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34Gene Patents and the Social Justice LensAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (12): 49-51. 2018.I am grateful to Feeney and colleagues for their thoughtful engagement with, and application of, the normative analysis I developed concerning gene patents in Farrelly (2016). Their exploration of...
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34Genetic Intervention and the New Frontiers of JusticeDialogue 41 (1): 139-. 2002.Recent advances in genetic research pose many complex problems for moral and political philosophers. On the one hand, these advances promise great things. Genetic enhancement techniques might allow us to prevent or cure a variety of debilitating diseases. But on the other hand, talk about intervening in people's genetic make-up conjures up memories of the sinister episodes of past eugenic movements. Such movements violated the most basic principles of justice. How can society capitalize on the b…Read more
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33Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review (review)Social Theory and Practice 35 (2): 327-331. 2009.
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32Civic liberalism and the 'dialogical model'of judicial reviewIn Colin Patrick Farrelly & Lawrence Solum (eds.), Virtue jurisprudence, Palgrave-macmillan. 2007.
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31Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, Reproductive Freedom, and Deliberative DemocracyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (2): 135-154. 2009.In this paper I argue that the account of deliberative democracy advanced by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1996, 2004) is a useful normative theory that can help enhance our deliberations about public policy in morally pluralistic societies. More specifically, I illustrate how the prescriptions of deliberative democracy can be applied to the issue of regulating non-medical uses of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), such as gender selection. Deliberative democracy does not aim to win a …Read more
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24It is widely agreed, claims John Horton, “that the core of the concept of toleration is the refusal, where one has the power to do so, to prohibit or seriously interfere with conduct one finds objectionable”.1 Liberals champion toleration as one of the main political virtues of a just society. The tolerant society is one which protects a diverse array of fundamental freedoms ranging from freedom of conscience and religion to freedom of expression and freedom of association. Secure in the knowled…Read more
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24Empirical ethics and the duty to extend the “biological warranty period”Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 480-503. 2013.The world's aging populations face novel health challenges never experienced before in human history. The moral landscape thus needs to adapt to reflect this novel empirical reality. In this paper I take for granted one basic moral principle advanced by Peter Singer and explore the implications that empirical considerations from demography, evolutionary biology, and biogerontology have for the way we conceive of fulfilling this principle at the operational level. After bringing to the fore a num…Read more
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24Contemporary Political Theory: A ReaderSAGE. 2004.Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader provides an accessible introduction to the key works of major contemporary political theorists. Key theorists and writers include John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, Susan Okin, Will Kymlicka, Iris Marion Young, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser and John Dryzek.
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16Introduction to Contemporary Political TheorySAGE. 2004.Colin Farrelly's central objective in writing this introductory text is to demonstrate to students the practical relevance of contemporary theoretical debates to everyday issues in policy creation and implementation and politics.
