Elizabeth Lanphier

Cincinnati Children's Hospital
University of Cincinnati
  • Cincinnati Children's Hospital
    Assistant Professor
  • University of Cincinnati
    Department of Philosophy
    Pediatrics (College of Medicine)
    Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Affiliated)
    Assistant Professor
APA Central Division
  •  3
    If You Are in the Chart, You Help Chart the Course
    with Samantha Joan Palmaccio-Lawton, Kara B. Markham, and Maria Barnes-Davis
    American Journal of Bioethics 24 (2): 58-61. 2024.
    The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision not only upended constitutional protections for abortion in the United States but also bolstered legislative and cultural int...
  •  4
    Professionalism or prejudice? Modelling roles, risking microaggressions
    with Emily Miller, Sonya Tang Girdwood, Anita Shah, and Chidiogo Anyigbo
    Journal of Medical Ethics 49 (12): 822-823. 2023.
    We agree with McCullough, Coverdale and Chervenak1 that ‘medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model’ to counter ‘incivility’ in medicine, which can include ‘dismissing’ or ‘demeaning others’. They note that ‘women may be at greater risk for experiencing incivility compared with men’, as may other individuals who experience ‘patterns of disrespect based on minority status’. The authors promote ‘professionalism’ and ‘etiquette’ to foster civility wi…Read more
  •  5
    Birth, trust and consent: reasonable mistrust and trauma-informed remedies
    with Leah Lomotey-Nakon
    Journal of Medical Ethics 49 (9): 624-625. 2023.
    In ‘The ethics of consent during labour and birth: episiotomies,’ van der Pijl et al 1 respond to the prevalence of unconsented procedures during labour, proposing a set of necessary features for adequate consent to episiotomy. Their model emphasises information sharing, value exploration and trust between a pregnant person and their healthcare provider(s). While focused on consent to episiotomy, van der Pijl et al contend their approach may be applicable to consent for other procedures during l…Read more
  •  8
    Expanding the Frame: An Afrofuturist Response to Artificial Womb Technology
    with Leah Lomotey-Nakon
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (5): 99-101. 2023.
    De Bie et al. (2023) provide a thorough review of the existing literature concerning Artificial Womb Technology (AWT) using the PRISMA-ScR method. The summary of the scoping review they conducted a...
  •  7
    Measuring Moral Distress: Improving the Tools by Educating Clinicians
    with Lauren Boxell
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (4): 61-63. 2023.
    In “Moral Distress: What are we measuring?” Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023) rightly note that varied understanding of moral distress, paired with shortcomings in existing empirical tools to accurat...
  •  9
    Whose Trauma? Who’s Trauma Informed?
    with Uchenna E. Anani
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (1): 98-100. 2023.
    This case raises questions of what “trauma-informed care” (TIC) means to the medical team caring for Maurice and how they embrace a TIC approach. There are established principles of trauma-informed...
  •  5
    Editors' Introduction to the Special Issue on the Translational Work of Bioethics
    with Larry R. Churchill
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 65 (4): 515-520. 2022.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors' Introduction to the Special Issue on the Translational Work of BioethicsElizabeth Lanphier and Larry R. ChurchillRecent essays in Perspectives and Biology and Medicine, including "Can Clinical Ethics Survive Climate Change" by Andrew Jameton and Jessica Pierce and "Ethical Maxims for a Marginally Inhabitable Planet" by David Schenck and Larry R. Churchill, both appearing in the Autumn 2021 issue, inspired conversations betwe…Read more
  •  5
    Bioethics and Civic Education in a Post-Roe America
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 65 (4): 654-663. 2022.
    ABSTRACT:This essay explores how bioethics as a field, rather than as a collection of individual efforts by bioethicists working within it, can inform deliberation on matters of bioethical import that, for better or worse, are in the hands of civic processes. It is motivated by the repeal of a constitutional protection of abortion access in the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which effectively returned abortion regulations to states rather than setting a base…Read more
  •  3
    Stepping Up or Stepping Back: FDA Roles in Producing and Shaping Knowledge of Pediatric Covid-19 Vaccines
    with Sophia Bessias
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (10): 26-28. 2022.
    We agree with Svirsky, Howard, and Berman that the US Food and Drug Administration plays various roles, only one of which is the technical review and evaluation of product safety and e...
  •  5
    A Mixed Methods Analysis of Requests for Religious Exemptions to a COVID-19 Vaccine Requirement
    with Armand H. Matheny Antommaria, Anne Housholder, and Michelle McGowan
    AJOB Empirical Bioethics 14 (1): 15-22. 2023.
