•  47
    Dignity, Health, and Membership: Who Counts as One of Us?
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (2): 115-129. 2016.
    This essay serves as an introduction to this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. The five articles in this issue address a range of topics from the human embryo and substantial change to conceptions of disability. They engage claims of moral status, defense of our humanity, and argue for an accurate and just classification of persons of different communities within a healthcare system. I argue in this essay that though their concerns are diverse, the authors in this issue help to an…Read more
  •  30
  •  30
    In this paper, I argue that distinctions between traditional and contemporary accounts of conscience protections, such as the account offered by Aulisio and Arora, fail. These accounts fail because they require an impoverished conception of our moral lives. This failure is due to unnoticed assumptions about the distinction between the traditional and contemporary articulations of conscience protection. My argument proceeds as follows: First, I highlight crucial assumptions in Aulisio and Arora’s…Read more
  •  24
  •  22
    Why Truthfulness is the First of the Virtues
    with Lauris C. Kaldjian
    American Journal of Bioethics 21 (5): 36-38. 2021.
    Christopher Meyers attempts a utilitarian defense of the deception of patients when the purported harms of truthful disclosure outweigh its benefits. He suggests that honesty i...
  •  22
    Kateb, George. Human Dignity (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 66 (2): 369-371. 2012.
  •  19
    The Actionless Agent: An Account of Human-CAI Relationships
    with Charles E. Binkley
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (5): 25-27. 2023.
    We applaud Sedlakova and Trachsel’s work and their description of conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) as possessing a hybrid nature with features of both a tool and an agent (Sedlakova and...
  •  18
    Assessing the performance of ChatGPT in bioethics: a large language models moral compass in medicine
    with Jamie Chen, Angelo Cadiente, and Lora J. Kasselman
    Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (2): 97-101. 2024.
    Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, …Read more
  •  16
    Educating ethically during COVID-19
    with Victoria Wilkins and Daniel Brian Nichols
    International Journal of Ethics Education 6 (1): 177-193. 2021.
    One of the perplexing features of an infectious disease is the damage it causes, not only to physical health, but to mental health and to social relationships. This tension between the separation that is required for safety and the human need for contact is especially felt by institutions of higher education. Many such institutions not only educate students but seek to foster the kinds of communities which have thrived on personal interaction and shared physical space. Different institutions hav…Read more
  •  15
    On Omissions and Artificial Hydration and Nutrition
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (4): 430-443. 2014.
    Understanding what sorts of things one might be responsible for is an important component of understanding what one should do in situations where the administration of artificial hydration and nutrition are required to sustain the life of a patient. Relying on work done in the philosophy of action and on moral responsibility, I consider the implications of omitting the administration of artificial hydration and nutrition and instances in which the omitting agent would and would not be responsibl…Read more
  •  15
    In this paper, I consider the role of conscience in medical practice. If the conscientious practice of individual practitioners cannot be defended or is incoherent or unreasonable on its own merits, then there is little reason to support conscience protection and to argue about its place in the current medical landscape. If this is the case, conscience protection should be abandoned. To the contrary, I argue that conscience protection should not be abandoned. My argument takes the form of an ana…Read more
  •  14
    J Med Philos, 2020; 45: 28–41; doi:_ 10.1093/jmp/jhz031 _.
  •  13
    Treating or Killing? The Divergent Moral Implications of Cardiac Device Deactivation
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 45 (1): 28-41. 2020.
    In this article, I argue that there is a moral difference between deactivating an implantable cardioverter defibrillator and turning off a cardiac pacemaker. It is, at least in most cases, morally permissible to deactivate an ICD. It is not, at least in most cases, morally permissible to turn off a pacemaker in a fully or significantly pacemaker-dependent patient. After describing the relevant medical technologies—pacemakers and ICDs—I continue with contrasting perspectives on the issue of deact…Read more
  •  12
    Don’t Ask Too Much: Non-maleficence as the Guiding Principle in IRB Decision-Making
    with Elli Gourna Paleoudis
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (6): 124-126. 2023.
    In “IRBs and The Protection Inclusion Dilemma: Finding a Balance,” Friesen et al. (2023) argue that IRBs ought to attend more, and better, to the need for the inclusion of under-researched populati...
  •  11
    Discussions of the proper role of conscience and practitioner judgement within medicine have increased of late, and with good reason. The cost of allowing practitioners the space to exercise their best judgement and act according to their conscience is significant. Misuse of such protections carve out societal space in which abuse, discrimination, abandonment of patients, and simple malpractice might occur. These concerns are offered amid a backdrop of increased societal polarization and are abo…Read more
  •  11
    Disproof of Concept: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas Using Algorithms
    with Charles Binkley
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (7): 81-83. 2022.
    Allowing algorithms to guide or determine decision-making in ethically complex situations, and eventually satisfying the need for good clinical ethics consultation work, is a philosophically intere...
  •  10
    Nursing ethics as a distinct entity within bioethics: Implications for clinical ethics practice
    with Maryanne Giuliante
    Nursing Ethics 30 (5): 671-679. 2023.
    The question of whether nursing ethics is a distinct entity within bioethics is an important and thought-provoking one. Though fundamental bioethical principles are appreciated and applied within the practice of nursing ethics, there exist distinct considerations which make nursing ethics a unique subfield of bioethics. In this article, we focus on the importance of relationships as a distinguishing feature of the foundation of nursing ethics, evidenced in its education, practice, and science. N…Read more
  •  9
    Team-teaching an interdisciplinary undergraduate bioethics course
    with Jennifer L. Hess
    International Journal of Ethics Education 5 (2): 233-241. 2020.
    The authors, one a trained geneticist and the other a trained ethicist, designed and team-taught a bioethics course where nineteen third- and fourth-year undergraduate students were enrolled at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the fall 2016 semester. The syllabus, including democratically-chosen ethical debate topics, peer-led student working groups, and varied assessment methods were novel aspects of the course. The students, being either philosophy or biology majors or minors,…Read more
  •  9
    Considerations of Conscience
    HEC Forum 33 (3): 165-174. 2021.
    The proper role of conscience in healthcare continues to be a topic of deep interest for bioethicists, healthcare professionals, and health policy experts. This issue of HEC Forum brings together a collection of articles about features of these ongoing discussions of conscience, advancing the conversations about conscience in healthcare from a variety of perspectives and on a variety of fronts. Some articles in this issue take up particularly challenging cases of conscientious objection in pract…Read more
  •  9
    Informed Consent for Clinician-AI Collaboration and Patient Data Sharing: Substantive, Illusory, or Both
    with Charles E. Binkley
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (10): 83-85. 2023.
    In the piece, “What Should ChatGPT Mean for Bioethics?” Professor Cohen proposes that the introduction of AI generally, and generative AI specifically, requires that patients be informed of, and co...
  •  9
    Discussions of the proper role of conscience and practitioner judgement within medicine have increased of late, and with good reason. The cost of allowing practitioners the space to exercise their best judgement and act according to their conscience is significant. Misuse of such protections carve out societal space in which abuse, discrimination, abandonment of patients, and simple malpractice might occur. These concerns are offered amid a backdrop of increased societal polarization and are abo…Read more
  •  8
    Why Clinicians Do Not Have a Duty to Participate in Pragmatic Clinical Trials
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (8): 81-83. 2023.
    In their thoughtful and well-supported target article, Andrew Garland, Stephanie Morain, Jeremy Sugarman (2023) argue that clinicians have a duty to participate in pragmatic clinical trials. This d...
  •  5
    What Is a Physician? Navigating Incommensurable Spheres of Role Morality
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (12): 44-46. 2023.
    In their compelling argument for the use of role morality as a means to aid physicians in navigating potential conflicts of interest, Doernberg and Truog (2023) posit the existence of distinct sphe...
  •  3
    Discussions of the proper role of conscience and practitioner judgement within medicine have increased of late, and with good reason. The cost of allowing practitioners the space to exercise their best judgement and act according to their conscience is significant. Misuse of such protections carve out societal space in which abuse, discrimination, abandonment of patients, and simple malpractice might occur. These concerns are offered amid a backdrop of increased societal polarization and are abo…Read more
  •  2
    Respecting the Value-Laden Nature of Participant Preferences: AI, Digital Phenotyping, and Psychiatry
    with Jack Noto, Daniel Silverstein, and Charles E. Binkley
    American Journal of Bioethics 24 (2): 93-96. 2024.
    We applaud Shen et al. (2024) for offering a framework to address how to return research results from digital phenotyping within the discipline of psychiatry. However, given the value-laden nature...