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15Imagination and idealism in the medical sciences of an ageing worldJournal of Medical Ethics 49 (4): 271-274. 2023.Imagination and idealism are particularly important creative epistemic virtues for the medical sciences if we hope to improve the health of the world’s ageing population. To date, imagination and idealism within the medical sciences have been dominated by a paradigm of disease control, a paradigm which has realised significant, but also limited, success. Disease control proved particularly successful in mitigating the early-life mortality risks from infectious diseases, but it has proved less su…Read more
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12Genetic Intervention and the New Frontiers of JusticeDialogue 41 (1): 139-154. 2002.Recent advances in genetic research pose many complex problems for moral and political philosophers. On the one hand, these advances promise great things. Genetic enhancement techniques might allow us to prevent or cure a variety of debilitating diseases. But on the other hand, talk about intervening in people's genetic make-up conjures up memories of the sinister episodes of past eugenic movements. Such movements violated the most basic principles of justice. How can society capitalize on the b…Read more
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11Biologically Modified JusticeCambridge University Press. 2016.Theories of distributive justice tend to focus on the issue of what constitutes a fair division of 'external' goods and opportunities; things like wealth and income, opportunities for education and basic liberties and rights. However, rapid advances in the biomedical sciences have ushered in a new era, one where the 'genetic lottery of life' can be directly influenced by humans in ways that would have been considered science fiction only a few decades ago. How should theories of justice be modif…Read more
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11If I had to live on a desert island and could only bring three books with me, what three books would they be? That is a tough decision! The last thirty years has witnessed a real boom in normative political theory/philosophy. But if I had to choose just three books to take with me to read on a desert island they would be the three books noted below. I think each of these books are engaging projects and each has made an important contribution to their respective fields. Furthermore, my attraction…Read more
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8Aging, Equality and the Human HealthspanHEC Forum 1-19. forthcoming.John Davis (_New Methuselahs_: _The Ethics of Life_ _Extension_, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2018) advances a novel ethical analysis of longevity science that employs a three-fold methodology of examining the impact of life extension technologies on three distinct groups: the “Haves”, the “Have-nots” and the “Will-nots”. In this essay, I critically examine the egalitarian analysis Davis deploys with respect to its ability to help us theorize about the moral significance of an applied gerontologica…Read more
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8In this article I critically examine Adam Moore's claim that the threshold for overriding intangible property rights and privacy rights is higher, in relation to genetic enhancement techniques and sensitive personal information, than is commonly suggested. I argue that Moore fails to see how important advances in genetic research are to social justice. Once this point is emphasised one sees that the issue of how formidable overriding these rights are is open to much debate. There are strong reas…Read more
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6From Sanitation Science to Geroscience: Public Health Must Transcend ‘Folkbiology’Public Health Ethics 16 (2): 165-174. 2023.Folkbiology refers to people’s everyday understanding of the biological world. The early twentieth-century pioneers of public health C.-E.A Winslow (1877–1957), and his mentor H. Biggs (1859–1923), conceptualized public health as the ‘purchasable’ science of preventing disease and death from unfavorable economic and living conditions. Their ideas were foundational in shaping public health’s strategy of a ‘war against disease’ (Winslow, 1903), a strategy that was very successful in preventing the…Read more
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4Making Deliberative Democracy a more practical idealEuropean Journal of Political Theory 4 (2): 200-208. 2004.
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3An introduction to aretaic theories of lawIn Colin Patrick Farrelly & Lawrence Solum (eds.), Virtue jurisprudence, Palgrave-macmillan. 2007.
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3John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 21 (6): 437-439. 2001.
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1Civic Liberalism and the “Dialogical Model” of Judicial ReviewLaw and Philosophy 25 (5): 489-531. 2006.In a world that is inherently indeterminate, a suitable theory of distributive justice must perhaps itself be indeterminate, and its indeterminacies must accommodate those of the world where relevant.Russell Hardin, Indeterminacy and Society.
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1"mind The Gap": Beneficence And SenescencePublic Affairs Quarterly 24 (2): 115-130. 2010.Over the past four decades, philosophers have tackled a broad range of topical issues in applied ethics and political theory. These range from abortion and animal rights to multiculturalism, and the distribution of wealth and income.1 There now exists a plethora of normative theories and principles that moral and political philosophers can invoke to tackle a diverse range of practical issues. Yet, oddly, science and science policy remain relatively marginalized topics in moral and political phil…Read more
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1their children? Society faces a diverse range of policy a reality than it is today? I do not intend to put forth a conoptions as it begins to grapple with the regulation of new clusive answer to this question but rather examine three human genetic technologies. From the issues of gene..
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Critical Notice: "The Social Character of Freedom of Expression"Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 14 (2): 261-271. 2001.Richard Moon's The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression is an insightful and comprehensive study of the right to freedom of expression in Canadian constitutional law. Moon begins by stressing the importance of the distinction between freedom of expression as a moral or political ideal and as a constitutional right. The former certainly informs the latter. But the general structure of constitutional adjudication will also play an important role in determining how these issues are re…Read more
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Queen's UniversityRegular Faculty
Kingston, Ontario, Canada