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Paternalistic reasons for interfering with another's choices or actions are generally taken to be those which appeal exclusively to the welfare of the person interfered with. Paternalism of this sort is problematic because it involves an obvious and compelling conflict between two fundamental moral principles, one which prescribes interfering with another , and one which prescribes protection of another's well-being . My concern in this dissertation is to say when paternalistic interference with adults is justified. That is, my project is to understand under what conditions the concern for another adult's welfare justifiably issues in interfering with his self-regarding choices or his interest in deciding his own actions or treatment. ;In Chapter 1, I develop a principle of justified paternalistic interference with adults which I take to be rigorously protective of individual liberty, but which does not require unnecessary sacrifices of individual welfare. In Chapter II, I draw out the general implications of this principle for the defense of liberty-impinging legislation. The remaining three chapters are devoted to illuminating the major conditions of the principle , and to showing that the principle is manageable and useful in practice. The chapters are entitled: PATERNALISTIC INTERFERENCE, LEGAL PATERNALISM, LIBERTY, BENEFICENCE, AND INVOLUNTARY CONFINEMENT, COMPETENCE AND COMPETENTS, and V. PATERNALISM AND VOLUNTARINESS

When (if ever) may a professional deceive a client for the client's own good? Under what conditions (if any) is whistle-blowing morally required? These are just some of the questions that scholars as diverse as Michael D. Bayles, Thomas Nagel, Sissela Bok, Jessica Mitford, and Peter A. French confront in this stimulating anthology. Organized around philosophical issues such as the moral foundations of professional ethics, models of the professional-client relationship, deception, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, professional dissent, and professional virtue, the volume illuminates the complex ethical issues that arise in journalism, law, health care, counselling, education, engineering, business, politics, and social science research. A variety of pedagogical aids--including clear introductions to and study questions for each set of readings, concrete cases designed to focus discussion, and an appendix on preparing cases and position papers--makes the text invaluable for both students and teachers of professional ethics.

The Silent Scream, a videotape which includes footage of a real time sonogram of an abortion in progress, has been receiving considerable attention in America as the anti-abortion movement’s latest argument. The tape has been enthusiastically endorsed by President Reagan and has been distributed to every member of Congress and to each of the Supreme Court justices. It is produced and narrated by Bernard N. Nathanson, a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist, and it includes a number of implicit and explicit claims which are highly controversial. Chief among these are: the claim that since we can draw no morally significant line during the stages of fetal development, the fetusmust be recognized as a person from conception onward, the claim that the film is a high tech, state of the art proof that abortion is the brutal murder of an innocent human being, the claim that in abortion the fetus experiences terror and pain, and the claim that as long as abortion is legal, showing this film must be made part of the informed consent procedure for abortion. My purpose in this paper is to examine these claims to see if The Silent Scream adds anything to the moral case for making abortion illegal. I give particular attention to two claims which are seldom addressed in the abortion debate, viz., that the fetus experiences terror and pain during an abortion, and that women have not had the information they need to give an adequately informed consent to abortion. Since there is so much confusion in the abortion debate, and since this film trades on that confusion, my broader purpose is to add some clarificationto the public discussion of this issue, which is daily becoming a more divisive issue of public policy.

Multiple gestations, or multifetal pregnancies,raise a number of significant policy questionsconcerning the well being of women and the wellbeing of the children fetuses might become.Important questions for feminists pertain notonly to multifetal pregnancy itself, but alsoto the medical interventions associated withthese pregnancies. In this paper, we addressthe questions of how many embryos should betransferred in assisted reproduction, how manyfetuses should remain in a multiple gestation,who should make these decisions, and the needto protect women from overexposure to exogenoushormones. Although we focus on assistedreproduction in the United States, we believethat our suggestions are applicable to othercountries where the technology is comparable.

Among fundamental, widely shared values, there are two which often come into conflict, creating a serious moral dilemma, viz., the value of individual well-being and the value of individual self-direction. These values issue in two fundamental moral principles, one which prescribes the protection of others from harm, and one which proscribes interfering with a person's right to direct his own life and actions. When an individual is doing or choosing something which subjects him to harm or significant risk of harm, the question of paternalistic interference arises.Since John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, there have been a number of attempts to say when such protective interference with adults is morally acceptable.