Abímbọ́lá, Kọ́lá. Culture and the Principles of Biomedical Ethics
2013, Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 19 (3): 31-39.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: This paper examines the roles of culture in the principles of biomedical ethics. Drawing on examples from African, Navajo and Western cultures, the paper maintains that various elements of culture are indispensable to the application of the principles of biomedical ethics.Comment : This text presents a clear introduction to questions about the application of biomedical ethical principles outside of Western medical contexts. It contains a good overview of the Western interpretation and application of autonomy, as well as other, culturally specific, interpretations of autonomy in medical contexts. This makes it useful as a text to introduce students to the way in which conflicts occur over the application of medical ethical principles in context prior to looking at specific cases (such as Jehovah's Witnesses refusal to accept blood transfusions or the well known case of the Hmong medical culture).Allen, Anita L.. Mental Disorders and the “System of Judgmental Responsibility”2010, Boston University Law Review 90: 621-640.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Diversifying Syllabi: Thesis: Those affected by mental disorders whose actions are episodically influenced by their disorder are often overlooked by philosophers of moral and ethical responsibility. Allen gives us reasons for thinking it is inappropriate to either: a) “summarily exclude people with mental problems out of the universe of moral agents, reducing them to the status of rocks, trees, animals, and infants” b) “include the group on the false assumption that their moral lives are precisely like the paradigmatic moral lives of the epistemically-sound and well-regulated people never personally touched by a mental condition” We must explore a revised approach to moral and ethical responsibility and obligation for this group.Comment : This text is useful in teaching in two main contexts: (1) in discussing ethical issues related to mental disorders; and (2) to provide a challenging case in classes on blame and responsibility. The text can be also used in the context of the free will and determinism debate, and as a further reading in classes on moral agency.Ashley, Florence. Gatekeeping Hormone Replacement Therapy for Transgender Patients is Dehumanising2019, The Journal of Medical Ethics. 45: 480-482.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-TurnerAbstract:
Although informed consent models for prescribing hormone replacement therapy are becoming increasingly prevalent, many physicians continue to require an assessment and referral letter from a mental health professional prior to prescription. Drawing on personal and communal experience, the author argues that assessment and referral requirements are dehumanising and unethical, foregrounding the ways in which these requirements evidence a mistrust of trans people, suppress the diversity of their experiences and sustain an unjustified double standard in contrast to other forms of clinical care. Physicians should abandon this unethical requirement in favour of an informed consent approach to transgender care.Comment (from this Blueprint): Ashley draws on their own experiences as a trans person, as well as that of the trans community more broadly, to argue against assessment and referral requirements for hormone-replacement therapy (HRT). Ashley argues instead for an informed consent model, on which providers of HRT are not gatekeepers of transness, but facilitators of thoughtful decision-making.Bok, Sissela. The Limits of Confidentiality1983, Hastings Center Report 13 (1):24-31.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Introduction: Doctors, lawyers, and priests have traditionally recog nized the duty of professional secrecy regarding what individuals confide to them: personal matters such as alcoholism or depression, marital difficulties, corporate or political problems, and indeed most concerns that patients or clients want to share with someone, yet keep from all others.' Accountants, bankers, social workers, and growing numbers of professionals now invoke a similar duty to guard confidences. As codes of ethics take form in old and new professions, the duty of confidentiality serves in part to reinforce their claim to professional status, and in part to strengthen their capacity to offer help to clients.Bordo, Susan. Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture1993, In her Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Diversifying Syllabi: Bordo claims that the recent increase in women with Anorexia is a symptom of the “central ills” of our culture. Bordo discusses three sources of this “cultural illness” which leads to anorexia: the dualist axis, the control axis, and the gender/power axis. She spends the bulk of the paper discussing each “axis” or problematic component of society which is reflected back to us in the increasing diagnosis of anorexia. These “psychopathogolgies” are expressions of the culture, she claims.Comment : This text is most readily applicable in teaching feminist theory and social philosophy. However, it is also very useful in at least three other contexts: (1) as a critical approach to mind-body dualism, especially when teaching on Descartes or Plato's Phaedo; (2) in teaching on the ethics of mental illness and the anti-psychiatry movement, as an example of socially constructed disorders; and (3) more broadly in teaching on personal and collective moral responsibility.Bortolotti, Lisa, John Harris. Disability, Enhancement and the Harm-Benefit Continuum2006, In John R. Spencer & Antje Du Bois-Pedain (eds.), Freedom and Responsibility in Reproductive Choice. Hart Publishers-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Nils-Hennes StearAbstract:
Suppose that you are soon to be a parent and you learn that there are some simple measures that you can take to make sure that your child will be healthy. In particular, suppose that by following the doctor’s advice, you can prevent your child from having a disability, you can make your child immune from a number of dangerous diseases and you can even enhance its future intelligence. All that is required for this to happen is that you (or your partner) comply with lifestyle and dietary requirements. Do you and your partner have any moral reasons (or moral obligations) to follow the doctor’s advice? Would it make a difference if, instead of following some simple dietary requirements, you consented to genetic engineering to make sure that your child was free from disabilities, healthy and with above average intelligence? In this paper we develop a framework for dealing with these questions and we suggest some directions the answers might take.
Comment : This is a paper that gives an account of enhancement and disability in terms of one's relative position on a harmed and benefitted continuum, and defends enhancement on completely general moral grounds according to which the pro tanto duty to enhance is the same as the pro tanto duty not to disable. It pairs well with criticisms of the 'new eugenics', such as Robert Sparrow's 'A Not-So-New Eugenics' (2011) and more generally with consequentialist or specifically harm-based accounts of moral obligation.Brazier, Margaret Rosetta. Exploitation and enrichment: The paradox of medical experimentation2008, Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (3):180--183.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Modern medicine is built on a long history of medical experimentation. Experiments in the past often exploited more vulnerable patients. Questionable ethics litter the history of medicine. Without such experiments, however, millions of lives would be forfeited. This paper asks whether all the ``unethical'' experiments of the past were unjustifiable, and do we still exploit the poorer members of the community today? It concludes by wondering if Harris is right in his advocacy of a moral duty to participate in medical research.Chadwick, Ruth F.. Cloning1982, Philosophy 57 (220):201-209.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Every body cell of an animal or human being contains the same complete set of genes. In theory any of these cells can be used to start a new embryo. The technique has been employed in the case of frogs. The nucleus is taken out of a body cell of a frog and implanted in an enucleated frog's egg. The resulting egg cell is stimulated to develop into a normal frog, and will be an exact copy of that frog which provided the nucleus with all the genetic information. In normal sexual reproduction, two parents each contribute half their genes, but in the case of cloning, one parent passes on all his or her genesChatterjee, Anjan. The promise and predicament of cosmetic neurology2006, Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (2): 110-113-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Advances in cognitive neuroscience make cosmetic neurology in some form inevitable and will give rise to extremely difficult ethical issues.Comment : This short paper introduces the ethical challenges related to cognitive enhancement. It lists some existing enhancing drugs, discusses the differences between developing drugs which treat diseases and those developed to enhance healthy individuals. The ethical challenges it considers include: safety and possible harmfulness of enhancing drugs; whether suffering and hardships are integral parts of human development and thus removing them might be problematic; whether the possibility of enhancement won't result in explicit and implicit coercive pressure to enhance, at the cost of human happiness. Chatterjee's text will serve well as an introduction to human enhancement in medical and applied ethics classes. In higher level classes it will be useful to supplement it with other, more in-depth papers engaging with specific problems.Corrigan, Oonagh. Empty Ethics: The Problem with Informed Consent2003, Sociology of Health & Illness, 25 (3): 768-792.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Informed consent is increasingly heralded as an ethical panacea, a tool to counter autocratic and paternalistic medical practices. Debate about the implementation of informed consent is constricted and polarised, centring on the right of individuals to be fully informed and to freely choose versus an autocratic, paternalistic practice that negates individual choice. A bioethical framework, based on a principle-led form of reductive/deductive reasoning, dominates the current model of informed consent. Such a model tends to abstract the process of consent from its clinical and social setting. By fleshing out the social process involved when patients and healthy volunteer subjects consent to take part in clinical drug trials, this paper attempts to address the problem arising from the current 'empty ethics' model. My arguments are substantiated by qualitative interview data drawn from a study I conducted on the process of consent as experienced by participants in clinical drug trials.Comment : This text is a clear critique of the use of informed consent as a medical-ethical panacea (it could be taught alongside O'neill's "Paternalism and Partial Autonomy" for a more accessible and applied look at the problem of informed consent). It would be useful as a contrast at the end of a unit on informed consent for medical treatment or a unit on clinical research ethics. It is especially good for use in a biomedical ethics or research ethics course aimed at students interested in the health professions.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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