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148Responsibility for global healthTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27 (1): 95-114. 2005.There are several reasons for the current prominence of global health issues. Among the most important is the growing awareness that some risks to health are global in scope and can only be countered by global cooperation. In addition, human rights discourse and, more generally, the articulation of a coherent cosmopolitan ethical perspective that acknowledges the importance of all persons, regardless of where they live, provide a normative basis for taking global health seriously as a moral issu…Read more
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185In Harm's Way: Essays in Honor of Joel Feinberg (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1994.For several decades the work of Joel Feinberg has been the most influential in legal, political and social philosophy in the English-speaking world. This 1994 volume honours that body of work by presenting fifteen essays, many of them by leading legal and political philosophers, that explore the problems that have engaged Feinberg over the years. Amongst the topics covered are issues of autonomy, responsibility and liability. It will be a collection of interest to anyone working in moral, legal …Read more
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201Marx, morality, and history: An assessment of recent analytical work on MarxEthics 98 (1): 104-136. 1987.
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192The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their Implications for Moral ProgressEthics 126 (1): 37-67. 2015.Traditional conservative arguments against the possibility of moral progress relied on underevidenced assumptions about the limitations of human nature. Contemporary thinkers have attempted to fill this empirical gap in the conservative argument by appealing to evolutionary science. Such “evoconservative” arguments fail because they overstate the explanatory reach of evolutionary theory. We maintain that no adequate evolutionary explanation has been given for important features of human morality…Read more
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10Toward a Drone Accountability Regime: A RejoinderEthics and International Affairs 29 (1): 67-70. 2015.
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91From nuremburg to kosovo: The morality of illegal international legal reformEthics 111 (4): 673-705. 2001.
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57Choosing who will be disabled: Genetic intervention and the morality of inclusion: Allen BuchananSocial Philosophy and Policy 13 (2): 18-46. 1996.The Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist Walter Gilbert described the mapping and sequencing of the human genome as “the grail of molecular biology.” The implication, endorsed by enthusiasts for the new genetics, is that possessing a comprehensive knowledge of human genetics, like possessing the Holy Grail, will give us miraculous powers to heal the sick, and to reduce human suffering and disabilities. Indeed, the rhetoric invoked to garner public support for the Human Genome Project appears …Read more
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206Political Liberalism and Social EpistemologyPhilosophy and Public Affairs 32 (2): 95-130. 2004.
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195Breaking Evolution's Chains: The Prospect of Deliberate Genetic Modification in HumansJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (1): 6-27. 2011.Many philosophers invoke the "wisdom of nature" in arguing for varying degrees of caution in the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. Because they view natural selection as akin to a master engineer that creates functionally and morally optimal design, these authors tend to regard genetic intervention with suspicion. In Part II, we examine and ultimately reject the evolutionary assumptions that underlie the master engineer analogy (MEA). By highlighting the constraints on ord…Read more
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843Theories of SecessionPhilosophy and Public Affairs 26 (1): 31-61. 1997.All theories of the right to secede either understand the right as a remedial right only or also recognize a primary right to secede. By a right in this context is meant a general, not a special, right (one generated through promising, contract, or some special relationship). Remedial Right Only Theories assert that a group has a general right to secede if and only if it has suffered certain injustices, for which secession is the appropriate remedy of last resort.1 Different Remedial Right Only …Read more
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80The Heart of Human RightsOup Usa. 2013.This book is the first in-depth attempt to provide a moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights
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160Institutions, beliefs and ethics: Eugenics as a case studyJournal of Political Philosophy 15 (1). 2007.
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25Social Moral EpistemologySocial Philosophy and Policy 19 (2): 126-152. 2002.The distinctive aim of applied ethics is to provide guidance as to how we ought to act, as individuals and as shapers of social policies. In this essay, I argue that applied ethics as currently practiced is inadequate and ought to be transformed to incorporate what I shall call social moral epistemology. This is a branch of social epistemology, the study of the social practices and institutions that promote the formation, preservation, and transmission of true beliefs. For example, social episte…Read more
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295Enhancement and the ethics of developmentKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 18 (1). 2008.Much of the debate about the ethics of enhancement has proceeded according to two framing assumptions. The first is that although enhancement carries large social risks, the chief benefits of enhancement are to those who are enhanced (or their parents, in the case of enhancing the traits of children). The second is that, because we now understand the wrongs of state-driven eugenics, enhancements, at least in liberal societies, will be personal goods, chosen or not chosen in a market for enhancem…Read more
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280Recognitional Legitimacy and the State SystemPhilosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1): 46-78. 1999.
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77In Better than Human, noted bioethicist Allen Buchanan grapples with the ethical dilemmas of the medical revolution and biomedical enhancements. One problem, he argues, is that the debate over these enhancements has divided into polar extremes--into denunciations of meddling in the natural order, or else a heady optimism that we can cure all that ails humanity. In fact, Buchanan notes, the human genome has always been unstable, and intervention is no offense against nature.
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40Pharmacogenomics: Ethical and regulatory issuesIn Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford handbook of bioethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.While acknowledging the potential benefits of pharmacogenomics as a methodology, a number of comprehensive reports in the past several years examine a multitude of ethical, legal, and social factors that may limit the extent to which these benefits are realized — and realized in ethically acceptable ways. This article aims to identify and explore the most basic ethical and regulatory issues that are likely to arise if pharmacogenomics becomes widely enough used to have a significant impact on re…Read more
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63Privatization and just healthcareBioethics 9 (3). 1995.When advocates of insurance‐privatization consider whether private insurance‐dominated systems achieve justice at all, they tend to rely on an incomplete set of criteria for a just healthcare system. They also mistakenly assume that it is enough to show that justice is in principle achievable within a private insurance‐dominated system. This essay offers a more complete set of criteria for a just healthcare system. It then argues that the motivational assumptions needed to make insurance‐privati…Read more
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22The Marxian Critique Of justice and RightsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (sup1): 269-306. 1981.Among analytic philosophers in the past few years there has been a growing commitment to taking Marx seriously. Since the publication in 1971 of John Rawls’ book A Theory of Justice there has been a growing commitment to taking problems of Justice and rights seriously. These two developments intersect in mutual criticism: Marx's radical critique challenges the resources of recent theories of rights and Justice, while the sophistication of recent theories raises the possibility that they escape M…Read more
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62Justice and Health Care: Selected EssaysOup Usa. 2009.This book brings together ten influential essays on justice and healthcare, written by a major figure in bioethics and political philosophy. What emerges is a systematic and unified approach to the issues that challenges widely-held dogmas and unsettles the framing assumptions of a number of prominent debates. Unlike most work in bioethics, this book takes the problem of implementing justice seriously, exploring the relationship between institutions, incentives, and moral commitments.
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2401Human nature and enhancementBioethics 23 (3): 141-150. 2008.Appeals to the idea of human nature are frequent in the voluminous literature on the ethics of enhancing human beings through biotechnology. Two chief concerns about the impact of enhancements on human nature have been voiced. The first is that enhancement may alter or destroy human nature. The second is that if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good because, for us, the good is determined by our nature. The first concern assumes that al…Read more
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28Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision MakingCambridge University Press. 1989.This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines …Read more
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