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6TB Matters MoreIn Michael Boylan (ed.), International Public Health Policy and Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 251-265. 2023.Tuberculosis (TB) is theTuberculosis (TB) second leading infectious cause of mortality worldwide and arguably the most important neglected topic in bioethics. This chapter: (1) explains the ethical importance of TB, (2) documents its neglect in bioethics discourse, (3) maps the terrain of ethical issues associated with TBTuberculosis (TB), and (4) advocates a moderate pluralistic approach to ethical issues associated with TB.
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474Reconciling Regulation with Scientific Autonomy in Dual-Use ResearchJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (1): 72-94. 2022.In debates over the regulation of communication related to dual-use research, the risks that such communication creates must be weighed against against the value of scientific autonomy. The censorship of such communication seems justifiable in certain cases, given the potentially catastrophic applications of some dual-use research. This conclusion however, gives rise to another kind of danger: that regulators will use overly simplistic cost-benefit analysis to rationalize excessive regulation of…Read more
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6Infectious DiseaseIn Helga Kuhse & Peter Singer (eds.), A Companion to Bioethics, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.This chapter contains sections titled: The Ethical Importance of Infectious Disease The Global Infectious Disease Status Quo: AIDS and TB Drug Resistance Limiting Liberty in Contexts of Contagion Improving Global Health References Further reading.
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104Ethical and philosophical consideration of the dual-use dilemma in the biological sciencesScience and Engineering Ethics 13 (4): 523-580. 2007.The dual-use dilemma arises in the context of research in the biological and other sciences as a consequence of the fact that one and the same piece of scientific research sometimes has the potential to be used for bad as well as good purposes. It is an ethical dilemma since it is about promoting good in the context of the potential for also causing harm, e.g., the promotion of health in the context of providing the wherewithal for the killing of innocents. It is an ethical dilemma for the resea…Read more
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153Victims, vectors and villains: are those who opt out of vaccination morally responsible for the deaths of others?Journal of Medical Ethics (12): 762-768. 2016.Mass vaccination has been a successful public health strategy for many contagious diseases. The immunity of the vaccinated also protects others who cannot be safely or effectively vaccinated—including infants and the immunosuppressed. When vaccination rates fall, diseases like measles can rapidly resurge in a population. Those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons are at the highest risk of severe disease and death. They thus may bear the burden of others' freedom to opt out of vaccinatio…Read more
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21Is the non-identity problem relevant to public health and policy? An online surveyBMC Medical Ethics 20 (1): 1-17. 2019.The non-identity problem arises when our actions in the present could change which people will exist in the future, for better or worse. Is it morally better to improve the lives of specific future people, as compared to changing which people exist for the better? Affecting the timing of fetuses being conceived is one case where present actions change the identity of future people. This is relevant to questions of public health policy, as exemplified in some responses to the Zika epidemic. There…Read more
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16IntroductionJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (5): 323-323. 2013.In light of controversy surrounding the initial online publication of Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva's article on ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’ in the Journal of Medical Ethics,1 …
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6On the dual uses of science and ethics: principles, practices, and prospects (edited book)ANU E Press. 2013.Claims about the transformations enabled by modern science and medicine have been accompanied by an unsettling question in recent years: might the knowledge being produced undermine--rather than further--human and animal well being? On the Dual Uses of Science and Ethics examines the potential for the skills, know-how, information, and techniques associated with modern biology to serve contrasting ends. In recognition of the moral ambiguity of science and technology, each chapter considers steps…Read more
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6Emergency Ethics: Volume IRoutledge. 2012.Emergencies are extreme events which threaten to cause massive disruption to society and negatively affect the physical and psychological well-being of its members. They raise important practical and theoretical questions about how we should treat each other in times of 'crisis'. The articles selected for this volume focus on the nature and significance of emergencies, demonstrate the normative implications of emergencies and provide multi-disciplinary perspectives on the ethics of emergency res…Read more
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6Health RightsRoutledge. 2010.Health Rights is a multidisciplinary collection of seminal papers examining ethical, legal, and empirical questions regarding the human right to health or health care. The volume discusses what obligations health rights entail for governments and other actors; how they relate to and potentially conflict with other rights and values; and how cultural diversity bears on the formulation and implementation of health rights.