    Background: While employers are increasingly considering and implementing COVID-19 vaccination requirements, little is known about the reasons offered by employees seeking religious exemptions.Methods: We conducted a mixed methods analysis of all the requests for religious exemptions submitted during the initial implementation of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement at a single academic medical center in the United States.Results: Five hundred sixty-five (3.4%) employees requested religious exempt…Read more
  •  8
    The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism by Rosamond Rhodes (review)
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 15 (2): 174-178. 2022.
    Rosamond Rhodes has written a welcome, clear, and expansive yet precise book that challenges the hegemonic influence of principlism in biomedical ethics and presents a viable alternative. At the outset, Rhodes critiques the idea of common morality underpinning the four principles from Tom Beauchamp and James Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics and ten rules from Bernard Gert, Charles Culver, and K. Danner Clouser in Bioethics: A Systematic Approach. Rhodes not only argues for why medicin…Read more
  •  7
    Enriching the Theory and Practice of Trauma Informed Ethics Consultation
    with Uchenna E. Anani
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (9): 7-9. 2022.
    We are grateful for the excellent and incisive commentaries on our paper “Trauma Informed Ethics Consultation” (Lanphier and Anani 2022). It is heartening to see most commentators agree with why cl...
  •  17
    Abortion and the Intersection of Ethics, Activism, and Politics
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (8): 72-74. 2022.
    Katie Watson describes her article in this special issue as “a call to bioethicists to recognize the ways we may have undervalued the moral status of women in our analytic frameworks, and to delibe...
  •  6
    Physician outreach during a pandemic: shared or collective responsibility?
    Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (7): 495-496. 2022.
    In ‘Ethics of sharing medical knowledge with the community: is the physician responsible for medical outreach during a pandemic?’ Strous and Karni note that the revised physician’s pledge in the World Medical Association Declaration of Geneva obligates individual physicians to share medical knowledge, which they interpret to mean a requirement to share knowledge publicly and through outreach. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Strous and Karni defend a form of medical paternalism insofar a…Read more
  •  4
    Supporting Marginalized Decision-Maker’s Autonomy(ies)
    with Armand H. Matheny Antommaria
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (6): 22-24. 2022.
    Amy E. Caruso Brown (2022) considers situations in which a minor child’s parent or legal guardian (the “marginalized decision-maker (MDM)”) defers to another individual (the “primary decision-maker...
  •  8
    Public Trust and Medical Ethics (review)
    Hastings Center Report 52 (2): 58-59. 2022.
    Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 58-59, March‐April 2022.
  •  12
    Age—not sex or gender—makes the case of Ellie Anderson Complex
    Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (4): 266-267. 2022.
    In ‘The Complex Case of Ellie Anderson’, Joona Rasanen and Anna Smajdor raise several ethical questions about the case. One question asks, but does not answer, whether Ellie faced discrimination for being transgender when her mother was not allowed access to Ellie’s sperm following her death. In raising the question, the authors imply anti-trans bias may have influenced this determination. However, this inference is not supported by current ethical and legal guidance for posthumous use of gamete…Read more
  •  9
    An Institutional Ethic of Care
    In Elizabeth Victor & Laura K. Guidry-Grimes (eds.), Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, Springer. pp. 169-193. 2021.
    Care ethics has a curious relationship to justice. Care theorists alternately portray justice as separate from yet at times intersecting with, parallel and distinct from, or falling within yet secondary to care. Theories of justice tend to imagine an ideal world, and reason about justice from an imagined universal position. Care ethics, on the other hand, respond to a philosophical history in which abstract universal reasoning occludes the particular needs and contributions of marginalized or op…Read more
  •  10
    Breaking Down Communication: Narrative Medicine and its Distinctions
    Social Philosophy Today 37 197-205. 2021.
    In “Communication Breakdown: Probing the Limits of Narrative Medicine and its Discontents” (2019), David J. Leichter engages practical experience teaching medical ethics in the college classroom to explore opportunities—and limits—of narrative engagement within medical ethics and clinical practice. Leichter raises concerns regarding potential epistemic harms, both testimonial and hermeneutical, when individuals, or their pain, cannot be adequately recognized through expressive modes traditionall…Read more
  •  13
    Can Covid-19 vaccines be used off-label? Should they be? These were questions on the minds of parents, pediatricians, and the media when the FDA fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for people aged 16 and up. Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics cautioned against pediatric off-label use of the vaccine, and the CDC Covid-19 Vaccine Provider Agreement appears to prohibit it. After briefly contextualizing ethical and legal precedents regarding off-label use, we offer an analysis of…Read more
  •  10
    Friends and Citizens in Plato’s Crito
    Philosophy in the Contemporary World 27 (1): 44-67. 2021.
