•  8
    Tackling Structural Injustices: On the Entanglement of Visibility and Justice in Emerging Technologies
    with Matthias Braun, Hannah Bleher, and Eva Maria Hille
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (7): 100-102. 2023.
    In today’s world, Artificial Intelligence plays a central role in many decision-making processes. However, its use can lead to structural and epistemic injustices—especially in the context of healt...
  •  175
    Ethical medical data donation: a pressing issue
    In Peter Dabrock, Matthias Braun & Patrik Hummel (eds.), The Ethics of Medical Data Donation, Springer Verlag. 2019.
  •  319
    While the substantiation of “best interests” has received much attention, the question of how “the child” is conceptualised to ensure any action taken or decision made is in the particular child’s best interests has been largely neglected. In this paper, I argue that the lack of robust understanding of who “the child” is means that we continue to make many generalisations and category-based assumptions in determining the child’s best interests. In addressing the challenge of doing right by the i…Read more
  •  296
    This article argues that personal medical data should be made available for scientific research, by enabling and encouraging individuals to donate their medical records once deceased, in a way similar to how they can already donate organs or bodies. This research is part of a project on posthumous medical data donation developed by the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute. Ten arguments are provided to support the need to foster posthumous medical data donation. Two major risks ar…Read more
  •  250
    Clinical applications of machine learning algorithms: beyond the black box
    with David S. Watson, Ian N. Bruce, Christopher E. M. Griffiths, Iain B. McInnes, Michael R. Barnes, and Luciano Floridi
    British Medical Journal 364. 2019.
    Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.
  •  281
    Adoption may be defined as ‘the legal process through which the state establishes a parental relationship, with all its attendant rights and duties, between a child and a (set of) parent(s) where there exists no previous procreative relationship’ . In adoptions from care, state intervention effectively converts an established, or nascent, adult– child relationship into ‘family’ in the legal sense. From the state’s perspective, adoption thus entails the transfer of parental responsibilities for a…Read more
  •  244
    Simulating (some) individuals in a connected world
    Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (6): 403-404. 2021.
    Braun explores the use of digital twin technology in medicine with a particular emphasis on the question of how such simulations can represent a person.1 In defining some first conditions for ethically justifiable forms of representation of digital twins, he argues that digital twins do not threaten an embodied person, as long as that person retains control over their simulated representation via dynamic consent, and ideally with the option to choose both form and usage of the simulation. His th…Read more
  •  228
    Breaking the Cycle: Solidarity with care-leaver mothers
    Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies 7 (2): 82-92. 2021.
    A significant proportion of child protection cases involve care-experienced mothers, which reveals a continuous cycle of mothers who lose their children to social services after having been in state care themselves as children. While the importance of protecting children requires little explanation and forms the justificatory basis for child protection interventions, it is important to remember that care-experienced mothers were once children entrusted to the state’s care, and who arguably have …Read more
  •  7
    Within the broad field of human enhancement, pediatric cognitive neuro-enhancement appears to arouse particular interest. The increasing importance of cognitive capacities in our contemporary and cultural context appears to be the main reason for the focus on cognition as the preferred trait of enhancement, while the choice of pharmacological means is based on factors of feasibility, accessibility, and cost. While the ethical issues arising in the adult context have already been extensively cove…Read more
  •  29
    The ethics of medical data donation (edited book)
    Springer International Publishing. 2019.
    This open access book presents an ethical approach to utilizing personal medical data. It features essays that combine academic argument with practical application of ethical principles. The contributors are experts in ethics and law. They address the challenges in the re-use of medical data of the deceased on a voluntary basis. This pioneering study looks at the many factors involved when individuals and organizations wish to share information for research, policy-making, and humanitarian purpo…Read more
  •  10
    Although the employment situation of disabled people has widely been identified as in need of improvement, progress in this area remains slow. While some progress has been made in including the physically or sensory disabled in the workplace, other types of disability have been largely neglected. This applies particularly to disabled workers in atypical employment, such as those whose workplace is the Digital Economy. In this article, we discuss the case of disabled app developers as a significa…Read more
  •  10
    Despite the welfare of the child being afforded special legal and moral importance, it appears that the law is currently not objective in its application to children. There is an undeniable link between healthy child development and education, with the latter greatly impacting on mental health and general well-being. Drawing on the example of the differential treatment of gifted children in an educational context, I argue that the legal framework with regard to learning disabilities and cognitiv…Read more
  •  275
    This article argues that personal medical data should be made available for scientific research, by enabling and encouraging individuals to donate their medical records once deceased, similar to the way in which they can already donate organs or bodies. This research is part of a project on posthumous medical data donation developed by the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Ten arguments are provided to support the need to foster posthumous medical d…Read more
  •  36
    Beyond an Open Future
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26 (2): 313-325. 2017.
    :Discussions about the ethical permissibility of pediatric cognitive enhancement frequently revolve around arguments about welfare, and often include an appeal to the child’s right to an open future. Both proponents and opponents of cognitive enhancement claim that their respective positions best serve the interests of the child by promoting an open future. This article argues that this right to an open future argument only captures some of the risks to the welfare of children, therefore requiri…Read more
  •  32
    The desire to self-improve is probably as old as humanity: most of us want to be smarter, more athletic, more beautiful, or more talented. However, in the light of an ever increasing array of possibilities to enhance our capacities, clarity about the purpose and goal of such efforts becomes crucial. This is especially true when decisions are made for children, who are exposed to their parents’ plans and desires for them under a notion of increasing wellbeing. In recent years, cognitive enhanceme…Read more