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2What, If Anything, Should Count as Elder Abuse?In Michael Boylan (ed.), International Public Health Policy and Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 309-318. 2023.The concept of elder abuseElder abuse has become increasingly prominent in public health. It raises problems that call for critical discussion, especially in light of the COVID pandemic. This essay offers such discussion, including discussion of whether the concept is worth retaining at all.
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16Commentary on ‘expressivism at the beginning and end of life’Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (8): 548-549. 2020.Death can be good— I’ll tell you how. Just have it come Decades from now.1 Full disclosure: The above poem expresses my outlook, and I have trouble empathising with people who want to die. But that does not make me unable to evaluate objections to the expressivist argument against PAS. Reed sets forth the expressivist argument as follows: ‘[W]hen we allow PAS for individuals who are terminally ill or facing some severe disease or disability, we send a message of disrespect to all individuals who…Read more
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66Death is a Punch in the Jaw: Life-Extension and its DiscontentsIn Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford handbook of bioethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.This article deals both with greatly extended finite life and with immortality and uses the term ‘greatly extended life’ to cover both. Except where indicated, it proceeds from some assumptions adapted from Christine Overall. First, people would know the life expectancy in their society or would know that they were immortal. Second, everyone would have the opportunity to choose greatly extended life. Third, greatly extended life would not be mandatory; people would be able to opt out at any poin…Read more
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4Coronavirus Is a Curse; Discrimination Makes it WorseEthics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 11 (1): 9-16. 2020.
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13Coronavirus Is a Curse / Discrimination Makes It WorseEthics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine: An International Journal. forthcoming.
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37“I Support the Right to Die. You Go First”: Bias and Physician-Assisted SuicideIn David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 703-715. 2018.Consider these three positions about physician-assisted suicide:Physician-assisted suicide should be illegal for everyone.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for only the terminally ill.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for all competent adults.So far, the debate in America has been primarily between positions 1 and 2. I think it should be between positions 1 and 3. Both those positions embody reasonable viewpoints, and I will not try to decide between them in this chapter. But I…Read more
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11“I’ve Been Bad”: Using Light Verse in Teaching PhilosophyJournal of Aesthetic Education 53 (3): 3-13. 2019.. Conventional wisdom in our society is that a good death involves accepting it as natural rather than striving to stave it off as long as possible. An alternative view is “Death can be good / I’ll show you how / Just have it come / decades from now.” In this essay, I discuss how I use this poem and other light verses of mine in teaching philosophy. These poems offer unusual viewpoints in several additional areas of philosophical and bioethical interest, including growth through adversity, old a…Read more
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8Longer Living through Technology: In Favor of Life-Prolonging Biomedical Technology for Old PeopleEthics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 6 (3-4): 163-171. 2015.
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14You see now that it is at any rate possibleTeaching Ethics 17 (1): 93-101. 2017.Fiction can help make students better thinkers about some philosophical issues, but this does not mean it will make them morally better people.
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Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 79 (2): 5-6. 2005.
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3Letter to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60 (5): 873-873. 1987.
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20Goldilocks and Mrs. Ilych: A Critical Look at the “Philosophy of Hospice”Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 6 (3): 314-324. 1997.Anyone who thinks contemporary American society is hopelessly contentious and lacking in shared values has probably not been paying attention to the way the popular media portray the hospice movement. Over and over, we are told such things as that “Humane care costs less than high-tech care and is what patients want and need,” that hospices are “the most effective and least expensive route to a dignified death,” that hospice personnel are “heroic,” that their “compassion and dedication seem inex…Read more
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33Analysis and its paradoxesIn Edna Ullmann-Margalit (ed.), The Scientific Enterprise, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 169--178. 1992.
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23"He That Was Courteous, True, and Faithful to His Friend Was That Time Cherished"-Is This Any Way to Run a Professional Association?Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 73 (2). 1999.
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19Letter to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 80 (5). 2007.
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32Patient and family decisions about life-extension and deathIn Rosamond Rhodes, Leslie Francis & Anita Silvers (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics, Blackwell. 2007.The prelims comprise: Rationality Morality Advance Directives Conclusion Notes References Suggested Further Reading.
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61Goldilocks and Mrs. Ilych: A Critical Look at the “Philosophy of Hospice”Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 6 (3): 314-. 1997.Anyone who thinks contemporary American society is hopelessly contentious and lacking in shared values has probably not been paying attention to the way the popular media portray the hospice movement. Over and over, we are told such things as that “Humane care costs less than high-tech care and is what patients want and need,” that hospices are “the most effective and least expensive route to a dignified death,” that hospice personnel are “heroic,” that their “compassion and dedication seem inex…Read more
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46What Is the Proper Role for Charity in Healthcare?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 5 (3): 425. 1996.My little girl has leukemia; she has had it for over a year, and now she needs at least five pints of blood a day. Not the whole blood, just the platelets. Most of our relatives and friends have given at least a few times. But we need more. Now I have to go to strangers.So begins Roberta Silman's short story, “Giving Blood,” a story about illness and charity. When the narrator's husband solicited blood donations at his workplace, “he thought everyone would help…He must have asked a hundred peopl…Read more
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |