Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 5, Page 500-510, June 2022.

Many contemporary ethical debates turn on claims about the nature and extent of our alleged procreative moral rights: moral rights to procreate or not to procreate as we choose. In this article, I argue that there are no procreative moral rights, in that generally we do not have a distinctive moral right to procreate or not to procreate as we choose. However, interference with our procreative choices usually violates our nonprocreative moral rights, such as our moral rights to bodily autonomy (...) or to privacy. My argument presents hypothetical cases in which a state interferes with a person's procreative choices in order to promote aggregate social welfare, but this interference does not violate any of the person's nonprocreative moral rights. These cases not only undermine frequently made claims that widely recognized nonprocreative moral rights entail procreative moral rights, they also challenge the intuitively plausible claim that interference with our procreative choices as such violates our moral rights. What at first appear to be substantive moral rights are in fact a kind of illusion created by the frequent overlap of other rights, but lacking in substance beyond that overlap. While this argument against the existence of procreative moral rights has substantive implications for ongoing debates in reproductive ethics, I ultimately suggest that it is consistent with a progressive approach to reproductive justice. (shrink)

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Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 461-468, May 2022.

Some bioconservatives reject the use of biotechnology for moral enhancement while simultaneously purporting to accept standard theism and process virtue (STPV). Standard theism holds that God is a personal, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, transcendent being. Process virtue holds that intrinsically valuable virtue can only be obtained through a specific process and not by means of biotechnological shortcuts. We describe two internal critiques, one conceptual and the other moral, that arise by combining standard theism and process virtue to reject moral enhancement. First, (...) the conceptual critique argues there is an inconsistency that arises when the process virtue view is applied to the concept of God himself. STPV inconsistently holds that intrinsically valuable virtue must arise through a process, yet also posits the existence of an immutable, omnibenevolent God, whose intrinsically valuable virtue never arose through a process. Theistic bioconservatives must either give up the notion that God has always been perfectly virtuous or give up their claim that virtue must be obtained through a particular kind of process. Second, the moral critique argues that rejecting moral enhancement on a process virtue basis is selfish, which is held to be a vice on all mainstream manifestations of standard theism. Process virtue is selfish because it requires prioritizing the intrinsic value of developing one’s own virtue through a process over using moral enhancement that will improve one’s ability to help others. We conclude that the combination of standard theism and process virtue does not serve as a strong basis from which to oppose moral enhancement. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 434-444, May 2022.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 411-422, May 2022.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 290-297, March 2022.

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Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 283-289, March 2022.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 2, Page 194-200, February 2022.

Recent years have witnessed intensive efforts to specify which requirements ethical artificial intelligence (AI) must meet. General guidelines for ethical AI consider a varying number of principles important. A frequent novel element in these guidelines, that we have bundled together under the term explicability, aims to reduce the black-box character of machine learning algorithms. The centrality of this element invites reflection on the conceptual relation between explicability and the four bioethical principles. This is important because the application of general ethical (...) frameworks to clinical decision-making entails conceptual questions: Is explicability a free-standing principle? Is it already covered by the well-established four bioethical principles? Or is it an independent value that needs to be recognized as such in medical practice? We discuss these questions in a conceptual-ethical analysis, which builds upon the findings of an empirical document analysis. On the example of the medical specialty of radiology, we analyze the position of radiological associations on the ethical use of medical AI. We address three questions: Are there references to explicability or a similar concept? What are the reasons for such inclusion? Which ethical concepts are referred to? (shrink)

Prolife theorists typically hold to the claim that all human beings possess equal moral status from conception and consequently possess a right to life. This, they believe, entails that abortion is impermissible in all circumstances. Critics characterize this as an extreme anti-abortion position, as it prima facie allows no exceptions, even in cases of rape. Here, I examine whether the prolife claim regarding equal moral status is compatible with a more attractive moderate stance that permits an exception in the case (...) of rape. I show that Judith Jarvis Thomson's analysis of rights can be used to modify the prolife position in this way, but that doing so involves concessions that prolife theorists are unlikely to find acceptable. (shrink)

In the beginning of the COVID pandemic, researchers and bioethicists called for human challenge trials to hasten the development of a vaccine for COVID. However, the fact that we lacked a specific, highly effective treatment for COVID led many to argue that a COVID challenge trial would be unethical and we ought to pursue traditional phase III testing instead. These ethical objections to challenge trials may have slowed the progress of a COVID vaccine, so it is important to evaluate their (...) merit. One common way of doing so is to make an analogy to other social practices that are relevantly similar and which we currently sanction. We submit that non-directed live organ donation (NDLOD) is a promising analogy. After arguing that the risks to volunteers for each activity appear similar, we explore potential disanalogies that would undermine the comparison. We note that there are differences in both the kind and certainty of benefit secured by NDLOD compared to challenge trials. We conclude these differences are insufficient to make NDLOD permissible and challenge trials impermissible. Ultimately, if we think the risks associated with NDLOD are ethically permissible, then we should think the same of the risks associated with COVID challenge trials. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 63-70, January 2022.

In the debates regarding the ethics of human organoid biobanking, the locus of donor autonomy has been identified in processes of consent. The problem is that, by focusing on consent, biobanking processes preclude adequate engagement with donor autonomy because they are unable to adequately recognise or respond to factors that determine authentic choice. This is particularly problematic in biobanking contexts associated with organoid research or the clinical application of organoids because, given the probability of unforeseen and varying purposes for which (...) a donor’s organoids could be employed and given the different ways in which a donor can relate to her biospecimens, a donor can value her organoids differently in different contexts and her reasons for autonomously permitting use of her cells and tissues in one case may not support an autonomous decision in another. In response, this paper has three aims: firstly, to make the case for why organoid biobanks ought to respect donor autonomy conceived as authentic choice; secondly, to explore the autonomy-respecting limits of established and widely prevalent models of biobank consent; and thirdly, to propose certain conditions that organoid biobanks ought to support or facilitate in order to respect donor autonomy. (shrink)