Personal Information provides an exception to transparency to most public institutions where public health research is conducted by allowing them to not disclose their uses of personal data. This exceptionalism is ethically problematic due to important concerns and we argue that all those who conduct research should be transparent and accountable for the work they do in the public interest.