•  199
    In this case discussion, Barnhill and Devine collect and present a significant amount of recent research on the various reasons why people struggle to succeed in weight loss programmes. Specifically, the authors focus on what they call ‘behavioural weight loss interventions’, which are ‘research, clinical or public health efforts to promote individual healthy eating and physical activity behaviours’. As defined, this is a very broad category of interventions and presumably includes all kinds of …Read more
  •  54
    A Feminist Analysis of Anti-Obesity Campaigns: Manipulation, Oppression, and Autonomy
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 10 (2): 61-78. 2017.
    A few years ago, the New York City Department of Health introduced a public health campaign entitled “Cut Your Portions, Cut Your Risk”, a series of posters in which images of food in increasingly large portion sizes appear. In one example, three packets of french fries are featured; in another, cheeseburgers are shown. In a red box in each, the text, in large, all-capital letters in English and Spanish, reads “Portions have grown,” and, below this, in all capitals, “so has obesity, which can le…Read more
  •  54
    Anti-racist health care practice, by Elizabeth A. McGibbon and Josephine B. Etowa
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 4 (2): 164-168. 2011.
    Elizabeth A. McGibbon and Josephine B. Etowa, Anti-racist health care practice, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009, reviewed by Kathryn L. Mackay
  •  34
    Public Health Virtue Ethics
    Public Health Ethics 15 (1): 1-10. 2022.
    This paper proposes that public health is the sort of institution that has a role in producing structures of virtue in society. This proposal builds upon work that describes how virtues are structured by the practices of institutions, at the collective or whole-of-society level. This work seeks to fill a gap in public health ethics when it comes to virtues. Mainstay moral theories tend to incorporate some role for virtues, but within public health ethics this role has not been fully articulated.…Read more
  •  34
    This paper imagines what the liberatory possibilities of (full) ectogenesis are, insofar as it separates woman from female reproductive function. Even before use with human infants, ectogenesis productively disrupts the biological paradigm underlying current gender categories and divisions of labour. I begin by presenting a theory of women’s oppression drawn from the radical feminisms of the 1960s, which sees oppression as deeply rooted in biology. On this view, oppressive social meanings are ov…Read more
  •  30
    There have been calls for some time for a new approach to public health in the United Kingdom and beyond. This is consequent on the recognition and acceptance that health problems often have a complex and multi-faceted aetiology. At the same time, policies which utilise insights from research in behavioural economics and psychology have gained prominence on the political agenda. The relationship between the social determinants of health and behavioural science in health policy has not hitherto b…Read more
  •  17
    Intertwined Interests in Expanded Prenatal Genetic Testing: The State’s Role in Facilitating Equitable Access
    with Zuzana Deans, Isabella Holmes, Ainsley J. Newson, and Lisa Dive
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (2): 45-47. 2022.
    In their analysis of how much fetal genetic information prospective parents should be able to access, Bayefsky and Berkman determine that parents should only be able to access information th...
  •  17
    In this article, I focus on two problematic aspects of British health-promotion campaigns regarding feeding children, particularly regarding breastfeeding and obesity. The first of these is that health-promotion campaigns around “lifestyle” issues dehumanize mothers with their imagery or text, stemming from the ongoing undervaluing and objectification of mothers and women. Public health-promotion instrumentalizes mothers as necessary components in achieving its aims, while at the same time under…Read more
  •  15
    One thousand women. Ten years. Diana Greene Foster’s epic Turnaway Study, and its namesake book, followed a thousand women who sought abortions across the United States for a decade after they were or were not successful in ending unwanted pregnancies to document how their lives changed. The result is a book rich in detail, full of facts about abortion in the United States—and somewhat more generally—that perhaps many of us knew or suspected but few could find in print. These facts include why s…Read more
  •  14
    Response: Collective Moral Agents and Their Collective-Level Virtues
    Public Health Ethics 15 (1): 23-26. 2022.
    In this short piece, I attempt to respond to some of the challenges raised by Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist and Karen Meagher in their commentaries on my paper, ‘Public Health Virtue Ethics’. While these authors have made many insightful and challenging remarks, I mostly focus on two questions here: first, about the nature of collectives as moral agents, in response to Nihlén Fahlquist, and second, about the concept of a collective-level virtue, in response to Meagher.
  •  9
    Feminist Bioethics and Activism in the Wake of COVID-19
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 15 (1): 162-163. 2022.
    The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world. The depth and breadth of changes are still unfolding. What is the place of feminist bioethics in this new world? It's important to point out that COVID-19 is only one of a few major catastrophes we are facing as humans. The ongoing and worsening effects of climate change, along with the paltry efforts of politicians to address it, are an urgent concern. Humanitarian crises caused by climate change, by COVID-19, or crises unrelated to either but surely…Read more
  •  8
    Reflections on Responsibility and the Prospect of a Long Life
    Public Health Ethics 12 (2): 130-132. 2019.
    In this commentary on Brown and colleagues’ paper, entitled ‘Against Moral Responsibilisation of Health: Prudential Responsibility and Health Promotion’, I highlight the tension between individual responsibility—even when this is prudential and not moral—and systemic factors that impact people's health. Brown and colleagues and I agree that individuals are frequently held inappropriately responsible for health-related behaviours or diseases that have become associated with the so-called ‘lifesty…Read more
  •  6
    A Discursive Exploration of Values and Ethics in Medicine: The Scholarship of Miles Little
    with Claire Hooker, Ian Kerridge, and Wendy Lipworth
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 19 (1): 15-20. 2021.
    In the paper “An archeology of corruption in medicine”, Miles Little, Wendy Lipworth, and Ian Kerridge present an account of corruption and describe its prevalent forms in medicine. In presenting an individual-focused account of corruption found within “social entities”, Little et al. argue that these entities are corruptible by nature and that certain individuals are prone to take advantage of the corruptibility of social entities to pursue their own ends. The authors state that this is not pre…Read more
  •  3
    Rules and Resistance: A Commentary on “An Archeology of Corruption in Medicine”
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 19 (1): 123-127. 2021.
    In the paper “An archeology of corruption in medicine”, Miles Little, Wendy Lipworth, and Ian Kerridge present an account of corruption and describe its prevalent forms in medicine. In presenting an individual-focused account of corruption found within “social entities”, Little et al. argue that these entities are corruptible by nature and that certain individuals are prone to take advantage of the corruptibility of social entities to pursue their own ends. The authors state that this is not pre…Read more