    I propose a revisionary reading of Plato’s Crito focusing on the dramatic rendering of the friendship between Crito and Socrates, which I argue affords a model for political participation in a social contract. Their friendship models how citizens can come to be conventionally related to one another, and how they should treat one another internal to that relationship. This approach is apt for contemporary democratic theory, perhaps more so than standard interpretations of the political theory tra…Read more
  •  12
    Trading Cultural Competency for Trauma Informed Care
    with Uchenna Anani and Dalia Feltman
    American Journal of Bioethics 21 (9): 13-16. 2021.
    Berger and Miller argue that cultural competency as an educational tool for physicians-in-training fails to address structural inequality and systemic oppression. Instead, it focuses on “cul...
  •  26
    Narrative and Medicine: Premises, Practices, Pragmatism
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 64 (2): 211-234. 2021.
    Narrative is now a commonly used term in medical education, ethics, and practice. Yet the concept of narrative defies singular definition, and definitional and functional pluralism about narrative in health care remains underappreciated. Diverse conceptualizations of narrative are generically grouped under umbrella terms like “medical humanities” or “narrative medicine.” Such broad grouping risks undermining attention to relevant differences in use, meaning, or theory of narrative, overestimatin…Read more
  •  21
    Trust, Transparency, and Trauma Informed Care
    American Journal of Bioethics 21 (5): 38-40. 2021.
    Not only is deception commonplace in medical encounters, according to Christopher Meyers (2021), but the clinical ethicist might have moral obligations to support and even enact deception. Descriptively Meyers is right that there are “opportunistic, self-interested and benevolent reasons” for deception through omission and commission in clinical medicine. But it is possible to retain this premise while rejecting the normative conclusion that the clinical ethicist “should sometimes be an active p…Read more
  •  14
    Aporia of the Gift: Precision Medicine’s Obligations Without Expectations
    American Journal of Bioethics 21 (4): 83-85. 2021.
    In “Obligations of the Gift” Sandra Lee (2021) suggests that social norms of reciprocity and the expectations and obligations associated with gift-giving afford a framework for addressing social justice considerations in precision medicine. Lee is particularly concerned with obligations to marginalized or oppressed racial and ethnic groups, which are also historically under-represented populations in precision medicine. Obligations arise, Lee argues, through the “gift” that research participants…Read more
  •  43
    A Problem of Self-Ownership for Reproductive Justice
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (2): 312-327. 2021.
    This paper raises three concerns regarding self-ownership rhetoric to describe autonomy within healthcare in general and reproductive justice in specific. First, private property and the notion of “ownership” embedded in “self-ownership,” rely on and replicate historical injustices related to the initial acquisition of property. Second, not all individuals are recognized as selves with equal access to self-ownership. Third, self-ownership only justifies negative liberties. To fully protect healt…Read more
  •  26
    Trauma Informed Ethics Consultation
    with Uchenna E. Anani
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (5): 45-57. 2022.
    We argue for the addition of trauma informed awareness, training, and skill in clinical ethics consultation by proposing a novel framework for Trauma Informed Ethics Consultation (TIEC). This approach expands on the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) framework for, and key insights from feminist approaches to, ethics consultation, and the literature on trauma informed care (TIC). TIEC keeps ethics consultation in line with the provision of TIC in other clinical settings. Most c…Read more
  •  13
    Ethical Home
    Social Philosophy Today 36 105-124. 2020.
    I argue for a conception of moral community as “ethical home,” in which home is a hybrid public and private concept, cohered through members’ complicit participation in the formation and endorsement of the community’s values and practices. In this essay I present and defend three premises that comprise my argument for this conception of moral community as an ethical home. First, I make a case for why “home” is an apt conception of moral community, defining the features of home relevant to my cla…Read more
  •  8
    The Strawman at the Pox Party
    with Kelly W. Harris
    American Journal of Bioethics 20 (9): 73-75. 2020.
    In “Pox Parties for Grannies?” Malm and Navin (2020) persuasively argue that it is unjust to permit, let alone promote, avoidable harm to children by knowingly and purposefully not vaccinating them...