•  2
    When Should We Not Respect a Patient’s Wish?
    Journal of Clinical Ethics 25 (3): 196-206. 2014.
    The prevailing orthodoxy for competency assessment is to test for the presence of certain abilities. This article argues that the presence of certain abilities is not enough when a patient refuses a life-sustaining/lifesaving measure that promises to work and does not present obviously onerous burdens. In such cases, we need to know whether the patient has rendered a competent refusal of such measures. Whereas the former refers us to test for certain abilities, the latter refers us to assess the…Read more
  •  36
    Book reviews (review)
    with Joseph A. Bulbulia, Kristen Kingfield Kearns, Ilsup Ahn, Peter Forrest, Graeme Marshall, and Patrick Hutchings
    Sophia 42 (1): 125-126. 2003.
    Book Review. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2014.929720
  •  1
    Direct Benefit, Equipoise, and Research on the Non-consenting
    In Tomas Zima & David N. Weisstub (eds.), Medical Research Ethics: Challenges in the 21st Century, Springer Verlag. pp. 195-213. 2022.
    Research on human subjects aims to obtain knowledge of vital importance for human health and functioning. Neuroscientific research specifically is understood as oriented towards three goals: the maintenance of neurological health, the treatment of neurological diseases or syndromes, and the enhancement of neurological functioning. Most guidelines or regulations for pediatric research (whether in the U.S. or elsewhere) require that if a research intervention exposes subjects to more than minimal …Read more
  •  14
    The Dead Donor Rule Is Not Morally Sufficient
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (2): 57-59. 2023.
    Nielsen Busch and Mjaaland (2023) argue that controlled donation after cardiac death (cDCD) protocols prescribe the extraction of organs that do not violate the dead donor rule. I argue here that e...
  •  17
    Moral Enhancement Is Irrational
    Acta Analytica 38 (4): 653-665. 2023.
    Debates on moral enhancement focus legitimate attention on the questions of whether it is possible and/or what could count as a moral enhancement given deep ethical disagreement. I argue here that moral enhancements might not even be rational to consider—from the perspective of the agent. At issue is the assessment of whether the enhancement is truly reliable. Since we assess reliable belief forming processes by their outputs, whether they are true, an agent who is entertaining a putative moral …Read more
  •  2
    Bioethics is a field of inquiry and as such is fundamentally an epistemic discipline. Knowing how we make moral judgments can bring into relief why certain arguments on various bioethical issues appear plausible to one side and obviously false to the other. Uncertain Bioethicsmakes a significant and distinctive contribution to the bioethics literature by culling the insights from contemporary moral psychology to highlight the epistemic pitfalls and distorting influences on our apprehension of va…Read more
  •  3
    The Fallacy of Relevance and Moral Risks
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (8): 80-82. 2022.
    Paltrow and colleagues focus on the deleterious consequences that could occur if Roe were overturned, including food and housing insecurity, loss of employment, bankruptcy, unjustified arres...
  •  3
    Morality and “The Conception Kit”
    Ethics and Medics 34 (7): 3-4. 2009.
  •  6
    A Defense of the Vatican on ANH
    with John M. Haas, Alfred Cioffi, Edward J. Furton, and Marie Hilliard
    Ethics and Medics 34 (6): 1-3. 2009.
  •  1
    Defending Conceivex as Assistance
    Ethics and Medics 34 (12): 3-4. 2009.
  • A Defense of Patients’ Wishes
    Ethics and Medics 34 (1): 1-3. 2009.
  •  3
    Human Embryos as Human Subjects
    Ethics and Medics 32 (9): 3-4. 2007.
  •  4
    IVF and the Conjugal Act
    Ethics and Medics 32 (4): 1-2. 2007.
  •  1
    Direct” versus “Indirect
    Ethics and Medics 36 (1): 3-4. 2011.
  •  18
    Deontic Fallacies and the Arguments against Conscientious Objections
    Christian Bioethics 27 (2): 140-157. 2021.
    The respect for one’s conscience is rooted in a broader respect for the human person. The conscience represents a person’s ability to identify the values and goods that inform her moral identity. Ignoring or overriding a person’s conscience can lead to significant moral and emotional distress. Refusals to respect a person’s conscientious objection to cases of killing are a source of incisive distress, since judgments that it is impermissible to kill so-and-so are typically held very strongly and…Read more
  •  3
    Book reviews (review)
    with Joseph A. Bulbulia, Kristen Kingfield Kearns, Ilsup Ahn, Peter Forrest, Graeme Marshall, and Patrick Hutchings
    Sophia 42 (1): 85-110. 2003.
  •  22
    Vulnerable Embryos
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (4): 781-810. 2010.
    Contemporary philosophical discussion on human embryonic stem cell research has focused primarily on the metaphysical and meta-ethical issues suchresearch raises. Though these discussions are interesting, largely ignored are arguments rooted in the secular research ethics tradition already informing humansubject research. This tradition countenances the notion of vulnerability and that vulnerable human subjects (of which human embryos are likely members)ought to be protected from research-relate…Read more
  •  19
    Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics by Neil C. Manson and Onora O’Neill
    The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9 (3): 610-613. 2009.
  •  21
    I argue in this paper two theses. First, I argue that the internal consistency of the argument from evil demands that it take into account some form of EST. Thus, there is no ground for the atheist to chide the theist when the theist appeals to an expanded version of theism. Second, I show that it isprima facie probable that RST does in fact ential EST. I show this by capitalizing on the distinction between what is contained in a concept and what is entailed by a concept. What a term or concept …Read more
  •  243
    Given the issues discussed and that the arguments in critical focus are fairly new, the collection provides a novel, comprehensive, and rigorous analysis of contemporary pro-choice arguments.”.
  •  45
    A Regulatory Argument Against Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (5): 496-508. 2009.
    This article explores the plausibility of an argument against embryonic stem cell research based on what the regulations already say about research on pregnant women and fetuses. The center of the argument is the notion of vulnerability and whether such a concept is applicable to human embryos. It is argued that such an argument can be made plausible. The article concludes by responding to several important objections.
  •  11
    St. Ambrose, Euthanasia, and Antisenescence Arguments
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 17 (2): 39-57. 2014.
  •  37
    Twinning, Identity, and Moral Status
    American Journal of Bioethics 13 (1): 42-43. 2013.
    No abstract
  •  25
    Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
    American Journal of Bioethics 11 (8): 60-61. 2011.
    The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 60-61, August 2011.
  •  40
    The Dead Donor Rule and Means-End Reasoning
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (1): 134-140. 2012.
  •  78
    Challenging research on human subjects: justice and uncompensated harms
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (1): 29-51. 2013.
    Ethical challenges to certain aspects of research on human subjects are not uncommon; examples include challenges to first-in-human trials (Chapman in J Clin Res Bioethics 2(4):1–8, 2011), certain placebo controlled trials (Anderson in J Med Philos 31:65–81, 2006; Anderson and Kimmelman in Kennedy Inst Ethics J 20(1):75–98, 2010) and “sham” surgery (Macklin in N Engl J Med 341:992–996, 1999). To date, however, there are few challenges to research when the subjects are competent and the research …Read more
  •  40
    Twinning, Substance, and Identity through Time
    The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 8 (2): 255-264. 2008.
    The author reviews one of the more intriguing articles in the stem cell research issue of the journal Metaphilosophy (April 2007), “Killing Embryos for Stem Cell Research,” by Jeff McMahan. He begins by recapitulating McMahan’s argument against the proposition that we are essentially individual human organisms. He then turns to two main critiques of the argument. First, he shows that the term “essentially” is insufficiently defined by McMahan and, more important, if we take the typical explicati…Read more