Although the physician’s use and misuse of power have been discussed in the social sciences and in literature, they have never been explored in medical ethics until now. In this book, Dr. Howard Brody argues that the central task is not to reduce the physician’s power, as others have suggested, but to develop guidelines for its use, so that the doctor shares with the patient both information and the responsibility for deciding on appropriate treatment. Dr. Brody first reviews literary works (...) dealing with medical power, from Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” to stories by William Carlos Williams, Vonda McIntyre, and Richard Selzer. These works, he shows, reveal the healers’ ambivalence over their own powers and patients’ fears of the abuse of power. Dr. Brody then points out important but neglected ethical issues that emerge from an analysis of power, such as the tension between care of individual patients and the pressures of the doctor’s workload; the rescue fantasy that impels some physicians to extraordinary lengths to save a life; and the economic system, which rewards surgeons and other specialists more than it does physicians who spend time talking with patients about their problems. He also shows how the perspective of shared power can shed new light on standard topics in medical ethics—from informed consent and confidentiality to resource allocation and cost containment. (shrink)

The definition of ‘medical humanities’ may be approached via three conceptions—the humanities as a list of disciplines, as a program of moral development, and as a supportive friend. The conceptions are grounded by linking them to three narratives—respectively, the history of the modern liberal arts college; the history of Petrarch and the studia humanitatis of the early Renaissance; and the life of Sir William Osler. The three conceptions are complementary, each filling gaps in one or more of the others. (...) Getting clearer on a definition of ‘medical humanities’ is practically important if this field is to take its rightful place within health professions education and practice. (shrink)

IN the recently published Life by I.eslie Stephen of his brother, Fitz- James, there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy. The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse with his pupils in this wise: "Gurney, what is the difference between justification and sanctification?- Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God " etc. In the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at your (...) good old orthodox College conversation continues to be somewhat upon this order; and to show you that we at Harvard have not lost all interest in these vital subjects, I have brought with me tonight something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you, --I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper. (shrink)

In seeking to clarify the concept of conflict of interest (COI) in debates about physician–industry relationships, Howard Brody (2011) highlights the extent to which the prob- lem turns on a common pejorative understanding of COI. Whether it is the academic or public policy “pharmapologists” or “pharmascolds” talking about COI, there is often a straightforward and overly simplistic correlation made: that is, a conflict of interest—by definition—leads to fraudulent or corrupt behavior. The same type of reasoning is com- monly found in (...) discussions about COI outside the health sciences, most notably in news stories about the awarding of government contracts or the behaviour of corporate executives. The problem is that in focusing on dramatic failures to manage COI (e.g., around Vioxx), there is a tendency to strongly associate COI with extreme forms of financial and even criminal misconduct, leaving the public, policymakers, academics, and professionals with a skewed and limited understanding of the concept. (shrink)

Restraint as an intervention in the management of acute mental distress has a long history that predates the existence of psychiatry. However, it remains a source of controversy with an ongoing debate as to its role. This article critically explores what to date has seemingly been only implicit in the debate surrounding the role of restraint: how should the concept of validity be interpreted when applied to restraint as an intervention? The practice of restraint in mental health is critically examined (...) using two post-positivist constructions of validity, the pragmatic and the psychopolitical, by means of a critical examination of the literature. The current literature provides only weak support for the pragmatic validity of restraint as an intervention and no support to date for its psychopolitical validity. Judgements regarding the validity of any intervention that is coercive must include reference to the psychopolitical dimensions of both practice and policy. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the syntax of inverse scope in Hungarian, a language that largely disambiguates quantifier scope at spell-out. Inverse scope is attributed to alternate orderings of potentially large chunks of structure, but with appeal to base-generation, as opposed to nonfeature-driven movement as in Kayne 1998. The proposal is developed within mirror theory and conforms to the assumption that structures are antisymmetrical. The paper also develops a matching notion of scope in terms of featural domination, as opposed (...) to c-command, and applies it to otherwise problematic cases of pied piping. Finally, the interaction of different quantifier types is examined and the patterns are explained invoking morphological considerations on one hand and A-bar reconstruction on the other. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to (...) take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

Among those who criticize the concept of a common refrain is that we really have no idea what futility means. For example, physicians seem to disagree on whether a treatment being futile means that it has a less than 5% chance of working or a 20% chance of working. If the concept is so unclear, then it seems a thin reed upon which to base a momentous ethical decision—namely, that the physician's judgment should be allowed to override the wishes of (...) the competent patient or the patient's duly appointed surrogate. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in (...) divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)

Morality based upon categorical imperatives. On a supposed right to tell lies from benevolent motives, by I. Kant.--Utilitarian morality, by H. Sidgwick.--What makes right acts right? by Sir D. Ross.--Utilitarianism, universalisation, and our duty to be just, by J. Harrison.--Extreme and restricted utilitarianism, by J. J. C. Smart.--What if everyone did that? by C. Strang.--Toward a credible form of utilitarianism, by R. B. Brandt.

Bernard Williams's remarkable essay on morality confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyses and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of 'goodness' in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards, and human nature. The (...) final chapters make a fascinating enquiry into what morality is about, looking beyond happiness to other human aims and ideals. This re-issue of a classic in moral philosophy includes a new foreword by the author. (shrink)

New edition (previously 1971) of an anthology for an undergraduate course. Comprises four parts: theories, explanation and causality, confirmation of scientific hypotheses, selected problems of particular sciences. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In recent years, bioethics has increasingly become an international area of inquiry with major contributions being made not only in North America but also in Europe and in the Pacific Rim countries. This general observation is particularly true for research ethics. Little attention has been paid, however, to this internationalization of bioethics in general and research ethics in particular, and there are few studies comparing what has emerged in the different countries.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one (...) would most expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

One of the great American pragmatic philosophers alongside Peirce and Dewey, William James (1842–1910) delivered these eight lectures in Boston and New York in the winter of 1906–7. Though he credits Peirce with coining the term 'pragmatism', James highlights in his subtitle that this 'new name' describes a philosophical temperament as old as Socrates. The pragmatic approach, he says, takes a middle way between rationalism's airy principles and empiricism's hard facts. James' pragmatism is both a method of interpreting ideas (...) by their practical consequences and an epistemology which identifies truths according to their useful outcomes. Furnished with many examples, the lectures illustrate pragmatism's response to classic problems such as the question of free will versus determinism. Published in 1907, this work further develops James's approach to religion and morality, introduced in The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), both reissued in this series. (shrink)

A pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology. The essays gathered in the posthumously published Essays in Radical Empiricism formulate (...) ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introduction John J. McDermott describes the historical background and the genesis of James's theory and considers the objections raised by its opponents. (shrink)

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to his (...) controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Research on ethical issues within food systems is often human-centric. As a consequence, animal-centric policy debates where regulatory decisions about food are being made tend to be overlooked by food scholars and activists. This absence was notable in the recent debates around Australia’s animal live export industry. Using Foucault’s tools, we explore how ‘food security’ is conceptualised and governed within animal cruelty policy debates about the live export trade. The problem of food security produced in these debates shaped Indonesians as (...) ‘victims’ of food insecurity due to the nation’s inability to produce sufficient quantities of protein. This understanding of the problem reproduced the dominant framing of food security as a problem for developing countries addressed by increasing global food production. The underlying premise uncritically accepted in Australia’s debates on live export trade was that intensive animal agriculture, and Australia’s live export trade specifically, were essential to alleviating global food insecurity. Drawing on our findings, we show how dominant representations of ‘food security’, and related regulatory and technological trajectories, flourish where alliances between animal and food activists, scholarship, and movements are weak. Accordingly, we argue for agri-food scholars to take up opportunities to contribute to the policy discussions about the treatment of animals to effectively expand the kinds of problems, solutions, and strategies of resistance produced in the discourses surrounding food system issues. (shrink)