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17Should practice and policy be revised to allow for risk-proportional payment to human challenge study participants?Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (12): 835-836. 2020.Human infection challenge studies provide illuminating case studies for several ongoing debates in research ethics, including those related to research risks and payment of participants. Grimwade et al 1 add to previous public engagement, qualitative evidence and philosophical literature on these topics.1–8 The authors advocate revision of research payment policy and practice based on their main finding that members of the public endorse ex ante payment of participants proportional to research-r…Read more
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23Human infection challenge studies in endemic settings and/or low-income and middle-income countries: key points of ethical consensus and controversyJournal of Medical Ethics 46 (9): 601-609. 2020.Human infection challenge studies (HCS) involve intentionally infecting research participants with pathogens (or other micro-organisms). There have been recent calls for more HCS to be conducted in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where many relevant diseases are endemic. HCS in general, and HCS in LMICs in particular, raise numerous ethical issues. This paper summarises the findings of a project that explored ethical and regulatory issues related to LMIC HCS via (i) a review of r…Read more
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20Invisible epidemics: ethics and asymptomatic infection (review)Monash Bioethics Review 38 (Suppl 1): 1-16. 2020.Interactions between microbes and human hosts can lead to a wide variety of possible outcomes including benefits to the host, asymptomatic infection, disease (which can be more or less severe), and/or death. Whether or not they themselves eventually develop disease, asymptomatic carriers can often transmit disease-causing pathogens to others. This phenomenon has a range of ethical implications for clinical medicine, public health, and infectious disease research. The implications of asymptomatic…Read more
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28Coronavirus Human Infection Challenge Studies: Assessing Potential Benefits and RisksJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 17 (4): 709-715. 2020.Human infection challenge studies have been proposed as a means to accelerate SARS-CoV2 vaccine development and thereby help to mitigate a prolonged global public health crisis. A key criterion for the ethical acceptability of SARS-CoV2 HCS is that potential benefits outweigh risks. Although the assessment of risks and benefits is meant to be a standard part of research ethics review, systematic comparisons are particularly important in the context of SARS-CoV2 HCS in light of the significant po…Read more
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11Ethical issues surrounding controlled human infection challenge studies in endemic low‐and middle‐income countriesBioethics 34 (8): 797-808. 2020.Controlled human infection challenge studies (CHIs) involve intentionally exposing research participants to, and/or thereby infecting them with, micro‐organisms. There have been increased calls for more CHIs to be conducted in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) where many relevant diseases are endemic. This article is based on a research project that identified and analyzed ethical and regulatory issues related to endemic LMIC CHIs via (a) a review of relevant literature and (b) qualitativ…Read more
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15Surveillance and control of asymptomatic carriers of drug‐resistant bacteriaBioethics 33 (7): 766-775. 2019.Drug‐resistant bacterial infections constitute a major threat to global public health. Several key bacteria that are becoming increasingly resistant are among those that are ubiquitously carried by human beings and usually cause no symptoms (i.e. individuals are asymptomatic carriers) until and/or unless a precipitating event leads to symptomatic infection (and thus disease). Carriers of drug‐resistant bacteria can also transmit resistant pathogens to others, thus putting the latter at risk of r…Read more
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49Freedom and moral enhancementJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (4): 215-216. 2014.This issue of Journal of Medical Ethics includes a pair of papers debating the implications of moral bioenhancement for human freedom–and, especially, the question of whether moral enhancement should potentially be compulsory. In earlier writings Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argue that compulsory moral bioenhancement may be necessary to prevent against catastrophic harms that might result from immoral behaviour.1 In “Voluntary moral enhancement and the survival-at-any-cost bias” Vojin Rak…Read more
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24Eugenic abortion, moral uncertainty, and social consequencesMonash Bioethics Review 20 (2): 26-42. 2001.The proliferation of prenatal genetic testing likely to follow from advances in genetic science invites reconsideration of the moral status of abortion. In this article I examine arguments surrounding the moral status of the fetus. I conclude that secular philosophy should ultimately admit that the moral status of the fetus is uncertain, and that this uncertainty itself makes abortion morally problematic. While this does not imply that abortion is always morally wrong or that it should be legall…Read more
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33Biodefense and dual-use research: the optimisation problem and the value of securityJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (4): 205-206. 2013.Central to the argument of ‘Biodefense and the Production of Knowledge: Rethinking the Problem’ are claims that the vast majority of ethical debate about biodefense research to date has focused on the dual use problem, and the focus of ethical discussion of dual-use research has been on the need to strike ‘a proper balance of only two dominant values: biosecurity and “open science”’ —the idea being that ‘under current conditions other values can and ought to be ignored because the stakes are so …Read more
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28Promoting Justice, Trust, Compliance, and Health: The Case for CompensationAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (11): 22-24. 2009.The qualitative research of Baum and colleagues (2009), among other things, reveals that people are worried about the financial consequences of social-distancing measures and that lack of trust in...
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24Ethics, health policy, and Zika: From emergency to global epidemic?Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (5): 343-348. 2018.Zika virus was recognised in 2016 as an important vector-borne cause of congenital malformations and Guillain-Barré syndrome, during a major epidemic in Latin America, centred in Northeastern Brazil. The WHO and Pan American Health Organisation, with partner agencies, initiated a coordinated global response including public health intervention and urgent scientific research, as well as ethical analysis as a vital element of policy design. In this paper, we summarise the major ethical issues rais…Read more
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Monash UniversityRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |