•  3
    Forgetting how we ate: personalised nutrition and the strategic uses of history
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 46 (1): 1-28. 2024.
    Personalised nutrition (PN) has emerged over the past twenty years as a promising area of research in the postgenomic era and has been popularized as the new big thing out of molecular biology. Advocates of PN claim that previous approaches to nutrition sought general and universal guidance that applied to all people. In contrast, they contend that PN operates with the principle that “one size does not fit all” when it comes to dietary guidance. While the molecular mechanisms studied within PN a…Read more
  •  4
    The environmental movement has brought attention to the reality that we are not only connected to the natural world, but the ways in which we transform nature have a significant impact on our well-...
  •  7
    Going the Distance
    with Angie Sassano, Ian Kerridge, and Wendy Lipworth
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 20 (2): 225-235. 2023.
    Qualitative studies on assisted reproductive technology commonly focus on the perspectives of participants living in major metropolises. In doing so, the experiences of those living outside major cities, and the unique way conditions of spatiality shape access to treatment, are elided. In this paper, we examine how location and regionality in Australia impact upon access and experience of reproductive services. We conducted twelve qualitative interviews with participants residing in regional are…Read more
  •  3
    The challenges to designing and implementing ethically and politically meaningful eating policies are many and complex. This article provides a brief overview of Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti’s Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach while also critically engaging with the place of racial justice, global interconnectedness, and debates over science in thinking about ethics and politics of public health nutrition and policy. I do not aim to burden Barnhill and …Read more
  •  2
    Lead Essay—Rural Bioethics
    with Danielle L. Couch
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 20 (2): 177-180. 2023.
  •  48
    What Should We Eat? Biopolitics, Ethics, and Nutritional Scientism
    with Donald B. Thompson
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (4): 587-599. 2015.
    Public health advocates, government agencies, and commercial organizations increasingly use nutritional science to guide food choice and diet as a way of promoting health, preventing disease, or marketing products. We argue that in many instances such references to nutritional science can be characterized as nutritional scientism. We examine three manifestations of nutritional scientism: the simplification of complex science to increase the persuasiveness of dietary guidance, superficial and hon…Read more
  •  32
    At once historical and philosophical, Michel Foucault used his genealogical method to expose the contingent conditions constituting the institutions, sciences and practices of the present. His analyses of the asylum, clinic, prison and sexuality revealed the historical, political and epistemological forces that make up certain types of subjects, sciences and sites of control. Although noting the originality of his work, a number of early critics questioned the normative framework of Foucault's m…Read more
  •  27
    Debates about Conflict of Interest in Medicine: Deconstructing a Divided Discourse
    with Serena Purdy, Miles Little, and Wendy Lipworth
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (1): 135-149. 2017.
    The pharmaceutical industry plays an increasingly dominant role in healthcare, raising concerns about “conflicts of interest” on the part of the medical professionals who interact with the industry. However, there is considerable disagreement over the extent to which COI is a problem and how it should be managed. Participants in debates about COI have become entrenched in their views, which is both unproductive and deeply confusing for the majority of medical professionals trying to work in an i…Read more
  •  28
    Bioethics and Epistemic Scientism
    with Claire Hooker and Ian Kerridge
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (4): 565-567. 2015.
  •  45
    On the fragility of medical virtue in a neoliberal context: the case of commercial conflicts of interest in reproductive medicine
    with Brette Blakely, Ian Kerridge, Paul Komesaroff, Ian Olver, and Wendy Lipworth
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37 (1): 97-111. 2016.
    Social, political, and economic environments play an active role in nurturing professional virtue. Yet, these environments can also lead to the erosion of virtue. As such, professional virtue is fragile and vulnerable to environmental shifts. While physicians are often considered to be among the most virtuous of professional groups, concern has also always existed about the impact of commercial arrangements on physicians’ willingness and capacity to enact their professional virtues. This article…Read more
  •  23
    Health Professionals “Make Their Choice”: Pharmaceutical Industry Leaders’ Understandings of Conflict of Interest
    with Quinn Grundy, Lisa Tierney, and Wendy Lipworth
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (4): 541-553. 2017.
    Conflicts of interest, stemming from relationships between health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry, remain a highly divisive and inflammatory issue in healthcare. Given that most jurisdictions rely on industry to self-regulate with respect to its interactions with health professionals, it is surprising that little research has explored industry leaders’ understandings of conflicts of interest. Drawing from in-depth interviews with ten pharmaceutical industry leaders based in Austral…Read more
  •  27
    Declarations, accusations and judgement: examining conflict of interest discourses as performative speech-acts
    with Wendy Lipworth and Ian Kerridge
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 19 (3): 455-462. 2016.
    Concerns over conflicts of interest in academic research and medical practice continue to provoke a great deal of discussion. What is most obvious in this discourse is that when COIs are declared, or perceived to exist in others, there is a focus on both the descriptive question of whether there is a COI and, subsequently, the normative question of whether it is good, bad or neutral. We contend, however, that in addition to the descriptive and normative, COI declarations and accusations can be u…Read more
  •  66
    Pastoral power and the confessing subject in patient-centred communication
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 6 (4): 483-493. 2009.
    This paper examines the power relations in “patient-centred communication”. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault I argue that while patient-centred communication frees the patient from particular aspects of medical power, it also introduces the patient to new power relations. The paper uses a Foucauldian analysis of power to argue that patient-centred communication introduces a new dynamic of power relations to the medical encounter, entangling and producing the patient to participate in the m…Read more
  •  46
    The Political and Ethical Challenge of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis
    with Ross Upshur, Ian Kerridge, Wendy Lipworth, and Chris Degeling
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (1): 107-113. 2015.
    This article critically examines current responses to multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and argues that bioethics needs to be willing to engage in a more radical critique of the problem than is currently offered. In particular, we need to focus not simply on market-driven models of innovation and anti-microbial solutions to emergent and re-emergent infections such as TB. The global community also needs to address poverty and the structural factors that entrench inequalities—thus moving beyond th…Read more
  •  8
    This book uses current debates over Michel Foucault’s method of genealogy as a practice of critique to reveal the historical constitution of contemporary alternative food discourses.
  •  34
    Medical and non-medical experts increasingly argue that individuals, whether they are diagnosed with a specific chronic disease or condition or not (and whether they are judged at minimal risk of these consequences or not), have an obligation to make ‘healthy’ food choices. We argue that this obligation is neither scientifically nor ethically justified at the level of the individual. Our intent in the article is not simply to argue against moralization of the value of prudential uses of food for…Read more
  •  36
    Debate concerning the social impact of obesity has been ongoing since at least the 1980s. Bioethicists, however, have been relatively silent. If obesity is addressed it tends to be in the context of resource allocation or clinical procedures such as bariatric surgery. However, prominent bioethicists Peter Singer and Dan Callahan have recently entered the obesity debate to argue that obesity is not simply a clinical or personal issue but an ethical issue with social and political consequences. Th…Read more
  •  34
    An Agrarian Imaginary in Urban Life: Cultivating Virtues and Vices Through a Conflicted History (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27 (2): 265-286. 2014.
    This paper explores the influence and use of agrarian thought on collective understandings of food practices as sources of ethical and communal value in urban contexts. A primary proponent of agrarian thought that this paper engages is Paul Thompson and his exceptional book, The Agrarian Vision. Thompson aims to use agrarian ideals of agriculture and communal life to rethink current issues of sustainability and environmental ethics. However, Thompson perceives the current cultural mood as hostil…Read more
  •  481
    The Violence of Care: An Analysis of Foucault's Pastor
    Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory. 2010.
    This paper will address Foucault’s analysis of the Hebrew and Christian pastor and argue that Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power in Security, Territory, Population neglects an important characteristic of the shepherd/pastor figure: violence. Despite Foucault’s close analysis of the early development of the Hebrew pastor, he overlooks the role of violence and instead focuses on sacrifice. However the sacrificial pastor does not figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew pastor is called to le…Read more
  •  2
    Over the past 25 years, activists, farmers and scholars have been arguing that the industrialized global food system erodes democracy, perpetuates injustices, undermines population health and is environmentally unsustainable. In an attempt to resist these effects, activists have proposed alternative food networks that draw on ideas and practices from pre-industrial agrarian smallholder farming, as well as contemporary peasant movements. This book uses current debates over Michel Foucault’s metho…Read more
  •  1
    I have been invited to reflect on “Discourse communities and the discourses of experience” a paper co-authored by Little, Jordens, and Sayers and discuss how their analysis of discourse communities has influenced the development of bioethics and consider its influence now and potential effects in the future. Their paper examines the way different discourse communities are shaped by different experiences and desires. The shared language and experiences can provide a sense of belonging and familia…Read more
  •  18
    Race, Reproduction, and Biopolitics: A Review Essay
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 18 (1): 99-107. 2021.
    This review essay critically examines Catherine Mills’s Biopolitics and Camisha Russell’s The Assisted Reproduction of Race. Although distinct works, the centrality of race and reproduction provides a point of connection and an opening into reframing contemporary debates within bioethics and biopolitics. In reviewing these books together I hope to show how biopolitical theory and critical philosophy of race can be useful in looking at bioethical problems from a new perspective that open up diffe…Read more
  •  5
    Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Body
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 14 (1): 157-161. 2021.
  •  8
    Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Body by Corine Pelluchon
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 14 (1): 157-161. 2021.
    Nourishment is a rich and ambitious text that situates human existence in its ecological materiality to broaden our ethical and political responsibilities beyond currently living individuals. With food procurement and nourishment as her focus, Pelluchon asks what do we owe our ancestors, what are our duties to future generations, and how are we to relate to nonhuman beings with whom we share the world.The objective of the book is “to propose a philosophy of existence that integrates what ecology…Read more
  •  21
    Lead Essay—Institutional Racism, Whiteness, and the Role of Critical Bioethics
    with Yin Paradies and Amanuel Elias
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 18 (1): 9-12. 2021.
    This paper discusses the ethical implications of racism and some of the various costs associated with racism occurring at the institutional level. We argue that, in many ways, the laws, social structures, and institutions in Western society have operated to perpetuate the continuation of historical legacies of racial inequities with or without the intention of individuals and groups in society. By merely maintaining existing structures, laws, and social norms, society can impose social, economic…Read more
  •  19
    After Conflicts of Interest: From Procedural Short-Cut to Ethico-Political Debate
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 17 (2): 245-255. 2020.
    This paper critically examines the proliferation of conflicts of interest discourse and how the most common conceptions of COI presuppose a hierarchy of primary and secondary interests. I show that a form of professional virtue or duty is commonly employed to give the primary interest normative force. However, I argue that in the context of increasingly commercialized healthcare neither virtue nor duty can do the normative work expected of them. Furthermore, I suggest that COI discourse is sympt…Read more
  • Food at the nexus of bioethics and biopolitics
    In Mary C. Rawlinson & Caleb Ward (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics, Routledge. pp. 167--177. 2017.