This new study provides a thorough analysis of the ethical reasoning of doctors and nurses. Based on extensive interviews, Soren Holm's work demonstrates how qualitative research methods can be used to study ethical reasoning, and that the results of such studies are important for normative ethics, that is, the analysis of how health care professionals ought to act.

The question of when we have justification for overriding ordinary, everyday decisions of persons with dementia is considered. It is argued that no single criterion for competent decision-making is able to distinguish reliably between decisions we can legitimately override and decisions we cannot legitimately override.

This paper gives a presentation and critical assessment of the phenomenological philosophy and ethics of the Danish theologian and philosopher K. E. Løgstrup (1905–1981). It is argued that although the ethics of Løgstrup contain valuable insights, an uncritical appropriation as the main source for a health care ethics or a philosophy of caring, is problematic. Løgstrup's philosophy contains a number of internal problems, and does not adequately deal with some problems raised by work in the modern health care setting.

One of the arguments that is often put forward in the discussion of human cloning is that it is in itself wrong to create a copy of a human being.

This paper analyses the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's 2002 public consultation on sex selection, a consultation that was mainly concerned with sex selection for non-medical reasons. Based on a close reading of the consultation document and questionnaire it is argued that the consultation is biased towards certain outcomes and can most plausibly be construed as an attempt not to investigate but to influence public opinion.

The possibility of creating human embryonic stem cell lines from the inner cell mass of blastocysts has led to considerable debate about how these scientific developments should be regulated. Part of this debate has focused on the ethical analysis and part on how this analysis should influence policymaking.

In an analysis of artificially intelligent systems for medical diagnostics and treatment planning we argue that patients should be able to exercise a right to withdraw from AI diagnostics and treatment planning for reasons related to (1) the physician’s role in the patients’ formation of and acting on personal preferences and values, (2) the bias and opacity problem of AI systems, and (3) rational concerns about the future societal effects of introducing AI systems in the health care sector.

“Dissecting Bioethics,” edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.The section is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people's actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are therefore particularly appreciated.The themes covered in the section so far (...) include dignity, naturalness, public interest, community, disability, autonomy, parity of reasoning, symbolic appeals, and toleration.All submitted papers are peer reviewed. To submit a paper or to discuss a suitable topic, contact Tuija Takala at [email protected]. (shrink)

Philosophy should and can contribute to bioethics Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9476-2 Authors Vicki Langendyk, School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW 1797, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

“Bodily autonomy” has received significant attention in bioethics, medical ethics, and medical law in terms of the general inviolability of a patient’s bodily sovereignty and the rights of patients to make choices (e.g., reproductive choices) that concern their own body. However, the role of the body in terms of how it can or does contribute to a patient’s capacity for, or exercises of their autonomy in clinical decision-making situations has not been explicitly addressed. The approach to autonomy in this paper (...) is aligned with traditional theories that conceive autonomy in terms of an individual’s capacities for, and exercises of rational reflection. However, at the same time, this paper extends these accounts by arguing that autonomy is, in part, embodied. Specifically, by drawing on phenomenological conceptions of the experience of autonomy, we argue that, in principle, the body is a necessary component of the capacity for autonomy. Secondly, through the presentation of two different cases, we highlight ways in which a patient’s body can contribute to the autonomy of treatment choices. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to explore additional conditions under which a concept of embodied autonomy should be employed in medical decision making, how its underlying principles might be operationalised in clinical situations, and its consequences for approaches to patient autonomy in healthcare practice, policy, and law. (shrink)

I am in general a great admirer of the work of Savulescu and Harris, not because I think their conclusions are often right but because they state these conclusions and their arguments very clearly. In their joint paper “The Creation Lottery,” they do, nevertheless, tendentiously overstate their case both with regard to the conclusions that flow from identifying natural reproduction as a creation lottery and in seeing their exchange as an example of good method in bioethics. In the following short (...) comment I want to point to some of the problematic areas in S&H's arguments. (shrink)

In “A Paradox out of Context: Harris and Holm on the Precautionary Principle,” Sandin criticizes the earlier paper “Extending Human Lifespan and the Precautionary Paradox” wherein John Harris and I argued that the precautionary principle is incoherent. These criticisms offer me the possibility to briefly expand and clarify some of our previous arguments, and to show that the paradox of precaution is not dispelled by attention to context as Sandin maintains. Even when context is fully acknowledged, application of the (...) PP will still lead to paradox and paralysis. (shrink)

At the end of 1999 the Danish Council of Ethics published a report on organ and tissue donation from living donors. The report focused on kidney and bone marrow transplantations, as these are presently the most common transplantations from live donors. During the work on the report, it became clear to the Council that, apart from problems concerning coercion and commercialization that affected both adult and child donors, by far the largest ethical problems occurred in donations from children.

The Future of Human Reproduction brings together new work, by an international group of contributors from various fields and perspectives, on ethical, social, and legal issues raised by recent advances in reproductive technology. These advances have put us in a position to choose what kindsof children and parents there should be; the aim of the essays is to illuminate how we should deal with these possibilities for choice. Topics discussed include gender and race selection, genetic engineering, fertility treatment, ovarian tissue (...) transfer, and post-menopausal pregnancy. The centralfocus of the volume is the interface between reproductive choice and public regulation. (shrink)

This paper develops a general approach to how society should compensate for losses that individuals incur due to public health interventions aimed at controlling the spread of infectious diseases. The paper falls in three parts. The first part provides an initial introduction to the issues and briefly outlines five different kinds of public health interventions that will be used as test cases. They are all directed at individuals and aimed at controlling the spread of infectious diseases (1) isolation, (2) quarantine, (...) (3) recommended voluntary social distancing, (4) changes in health care provision for asymptomatic carriers of multi-resistant microorganisms, and (5) vaccination. The interventions will be briefly described including the various risks, burdens and harms individuals who are subject to these interventions may incur. The second part briefly surveys current compensation mechanisms as far as any exist and argue that even where they exist they are clearly insufficient and do not provide adequate compensation. The third part will then develop a general framework for compensation for losses incurred due to public health interventions in the infectious disease context. This is the major analytical and constructive part of the paper. It first analyses pragmatic and ethical arguments supporting the existence of an obligation on the part of the state to compensate for such losses, and then considers whether this obligation can be defeated by (1) resource considerations, or (2) issues relating to personal responsibility. (shrink)

Phenomenology gives rise to certain ontological considerations that have far-reaching implications for standard conceptions of patient autonomy in medical ethics, and, as a result, the obligations of and to patients in clinical decision-making contexts. One such consideration is the phenomenological reduction in classical phenomenology, a core feature of which is the characterisation of our primary experiences as immediately and inherently meaningful. This paper builds on and extends the analyses of the phenomenological reduction in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (...) in order to identify and explain its implications for our current understanding of the principle of respect for patient autonomy and the norms of clinical decision making. (shrink)

This paper argues that a precautionary approach to scientific progress of the sort advocated by Walter Glannon with respect to life-extending therapies involves both incoherence and irresolvable paradox. This paper demonstrates the incoherence of the precautionary approach in many circumstances and argues that with respect to life-extending therapies we have at present no persuasive reasons for a moratorium on such research.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the scientific background to the current ethical and legislative debates about the generation and use of human stem cells, and to give an overview of the ethical issues underlying these debates. The ethical issues discussed are 1) stem cells and the status of the embryo, 2) women as the sources of ova for stem cell production, 3) the use of ova from other species, 4) slippery slopes towards reproductive cloning, 5) the public (...) presentation of stem cell research and 6) the evaluation of scientific uncertainty and its implications for public policy. (shrink)

Background There has been debate on whether a global or unified field of bioethics exists. If bioethics is a unified global field, or at the very least a closely shared way of thinking, then we should expect bioethicists to behave the same way in their academic activities anywhere in the world. This paper investigates whether there is a 'global bioethics' in the sense of a unified academic community. Methods To address this question, we study the web-linking patterns of bioethics institutions, (...) the citation patterns of bioethics papers and the buying patterns of bioethics books. Results All three analyses indicate that there are geographical and institutional differences in the academic behavior of bioethicists and bioethics institutions. Conclusion These exploratory studies support the position that there is no unified global field of bioethics. This is a problem if the only reason is parochialism. But these regional differences are probably of less concern if one notices that bioethics comes in many not always mutually understandable dialects. (shrink)

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)

Abortion remains a highly controversial issue in many countries and subject to intense public debate. The aim of this chapter is to summarize the most prominent assumptions and arguments concerning the moral and legal dimensions of abortion on which this debate rests. Where the moral justifiability of abortion is concerned, this chapter focuses on arguments relating to the moral status of the fetus or embryo, the notion of personhood, the biological development of the embryo or fetus, and the moral relevance (...) of specific points in the developmental process. In terms of the legal aspects, we consider concepts and principles invoked at law, principally, the rights of pregnant women and the medical concept of viability. For each moral and legal position in the abortion debate, we provide an overview of the principal assumptions and arguments and acknowledge the main criticisms. (shrink)

Cardiff Law School, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, UK. Tel: +44(0)2920875447, Fax: +44(0)2920874097; Email: Holms{at}cardiff.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract The paper presents a brief overview of current knowledge about (i) the link between parental behaviour and lifestyle and childhood obesity, (ii) the many other factors influencing overweight and obesity rates in children and (iii) the effectiveness of interventions in children who are already overweight and obese. On the basis of this, it is analysed (...) to what extent it is meaningful to attribute causal and moral responsibility to parents in theory and in practice. It is argued that although there is a sense in which many parents are causally and morally responsible for the obesity of their children, most parents are not blameworthy and the attribution of parental responsibility in most cases does not justify intervention in the family context by society on behalf of the children. In the analysis of the possible justification of more general interventions, parallels are drawn to the distinction between hard and soft forms of paternalism. Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22: 6) For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. 1. (Samuel 3: 13) CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)