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566A Normative Approach to Artificial Moral AgencyMinds and Machines 30 (2): 195-218. 2020.This paper proposes a methodological redirection of the philosophical debate on artificial moral agency in view of increasingly pressing practical needs due to technological development. This “normative approach” suggests abandoning theoretical discussions about what conditions may hold for moral agency and to what extent these may be met by artificial entities such as AI systems and robots. Instead, the debate should focus on how and to what extent such entities should be included in human prac…Read more
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466The Return of Lombroso? Ethical Aspects of Preventive Forensic ScreeningPublic Health Ethics 8 (3): 270-283. 2015.The vision of legendary criminologist Cesare Lombroso to use scientific theories of individual causes of crime as a basis for screening and prevention programmes targeting individuals at risk for future criminal behaviour has resurfaced, following advances in genetics, neuroscience and psychiatric epidemiology. This article analyses this idea and maps its ethical implications from a public health ethical standpoint. Twenty-seven variants of the new Lombrosian vision of forensic screening and pre…Read more
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252Shared decision-making and patient autonomyTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 30 (4): 289-310. 2009.In patient-centred care, shared decision-making is advocated as the preferred form of medical decision-making. Shared decision-making is supported with reference to patient autonomy without abandoning the patient or giving up the possibility of influencing how the patient is benefited. It is, however, not transparent how shared decision-making is related to autonomy and, in effect, what support autonomy can give shared decision-making. In the article, different forms of shared decision-making ar…Read more
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137This article is not about abortion, but rather about how one can reflect on abortion - in particular its moral and political status. My aim, however, is not to defend any particular position regarding such status, rather, I will try to say something comprehensible about how one can (and cannot) reason one's way from a stand regarding the morality of abortion to a stand on the issue of abortion policy.
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124Shared Decision Making, Paternalism and Patient ChoiceHealth Care Analysis 18 (1): 60-84. 2010.In patient centred care, shared decision making is a central feature and widely referred to as a norm for patient centred medical consultation. However, it is far from clear how to distinguish SDM from standard models and ideals for medical decision making, such as paternalism and patient choice, and e.g., whether paternalism and patient choice can involve a greater degree of the sort of sharing involved in SDM and still retain their essential features. In the article, different versions of SDM …Read more
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120The Morality of InterferenceTheoria 65 (1): 55-69. 1999.This paper is about the idea of a moral distinction between doing harm and allowing harm to occurr. It discusses, and developes a general argument against, the version of the distinction often described as counterfactual, which I characterize in terms of making a moral difference between different ways of causing harm (in contrast to, e.g., the version famously discussed by Jonathan Bennett). The gist of the argument is that all variants of this version of the doing-allowing idea would have to m…Read more
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109Person Centred Care and Shared Decision Making: Implications for Ethics, Public Health and ResearchHealth Care Analysis 20 (3): 231-249. 2012.This paper presents a systematic account of ethical issues actualised in different areas, as well as at different levels and stages of health care, by introducing organisational and other procedures that embody a shift towards person centred care and shared decision-making (PCC/SDM). The analysis builds on general ethical theory and earlier work on aspects of PCC/SDM relevant from an ethics perspective. This account leads up to a number of theoretical as well as empirical and practice oriented i…Read more
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99Adherence, shared decision-making and patient autonomyMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 15 (2): 115-127. 2012.In recent years the formerly quite strong interest in patient compliance has been questioned for being too paternalistic and oriented towards overly narrow biomedical goals as the basis for treatment recommendations. In line with this there has been a shift towards using the notion of adherence to signal an increased weight for patients’ preferences and autonomy in decision making around treatments. This ‘adherence-paradigm’ thus encompasses shared decision-making as an ideal and patient perspec…Read more
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77Moral relativism comes in many forms. Most discussed of these are metaethical ideas that make claim to some form of relativity regarding the truth, meaning and/or knowledge of moral judgements. Notwithstanding the vast differences that exist between more precise versions of metaethical relativism (MR), they all have one basic feature in common: A moral judgement can only be true (or have a certain meaning, or be known) relative to a person or some group of persons. However, a moral judgement to …Read more
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73The goals of public health: An integrated, multidimensional modelPublic Health Ethics 1 (1): 39-52. 2008.While promoting population health has been the classic goal of public health practice and policy, in recent decades, new objectives in terms of autonomy and equality have been introduced. These different goals are analysed, and it is demonstrated how they may conflict severly in several ways, leaving serious unclarities both regarding the normative issue of what goal should be pursued by public health, what that implies in practical terms, and the descriptive issue of what goal that actually is …Read more
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68Ethical issues in forensic psychiatric research on mentally disordered offendersBioethics 24 (1): 35-44. 2009.This paper analyses ethical issues in forensic psychiatric research on mentally disordered offenders, especially those detained in the psychiatric treatment system. The idea of a 'dual role' dilemma afflicting forensic psychiatry is more complicated than acknowledged. Our suggestion acknowledges the good of criminal law and crime prevention as a part that should be balanced against familiar research ethical considerations. Research aiming at improvements of criminal justice and treatment is a so…Read more
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55Divisibility and the Moral Status of EmbryosBioethics 15 (5-6): 382-397. 2001.The phenomenon of twinning in early fetal development has become a popular source for doubt regarding the ascription of moral status to early embryos. In this paper, the possible moral basis for such a line of reasoning is critically analysed with sceptical results. Three different versions of the argument from twinning are considered, all of which are found to rest on confusions between the actual division of embryos involed in twinning and the property of early embryos to be divisible, be base…Read more
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51A Virtue of Precaution Regarding the Moral Status of Animals with Uncertain SentienceJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 30 (2): 213-224. 2017.We address the moral importance of fish, invertebrates such as crustaceans, snails and insects, and other animals about which there is qualified scientific uncertainty about their sentience. We argue that, on a sentientist basis, one can at least say that how such animals fare make ethically significant claims on our character. It is a requirement of a morally decent person that she at least pays attention to and is cautious regarding the possibly morally relevant aspects of such animals. This i…Read more
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50Part I: Introduction to the Philosophy of Hate CrimeIn The Philosophy of Hate Crime Anthology, University of Gothenburg. 2013.
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50The precautionary principle (PP) has been criticised for almost every intellectual sin one may imagine: unclarity, impracticability, rigidity, implausibility etc. Recognising the rather obvious fact that there is no such thing as one PP, this paper attempts to address this criticism on a more constructive note than merely view it as forcing us to be "for or against" precaution. This is done by connecting an underlying ethical ideal regarding the imposition of risks present in most formulations o…Read more
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47The Black Hole Challenge: Precaution, Existential Risks and the Problem of Knowledge GapsEthics, Policy and Environment 22 (1): 49-60. 2019.So-called ‘existential risks’ present virtually unlimited reasons for probing them and responses to them further. The ensuing normative pull to respond to such risks thus seems to present us with r...
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45The morality of scientific opennessScience and Engineering Ethics 2 (4): 411-428. 1996.The ideal of scientific openness — i.e. the idea that scientific information should be freely accessible to interested parties — is strongly supported throughout the scientific community. At the same time, however, this ideal does not appear to be absolute in the everyday practice of science. In order to get the credit for new scientific advances, scientists often keep information to themselves. Also, it is common practice to withhold information obtained in commissioned research when the scient…Read more
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45The Ethics of Screening in Health Care and Medicine: Serving Society Or Serving the Patient?Springer Verlag. 2011.This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs.
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43The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of RiskSpringer. 2011.Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticise…Read more
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39While other parts of medicine and health care seems traditionally to be primarily directed at preventing losses of bodily functions, repairing said functions in the case of such losses, or at least to provide ailment for unpleasant symptoms, sports medicine has allready from the beginning been involved with the project of enhancing bodily functions with regard to sports performance. First, when sports medicine involve itself in the traditional health care activity of prevention, therapy and ailm…Read more
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37Medical genetic interventions can be performed in two ways. First, genetic defects may be repaired (gene therapy). Secondly, a possible future individual (an embryo or a possible combination of gametes) may be preselected because of its favourable genetic make-up (by using genetic diagnostic methods and procedures from reproductive medicine so called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis). The first kind of intervention means that someone gets medical treatment in the normal sense, however, the seco…Read more
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36Person Centered Care and Personalized Medicine: Irreconcilable Opposites or Potential Companions?Health Care Analysis 27 (1): 45-59. 2019.In contrast to standardized guidelines, personalized medicine and person centered care are two notions that have recently developed and are aspiring for more individualized health care for each single patient. While having a similar drive toward individualized care, their sources are markedly different. While personalized medicine stems from a biomedical framework, person centered care originates from a caring perspective, and a wish for a more holistic view of patients. It is unclear to what ex…Read more
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35The Use of Human Biobanks. Ethical, Social, Economical, and Legal Aspects: Edited by M G Hansson. Uppsala University, 2001, free, pp 93. ISBN 91-506-1472-X (review)Journal of Medical Ethics 29 (2): 123-123. 2003.
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35A new landscape of prenatal testing is presently developing, including new techniques for risk-reducing, non-invasive sampling of foetal DNA and drastically enhanced possibilities of what may be rapidly and precisely analysed, surrounded by a growing commercial genetic testing industry and a general trend of individualization in healthcare policies. This article applies a set of established ethical notions from past debates on PNT for analysing PNT screening-programmes in this new situation. Whi…Read more
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33The Legal Ethical Backbone of Conscientious RefusalCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26 (1): 59-68. 2017.
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32While health care goals are usually formulated in terms of the securing of good health for the population, the goal of public health is to an increasing extent, at least in Western countries, being formulated in terms of the provision of societal preconditions for securing of good health. This goal may be attained although no one enjoys good health as a result, namely if people choose not to make use of the preconditions provided. However, reaching this goal may still seem desirable in that it p…Read more
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32Sustainability principle for the ethics of healthcare resource allocationJournal of Medical Ethics 47 (2): 90-97. 2021.We propose a principle of sustainability to complement established principles used for justifying healthcare resource allocation. We argue that the application of established principles of equal treatment, need, prognosis and cost-effectiveness gives rise to what we call negative dynamics: a gradual depletion of the value possible to generate through healthcare. These principles should therefore be complemented by a sustainability principle, making the prospect of negative dynamics a further fac…Read more
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31Sustainable healthcare resource allocation, grounding theories and operational principles: response to our commentatorsJournal of Medical Ethics 48 (1): 38-38. 2022.We proposed adding a sustainability principle to the operational ethical principles guiding public healthcare resources allocation decisions. All our commentators acknowledge our core message: healthcare needs to pay attention to the future. They also strengthen our proposal by offering support by luck egalitarian and Rawlsian arguments, and helpfully point out ambiguities and gaps requiring attention in the further development of the proposal, and its practical implementation.
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30Editorial: New Media and Risky Behavior of Children and Young People: Ethics and Policy Implications. Introducing the Themes and Pushing for MorePublic Health Ethics 7 (1): 1-4. 2014.
Göteborg, Vastra Gotaland, Sweden
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |