Columbia, South Carolina, United States of America
  •  105
    The ethics of NBIC convergence
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (3). 2007.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  84
    Recommendations for Nanomedicine Human Subjects Research Oversight: An Evolutionary Approach for an Emerging Field
    with Leili Fatehi, Susan M. Wolf, Jeffrey McCullough, Ralph Hall, Frances Lawrenz, Jeffrey P. Kahn, Cortney Jones, Stephen A. Campbell, Rebecca S. Dresser, Arthur G. Erdman, Christy L. Haynes, Robert A. Hoerr, Linda F. Hogle, Moira A. Keane, Nancy M. P. King, Efrosini Kokkoli, Gary Marchant, Andrew D. Maynard, Martin Philbert, Gurumurthy Ramachandran, Ronald A. Siegel, and Samuel Wickline
    Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 40 (4): 716-750. 2012.
    Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and c…Read more
  •  80
    An agenda for future debate on concepts of health and disease
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (1): 19-27. 2007.
    The traditional contrast between naturalist and normativist disease concepts fails to capture the most salient features of the health concepts debate. By using health concepts as a window on background notions of medical science and ethics, I show how Christopher Boorse (an influential naturalist) and Lennart Nordenfelt (an influential normativist) actually share deep assumptions about the character of medicine. Their disease concepts attempt, in different ways, to shore up the same medical mode…Read more
  •  79
    Expanding the horizon of reflection on health and disease
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (5): 461-473. 1995.
    Last updated - 2020-01-06.
  •  76
    Ethics, politics, and health care reform
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (5): 397-405. 1994.
  •  74
    Germund Hesslow has argued that concepts of health and disease serve no important scientific, clinical, or ethical function. However, this conclusion depends upon the particular concept of disease he espouses; namely, on Boorse's functional notion. The fact/value split embodied in the functional notion of disease leads to a sharp split between the science of medicine and bioethics, making the philosophy of medicine irrelevant for both. By placing this disease concept in the broader context of me…Read more
  •  69
    An ethics discussion series for hospital administrators
    with Allan S. Brett, James I. Raymond, and Donald E. Saunders
    HEC Forum 10 (2): 177-185. 1998.
    Peer Reviewed.
  •  57
    Beware of mereologists bearing gifts: prolegomena to a medical metaphysics
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (5): 385-408. 2013.
    This essay considers implications of formal mereologies and ontologies for medical metaphysics. Edward Fried’s extensional mereological account of the human body is taken as representative of a prominent strand in analytic metaphysics that has close affinities with medical positivism. I show why such accounts fail. First, I consider how Fried attempts to make sense of the medical case of Barney Clark, the first recipient of an artificial heart, and show that his analytic metaphysical categories …Read more
  •  54
    This book is for those interested in an extensive review of the field of bioethics. It is for philosophers who wish to understand the core conceptual issues in health care ethics, and for bioethicists who wish to better understand classical problems in philosophy that have a bearing on health care ethics. The Handbook of Bioethics: Taking Stock of the Field from a Philosophical Perspective: -presents a comprehensive survey of bioethics in one volume; -has 27 of the most prominent scholars in the…Read more
  •  54
    Intolerant tolerance
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (2): 161-181. 1994.
