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206In this article, we critically reflect on the responsibilities that the food industry has for public health. Although food companies are often significant contributors to public health problems, the mere possibility of corporate responsibility for public health seems to be excluded in the academic public health discourse. We argue that the behavior of several food companies reflects a split corporate personality, as they contribute to public health problems and simultaneously engage in activitie…Read more
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29Ethics of early detection of disease risk factors: A scoping reviewBMC Medical Ethics 25 (1): 1-16. 2024.Background Scientific and technological advancements in mapping and understanding the interrelated pathways through which biological and environmental exposures affect disease development create new possibilities for detecting disease risk factors. Early detection of such risk factors may help prevent disease onset or moderate the disease course, thereby decreasing associated disease burden, morbidity, and mortality. However, the ethical implications of screening for disease risk factors are unc…Read more
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8Sustainability as an Intrinsic Moral Concern for Solidaristic Health CareHealth Care Analysis 1-11. forthcoming.Environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change have adverse impacts on global health. Somewhat paradoxically, health care systems that aim to prevent and cure disease are themselves major emitters and polluters. In this paper we develop a justification for the claim that solidaristic health care systems should include sustainability as one of the criteria for determining which health interventions are made available or reimbursed – and which not. There is …Read more
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22Academic freedom under siegeJournal of Medical Ethics. forthcoming.This paper describes a global pattern of declining academic freedom, often driven by powerful political interference with core functions of academic communities. It argues that countering threats to academic freedom requires doubling down on ethics, specifically standards of justice and fairness in pursuing knowledge and assigning warrant to beliefs. Using the example of the selection of a Qatari university to host the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics, the authors urge fairness towards diverse g…Read more
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23(Un)fairness of Vaccination FreeridingPublic Health Ethics 15 (3): 233-239. 2022.For contagious diseases like measles a successful immunization program can result in herd protection. Small outbreaks may still occur but fade out soon, because the possibilities for the pathogen to spread in the ‘herd’ are very small. This implies that people who refuse to participate in such a program will still benefit from the protection it offers, but they don’t do their part in maintaining protection. Isn’t that a case of freeriding—and isn’t that unfair towards all the people who do colla…Read more
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20Facing difficult but unavoidable choices: Donor blood safety and the deferral of men who have sex with menBioethics 36 (8): 840-848. 2022.Blood service organizations employ various ways to ensure transfusion blood safety, including the testing of all donations for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTI) and the exclusion of donors who are at increased risk of a recent infection. As some TTIs are more common among men who have sex with men (MSM), many jurisdictions (temporarily) defer the donation of blood by sexually active MSM. This boils down to a categorical exclusion of a large group solely on the basis of their sexual orie…Read more
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13Facing difficult but unavoidable choices: Donor blood safety and the deferral of men who have sex with menBioethics 36 (8): 840-848. 2022.Blood service organizations employ various ways to ensure transfusion blood safety, including the testing of all donations for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTI) and the exclusion of donors who are at increased risk of a recent infection. As some TTIs are more common among men who have sex with men (MSM), many jurisdictions (temporarily) defer the donation of blood by sexually active MSM. This boils down to a categorical exclusion of a large group solely on the basis of their sexual orie…Read more
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8The contemporary study looked into the extent and nature of supradisciplinary collaborations within Wageningen University and Research’s 2014-2018 investment theme Global One Health. An analysis of year reports showed the extent to which projects were supradisciplinarily operationalized, was fairly limited. Interviews with scientists from life sciences and social sciences revealed constraining, facilitating and undecided factors with regards to successfully effecting supradisciplinary collaborat…Read more
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271Food Vendor Beware! On Ordinary Morality and Unhealthy MarketingFood Ethics 5 (1): 1-21. 2019.Food and beverage firms are frequently criticised for their impact on the spread of non-communicable diseases like obesity and diabetes type 2. In this article we explore under what conditions the sales and marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products is irresponsible. Starting from the notion of ordinary morality we argue that firms have a duty to respect people’s autonomy and adhere to the principle of non-maleficence in both market and non-market environments. We show how these considera…Read more
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44Nudging is considered a promising approach for behavioural change. At the same time, nudging has raised ethical concerns, specifically in relation to the impact of nudges on autonomous choice. A complexity is that in this debate authors may appeal to different understandings or dimensions of autonomy. Clarifying the different conceptualisations of autonomy in ethical debates around nudging would help to advance our understanding of the ethics of nudging. A literature review of these consideratio…Read more
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19The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulting health and economic crisis has caused major disruptions in the functioning of food systems and revived the discussion on what forms balanced, effective and responsible crisis management. As part of its thought leadership and its social responsibility in times of crisis, WUR is uniquely placed to contribute to the scientific knowledge base and data collection mechanisms required for early recognition and rapid response. In addition, WUR takes on the cha…Read more
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7Infection control measures in times of antimicrobial resistance: a matter of solidarityMonash Bioethics Review 38 (Suppl 1): 47-55. 2020.Control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms are traditionally approached as a trade-off between public interests on the one hand and individual autonomy on the other. We propose to reframe the ethical issue and consider control measures directed at carriers an issue of solidarity. Rather than asking “whether it is justified to impose strict measures”, we propose asking “how to best care for a person’s carriership and well-being in ways that do not imply an unacceptable…Read more
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25Ethical Advice for an Intensive Care Triage Protocol in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned from The NetherlandsPublic Health Ethics 13 (2): 157-165. 2020.At the height of the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands a shortness of intensive care beds was looming. Dutch professional medical organizations asked a group of ethicists for assistance in drafting guidelines and criteria for selection of patients for intensive care treatment in case of absolute scarcity, when medical selection criteria would no longer suffice. This article describes the Dutch context, the process of drafting the advice and reflects on the role of ethicists and lessons learned.…Read more
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39Law, Ethics, and Politics in the Face of a Global PandemicPublic Health Ethics 13 (1): 1-3. 2020.