The debate over the existence of a “public sphere” in China’s Late Qing/Early Republican era began nearly three decades ago, but it has yet to generate a special socio-cultural review on the “Confucian social imaginary” of the Chinese people. The article builds on existing “economic-political approach” and “idea-communication approach” to argue decisive factors hindering the development of a Habermasian “public sphere.” These includes (1) people’s traditional-collectivist lifestyle, (2) lack of understanding of “universal equality,” (3) conservative self-positioning during social transition, (4) (...) regionalist attitude toward outsiders, (5) lack of access to Enlightenment ideas, (6) disregard for parliamentary systems, and (7) ignorance of the rule of law. (shrink)

This new volume of philosophical papers by Bernard Williams is divided into three sections: the first Action, Freedom, Responsibility, the second Philosophy, Evolution and the Human Sciences; in which appears the essay which gives the collection its title; and the third Ethics, which contains essays closely related to his 1983 book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Like the two earlier volumes of Williams's papers published by Cambridge University Press, Problems of the Self and Moral Luck, this volume will be (...) welcomed by all readers with a serious interest in philosophy. It is published alongside a volume of essays on Williams's work, World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, which provides a reappraisal of his work by other distinguished thinkers in the field. (shrink)

Introduction: the advance of governmentality -- Foucault, power, and governmentality: introduction; what is governmentality?; beyond the microphysics of power?; from theory of the state to genealogy of the state; history of the art of government; pastoral power; raison d'état; liberal governmentality; five propositions on foucault and governmentality -- Governmentality 3.4.7.: introduction; governmentality after Foucault; governmentality and the political sciences; some problems in governmentality -- Foucault effect redux? some notes on international governmentality studies: constellation; a few preliminary observations; problems and debates (...) in international governmentality studies -- Reconnecting governmentality and genealogy: introduction; genealogy and governmentality; pluralizing genealogy; practicing genealogy; lines of descent: the family tree of power?; counter-memory and re-serialization; the retrieval of forgotten struggles and subjugated knowledges -- Conclusion: encountering governmentality: governmentality as a new cartography of power; from mapping to encountering; governmentality and politics. (shrink)

The human labor and animal inputs required to manufacture meat products are kept physically and symbolically distanced from the consumer. Recently however, meatpacking plants received significant news media attention when they emerged as hotpots for COVID-19 — threatening workers’ health, requiring plants to slow production, and forcing farmers to euthanize livestock. In light of these disruptions, this research asks: how did news media frame the impact of COVID-19 on the meat industry, and to what extent is a process of _defetishization_ (...) observed? Examining a sample of 230 news articles from coverage of US meatpacking plants and COVID-19 in 2020, I find that news media largely attributes the cause for the spread of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants to the history of exploitative working conditions and business practices of the meat industry. By contrast, the solutions offered to address these problems aim at alleviating the immediate obstacles posed by the pandemic and returning to, rather than challenging, the status quo. These short-run solutions for complex issues demonstrate the constraints in imagining alternatives to a problem rooted in capitalism. Furthermore, my analysis shows that animals are only made visible in the production process when their bodies become a waste product. (shrink)

As humans, we want to live meaningfully, yet we are often driven by impulse. In Religion and the Meaning of Life, Williams investigates this paradox – one with profound implications. Delving into felt realities pertinent to meaning, such as boredom, trauma, suicide, denial of death, and indifference, Williams describes ways to acquire meaning and potential obstacles to its acquisition. This book is unique in its willingness to transcend a more secular stance and explore how one's belief in God may be (...) relevant to life's meaning. Religion and the Meaning of Life's interdisciplinary approach makes it useful to philosophers, religious studies scholars, psychologists, students, and general readers alike. The insights from this book have profound real-world applications – they can transform how readers search for meaning and, consequently, how readers see and exist in the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one (...) would most expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

Bernard Williams; XIV*—The Truth in Relativism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 215–228, https://doi.org/10.1093.

I am grateful to Drs. Richard Bukata and Jerome Hoffman and the staff of Primary Care Medicals for retrieving and analyzing some of the references used in this paper.

A predominant ethical view holds that physician‐investigators should conduct their research with therapeutic intent. And since a physician offering a therapy wouldn't prescribe second‐rate treatments, the experimental intervention and the best proven therapy should appear equally effective. "Clinical equipoise" is necessary. But this perspective is flawed. The ethics of research and of therapy are fundamentally different, and clinical equipoise should be abandoned.