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402Building Community Capacity with Philosophy: Toolbox Dialogue and Climate ResilienceEcology and Society 27 (2). 2022.In this article, we describe a project in which philosophy, in combination with methods drawn from mental modeling, was used to structure dialogue among stakeholders in a region-scale climate adaptation process. The case study we discuss synthesizes the Toolbox dialogue method, a philosophically grounded approach to enhancing communication and collaboration in complex research and practice, with a mental modeling approach rooted in risk analysis, assessment, and communication to structure conver…Read more
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212Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property RightsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (4): 681-695. 2014.In debates about the moral foundations of intellectual property, one very popular strand concerns the role of labor as a moral basis for intellectual property rights. This idea has a great deal of intuitive plausibility; but is there a way to make it philosophically precise? That is, does labor provide strong reasons to grant intellectual property rights to intellectual laborers? In this paper, I argue that the answer to that question is “yes”. I offer a new view, different from existing labor t…Read more
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51Moving Beyond ‘Therapy’ and ‘Enhancement’ in the Ethics of Gene EditingCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 28 (4): 695-707. 2019.:Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, expectations about the potential for altering genes and controlling our biology at the fundamental level have been sky high. These expectations have gone largely unfulfilled. But though the dream of being able to control our biology is still far off, gene editing research has made enormous strides toward potential clinical use. This paper argues that when it comes to determining permissible uses of gene editing in one important medical context—ger…Read more
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44Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 5, Page 608-609, June 2022.
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38Gene Editing: How Can You Ask “Whether” If You Don't Know “How”?Hastings Center Report 51 (3): 13-17. 2021.Though questions about whether gene editing should be done at all have dominated ethical discussion, a literature about how it can be done ethically has been growing. Work on responsible translational pathways for human germline gene editing has been criticized for focusing on the wrong questions. But questions about responsible translational pathways—questions about how gene editing could be done ethically—are, in an important sense, prior to questions about whether it is desirable and permissi…Read more
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36Diagnostic Justice: Testing for Covid-19European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 17 (2). 2021.Diagnostic testing can be used for many purposes, including testing to facilitate the clinical care of individual patients, testing as an inclusion criterion for clinical trial participation, and both passive and active surveillance testing of the general population in order to facilitate public health outcomes, such as the containment or mitigation of an infectious disease. As such, diagnostic testing presents us with ethical questions that are, in part, already addressed in the literature on c…Read more
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31Revising, Correcting, and Transferring GenesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (8): 7-18. 2020.The distinction between germline and somatic gene editing is fundamental to the ethics of human gene editing. Multiple conferences of scientists, ethicists, and policymakers, and multiple professional bodies, have called for moratoria on germline gene editing, and editing of human germline cells is considered to be an ethical “red line” that either never should be crossed, or should only be crossed with great caution and care. However, as research on germline gene editing has progressed, it has …Read more
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29Intergenerational monitoring in clinical trials of germline gene editingJournal of Medical Ethics 46 (3): 183-187. 2020.Design of clinical trials for germline gene editing stretches current accepted standards for human subjects research. Among the challenges involved is a set of issues concerningintergenerational monitoring—long-term follow-up study of subjects and their descendants. Because changes made at the germline would be heritable, germline gene editing could have adverse effects on individuals’ health that can be passed on to future generations. Determining whether germline gene editing is safe and effec…Read more
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25Whose Genome? Which Genetics?American Journal of Bioethics 23 (7): 50-53. 2023.Despite what many critics see as an inability to deliver much in the way of therapeutic value (Hunter and Drazen 2019), genetics remains a bottomless source of fascination, trepidation, and reflect...
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23Days of Future Past: Reply to Open Peer Commentaries on “Revising, Correcting, and Transferring Genes”American Journal of Bioethics 20 (8). 2020.Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W1-W3.
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21Trojan Horses, Clinical Utility, and Parfitian PuzzlesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 22 (9): 16-18. 2022.There is a burgeoning corner of the philosophical literature on germline gene editing (GGE) about whether GGE is “person-affecting” or “identify-affecting.” The distinction between actions that aff...
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21Global health and global governance of emerging biomedical technologiesJournal of Medical Ethics 49 (10): 719-720. 2023.Global governance of emerging, disruptive biomedical technologies presents a multitude of ethical problems. The recent paper by Shoziet alraises some of these problems in the context of a discussion of what could be themostdisruptive (and most morally fraught) emerging biomedical technology—human germline genome editing. At the heart of their argument is the claim that, for something like gene editing, there is likely to be tension between the interests of specific states in crafting regulation …Read more
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3Understanding scientists' computational modeling decisions about climate risk management strategies using values-informed mental modelsGlobal Environmental Change 42 107-116. 2017.When developing computational models to analyze the tradeoffs between climate risk management strategies (i.e., mitigation, adaptation, or geoengineering), scientists make explicit and implicit decisions that are influenced by their beliefs, values and preferences. Model descriptions typically include only the explicit decisions and are silent on value judgments that may explain these decisions. Eliciting scientists’ mental models, a systematic approach to determining how they think about climat…Read more
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Portland State UniversityRegular Faculty
Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Philosophy of Biology |