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433Injustice in Food-Related Public Health Problems: A Matter of Corporate ResponsibilityBusiness Ethics Quarterly 30 (3): 388-413. 2020.ABSTRACTThe responsibility of the food and beverage industry for noncommunicable diseases is a controversial topic. Public health scholars identify the food and beverage industry as one of the main contributors to the rise of these diseases. We argue that aside from moral duties like not doing harm and respecting consumer autonomy, the food industry also has a responsibility for addressing the structural injustices involved in food-related health problems. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Youn…Read more
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18Introduction It is increasingly considered important that people make an autonomous and informed decision concerning colorectal cancer screening. However, the realisation of autonomy within the concept of informed decision-making might be interpreted too narrowly. Additionally, relatively little is known about what the eligible population believes to be a 'good' screening decision. Therefore, we aimed to explore how the concepts of autonomous and informed decision-making relate to how the eligib…Read more
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10Correction to: Food Vendor Beware! On Ordinary Morality and Unhealthy MarketingFood Ethics 5 (1-2): 1-21. 2019.The title of the article in the initial online publication was mixed up with copy editing information. The original article has been corrected.
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497Stakeholder Dialogue as Agonistic Deliberation: Exploring the Role of Conflict and Self-Interest in Business-NGO InteractionBusiness Ethics Quarterly 30 (1): 3-30. 2020.ABSTRACT:Many companies engage in dialogue with nongovernmental organizations about societal issues. The question is what a regulative ideal for such dialogues should be. In the literature on corporate social responsibility, the Habermasian notion of communicative action is often presented as a regulative ideal for stakeholder dialogue, implying that actors should aim at consensus and set strategic considerations aside. In this article, we argue that in many cases, communicative action is not a …Read more
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32Sharing Responsibility: Responsibility for Health Is Not a Zero-Sum GamePublic Health Ethics 12 (2): 99-102. 2019.
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32Between Individualistic Animal Ethics and Holistic Environmental Ethics Blurring the BoundariesIn Bernice Bovenkerk & Jozef Keulartz (eds.), Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring Boundaries in Human-Animal Relationships, Springer. 2016.Due to its emphasis on experiential interests, animal ethics tends to focus on individuals as the sole unit of moral concern. Many issues in animal ethics can be fruitfully analysed in terms of obligations towards individual animals, but some problems require reflection about collective dimensions of animal life in ways that individualist approaches can’t offer. Criticism of the individualist focus in animal ethics is not new; it has been put forward in particular by environmental ethics approac…Read more
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29Why Socio-Economic Inequalities in Health Threaten Relational Justice. A Proposal for an Instrumental EvaluationPublic Health Ethics 11 (3): 311-324. 2018.In this article, we argue that apart from evaluating the causes and the social determinants of health inequalities, an evaluation of the effects of health inequalities is due. For this, we propose the ideal of relational equality as an evaluative framework, and test to what extent health inequalities threaten this ideal of a society of equals. We identify three ways in which they do and argue that these risks are especially great for those lower down the socio-economic strata. We thus conclude t…Read more
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34Ethics of infection control measures for carriers of antimicrobial drug–Resistant organismsEmerging Infectious Diseases 24 (9). 2018.Many countries have implemented infection control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms. To explore the ethical implications of these measures, we analyzed 227 consultations about multidrug resistance and compared them with the literature on communicable disease in general. We found that control measures aimed at carriers have a range of negative implications. Although moral dilemmas seem similar to those encountered while implementing control measures for other infectio…Read more
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22A Practice-Oriented Review of Health ConceptsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (4): 381-401. 2018.Whereas theories on health generally argue in favor of one specific concept, we argue that, given the variety of health practices, we need different concepts of health. We thus approach health concepts as a Wittgensteinian family of thick concepts. By discussing five concepts of health offered by theory, we argue that all capture something that seems relevant when we talk and think about health. Classifying these concepts reveals their family resemblances: each of these concepts differs from the…Read more
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48No Smoke Without Fire: Harm Reduction, E-Cigarettes and the Smoking EndgamePublic Health Ethics 10 (1): 1-4. 2017.
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358Understanding political responsibility in corporate citizenship: towards a shared responsibility for the common goodJournal of Global Ethics 13 (1): 90-108. 2017.ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to …Read more
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17A Dutch medical student has the potentially more virulent Panton-Valentine leukocidin form of MRSA colonization yet shows no signs or symptoms of infection. More than a year ago, a routine MRSA screening of health care personnel providing care for MRSA-positive patients detected the colonization. Since then, the student has been treated intensively but unsuccessfully in an attempt to decolonize her. During this decolonization period, the medical student was barred from performing patient-related…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |