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32Restoring humane values to medicine: a Miles Little reader (edited book)Desert Pea Press. 2003.Does reading poetry make you a better clinician?Can euthanasia be understood in terms of the meaning of a life?What is the moral and existential significance of ...
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78Clinical obligations and public health programmes: healthcare provider reasoning about managing the incidental results of newborn screeningJournal of Medical Ethics 35 (10): 626-634. 2009.Background: Expanded newborn screening generates incidental results, notably carrier results. Yet newborn screening programmes typically restrict parental choice regarding receipt of this non-health serving genetic information. Healthcare providers play a key role in educating families or caring for screened infants and have strong beliefs about the management of incidental results. Methods: To inform policy on disclosure of infant sickle cell disorder (SCD) carrier results, a mixed-methods stud…Read more
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62Marginalizing Experience: A Critical Analysis of Public Discourse Surrounding Stem Cell Research in Australia (2005–6) (review)Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 8 (2): 191-202. 2011.Over the past decade, stem cell science has generated considerable public and political debate. These debates tend to focus on issues concerning the protection of nascent human life and the need to generate medical and therapeutic treatments for the sick and vulnerable. The framing of the public debate around these issues not only dichotomises and oversimplifies the issues at stake, but tends to marginalise certain types of voices, such as the women who donate their eggs and/or embryos to stem c…Read more
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9Humane medicineCambridge University Press. 1995.In the late twentieth century the impressive achievements of modern medicine are obvious, yet medicine seems to have failed to satisfy public expectation. Government regulation of hospitals and doctors is tightening in most Western countries and health funding is a divisive political issue. Medical complaints departments are increasingly busy. In the United States medical litigation has reached alarming levels, and a similar trend can be seen in other developed countries. Is there something wron…Read more
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12Vascular Amputees: A Study in DisappointmentJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 19 (1): 21-24. 2022.Despite optimistic reports about the results of amputation for advanced vascular disease, the patient’s assessment of advantages and disadvantages is seldom acknowledged. A detailed social study of 67 amputees has revealed considerable disparity between the patient’s views and those of the medical staff. About a third of the patients are forced to retire from active work by the amputation; about three-quarters report a serious decline in their social activities; only about half are really indepe…Read more
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69Testimonial injustice: discounting women’s voices in health care priority settingJournal of Medical Ethics 47 (11): 744-747. 2021.Testimonial injustice occurs when bias against the credibility of certain social identities results in discounting of their contributions to deliberations. In this analysis, we describe testimonial injustice against women and how it figures in macroallocation procedure. We show how it harms women as deliberators, undermines the objective of inclusivity in macroallocation and affects the justice of resource distributions. We suggest that remedial action is warranted in order to limit the effects …Read more
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114Is there a real nexus between ethics and aesthetics?Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 7 (1): 91-102. 2010.Aesthetics is a vexed topic in philosophy, with a long history. For my purposes, an aesthetic experience is a foundational affective response to an object, to which terms such as “ugly”, “beautiful”, “pretty” or “harmonious” are applied. These terms are derived from a Discourse of aesthetics; some remain constant, others change from generation to generation. Aesthetics and ethics have been linked in Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. This essay examines what is happening to t…Read more
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70On Agonising: Street Charity and First Ethics (review)Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 7 (3): 321-327. 2010.To agonise is to undergo great mental anguish through worrying about something, according to the New Oxford Dictionary of English. I suggest that agonising in this sense is a fundamental response to any ethical dilemma. It has a long intellectual and literary lineage. In this essay, I agonise over the dilemmas posed by street beggars, their intrusiveness and their appeal to our intuitive sense of social duty. I explore the discomfort we may feel at their presence, and the value that discomfort m…Read more
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University of SydneyRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Social Science |