    The Hyde Amendment and Roman Catholic attempts to put restrictions on Title X funding have been criticized for being intolerant. However, such criticism fails to appreciate that there are two competing notions of tolerance, one focusing on the limits of state force and accepting pluralism as unavoidable, and the other focusing on the limits of knowledge and advancing pluralism as a good. These two types of tolerance, illustrated in the writings of John Locke and J.S. Mill, each involve an intole…Read more
  •  49
    Many accounts of the historical development of neurological criteria for determination of death insufficiently distinguish between two strands of interpretation advanced by advocates of a "whole-brain" criterion. One strand focuses on the brain as the organ of integration. Another provides a far more complex and nuanced account, both of death and of a policy on the determination of death. Current criticisms of the whole-brain criterion are effective in refuting the first interpretation, but not …Read more
  •  49
    Many physicians assert that new cost-control mechanisms inappropriately interfere with clinical decision-making. They claim that high costs arise from poorly practiced medicine, and argue that effective utilization of resources is best promoted by advancing the scientific and ethical ideals of medicine. However, the claim is not warranted by empirical evidence. In this essay, I show how it rests upon aesthetic considerations associated with diagnostic elegance. I first consider scientific ration…Read more
  •  44
    Current philosophical and legal bioethical reflection on reprogenetics provides little more than a rationalization of the interests of science. There are two reasons for this. First, bioethicists attempt to address ethical issues in a “language of precision” that characterizes science, and this works against analogical and narratological modes of discourse that have traditionally provided guidance for understanding human nature and purpose. Second, the current ethical and legal debate is framed …Read more
  •  42
    A Framework for Understanding Medical Epistemologies
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (5): 461-486. 2013.
    What clinicians, biomedical scientists, and other health care professionals know as individuals or as groups and how they come to know and use knowledge are central concerns of medical epistemology. Activities associated with knowledge production and use are called epistemic practices. Such practices are considered in biomedical and clinical literatures, social sciences of medicine, philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, and also in other nonmedical literatures. A host of different ki…Read more
  •  37
    Conflicts of interest serve as a cipher for a radical rupture in the Flexnerian paradigm of medicine, and they can only be addressed if we recognize that health care is now practiced by institutions, not just individual physicians. By showing how "appropriate utilization of services" or "that which is medically indicated" is a function of socioeconomic factors related to institutional responsibilities, I point toward an administrative and organizational ethic as a needed component for addressing…Read more
  •  36
    Hegel and the Spirit (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 26 (1): 71-77. 1994.
    In most of the philosophy of the last 150 years, theological concerns have been increasingly marginalized. This does not mean that the issues that were addressed theologically in the past are no longer addressed. Rather, the perennial concerns have been reconstructed so that they are no longer tied to a religious context. Ecclesiology has become political theory, moral theology has become ethics, and doctrines of revelation have become epistemology. Such a list could be made fairly exhaustive, a…Read more
  •  34
    Open questions in the ethics of convergence
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (3). 2007.
    After historically situating NBIC Convergence in the context of earlier bioethical debate on genetics, ten questions are raised in areas related to the ethics of Convergence, indicating where future research is needed.
  •  29
    There is a curious asymmetry in cases where the use of religious language involves a breakdown in communication and leads to a seemingly intractable dispute. Why does the use of religious language in such cases almost always arise on the side of patients and their families, rather than on the side of clinicians or others who work in healthcare settings? I suggest that the intractable disputes arise when patients and their families use religious language to frame their problem and the possibiliti…Read more
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  •  24
    Embryo Research: The Ethical Geography of the Debate
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (5): 495-519. 1997.
    Three basic political positions on embryo research will be identified as libertarian, conservative, and social-democratic. The Human Embryo Research Panel will be regarded as an expression of the social-democratic position. A taxonomy of the ethical issues addressed by the Panel will then be developed at the juncture of political and ethical modes of reflection. Among the arguments considered will be those for the separability of the abortion and embryo research debates; arguments against the po…Read more
  •  23
    The scope of organizational ethics
    HEC Forum 10 (2): 127-135. 1998.
  •  23
    Bioethics in a Liberal Society (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 30 (2): 124-125. 1998.
  •  22
    A Sympathetic but Critical Assessment of Nanotechnology Initiatives
    with Robert Best and Robin Wilson
    Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 34 (4): 655-657. 2006.
  •  21
    The ethical issues integral to embryo research and brain death are intertwined with comprehensive views of life that are not explicitly discussed in most policy debate. I consider three representative views – a naturalist, romantic, and theist – and show how these might inform the way practical ethical issues are addressed. I then consider in detail one influential argument in embryo research that attempts to bypass deep values. I show that this twinning argument is deeply flawed. It presupposes…Read more
  •  20
    The two sides of inter-ethics
    HEC Forum 12 (3): 185-190. 2000.