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On subjective measures of decision quality Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Jasper Debrabander
In times of person‐centered care, it is all the more important to support patients in making good decisions about their care. One way to offer such support to patients is by way of Patient Decision Aids (PDAs). Ranging from patient brochures to web‐based tools, PDAs explicitly state the decisions patients face, inform them about their medical options, help them to clarify and discuss their values,
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Parthenogenesis, identity, and value Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 William Simkulet
Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction in which a gamete (ovum or sperm) develops without being fertilized. Tomer Jordi Chaffer uses parthenogenesis to challenge Don Marquis' future‐like‐ours (FLO) argument against abortion. According to Marquis, (1) what makes it morally wrong to kill us is that it would deprive us of a possible future that we might come to value—a future “like ours” (FLO)
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Old by obsolescence: The paradox of aging in the digital era Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-20 Joan Llorca Albareda, Pablo García‐Barranquero
Geroscience and philosophy of aging have tended to focus their analyses on the biological and chronological dimensions of aging. Namely, one ages with the passage of time and by experiencing the cellular‐molecular deterioration that accompanies this process. However, our concept of aging depends decisively on the social valuations held about it. In this article, we will argue that, if we study social
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Stewardship according to context: Justifications for coercive antimicrobial stewardship policies in agriculture and their limitations Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-20 Tess Johnson
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent, global threat to public health. The development and implementation of effective measures to address AMR is vitally important but presents important ethical questions. This is a policy area requiring further sustained attention to ensure that policies proposed in National Action Plans on AMR are ethically acceptable and preferable to alternatives that might
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Phenomenology and empowerment in self‐testing apps Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Alexandra Kapeller
Although self‐testing apps, a form of mobile health (mHealth) apps, are often marketed as empowering, it is not obvious how exactly they can empower their users—and in which sense of the word. In this article, I discuss two conceptualisations of empowerment as polar opposites—one in health promotion/mHealth and one in feminist theory—and demonstrate how both their applications to individually used
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Time to rethink assisted dying? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-16 Udo Schuklenk
I wrote some years ago in these pages that the ethical debate on assisted suicide and euthanasia is essentially settled in favour of these practices.1 The number of jurisdictions, not only in the global north, but also in the global south, that introduce assisted dying in some form or shape has since continued to increase, and no attempts have been made to reverse such policy changes. Addressing dire
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Accounting for future populations in health research Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-11 Leah Pierson
The research we fund today will improve the health of people who will live tomorrow. But future people will not all benefit equally: decisions we make about what research to prioritize will predictably affect when and how much different people benefit from research. Organizations that fund health research should thus fairly account for the health needs of future populations when setting priorities
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The selective deployment of AI in healthcare Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-30 Robert Vandersluis, Julian Savulescu
Machine‐learning algorithms have the potential to revolutionise diagnostic and prognostic tasks in health care, yet algorithmic performance levels can be materially worse for subgroups that have been underrepresented in algorithmic training data. Given this epistemic deficit, the inclusion of underrepresented groups in algorithmic processes can result in harm. Yet delaying the deployment of algorithmic
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A paradigm shift?—On the ethics of medical large language models Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-25 Thomas Grote, Philipp Berens
After a wave of breakthroughs in image‐based medical diagnostics and risk prediction models, machine learning (ML) has turned into a normal science. However, prominent researchers are claiming that another paradigm shift in medical ML is imminent—due to most recent staggering successes of large language models—from single‐purpose applications toward generalist models, driven by natural language. This
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Navigating conflicts of reproductive rights: Unbundling parenthood and balancing competing interests Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Dorian Accoe, Guido Pennings
Advances in assisted reproductive technologies can give rise to several ethical challenges. One of these challenges occurs when the reproductive desires of two individuals become incompatible and conflict. To address such conflicts, it is important to unbundle different aspects of (non)parenthood and to recognize the corresponding reproductive rights. This article starts on the premise that the six
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Conscientious refusal or conscientious provision: We can't have both Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Ryan Kulesa, Alberto Giubilini
Some authors argue that it is permissible for clinicians to conscientiously provide abortion services because clinicians are already allowed to conscientiously refuse to provide certain services. Call this the symmetry thesis. We argue that on either of the two main understandings of the aim of the medical profession—what we will call “pathocentric” and “interest‐centric” views—conscientious refusal
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Arguments for a ban on pediatric intersex surgery: A dis/analogy with Jehovah witness blood transfusion Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Catherine Clune‐Taylor
This article argues for a ban on the performance of medically unnecessary genital normalizing surgeries as part of assigning a binary sex/gender to infants with intersex conditions on the basis of autonomy, regardless of etiology. It does this via a dis/analogy with the classic case in bioethics of Jehovah Witness (JW) parents' inability to refuse life‐saving blood transfusions for their minor children
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Why restrict medical effective altruism? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Travis Quigley
In a challenge trial, research subjects are purposefully exposed to some pathogen in a controlled setting, in order to test the efficacy of a vaccine or other experimental treatment. This is an example of medical effective altruism (MEA), where individuals volunteer to risk harms for the public good. Many bioethicists rejected challenge trials in the context of Covid‐19 vaccine research on ethical
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Corrigendum to: Attitudes, intentions and procreative responsibility in current and future assisted reproduction Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-08
Battisti, D. (2023). Attitudes, intentions and procreative responsibility in current and future assisted reproduction. Bioethics, 37(5), 449–461. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13150. The name ‘McDougall’ is incorrectly spelled as ‘McDougal’ on pages 453 and 454. The phrase ‘focus-agent focus’ on page 454 is incorrect and should read ‘future-agent focus’. The part of the sentence "implies the prospective
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Nature-versus-nurture considered harmful: Actionability as an alternative tool for understanding the exposome from an ethical perspective Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Caspar W. Safarlou, Annelien L. Bredenoord, Roel Vermeulen, Karin R. Jongsma
Exposome research is put forward as a major tool for solving the nature-versus-nurture debate because the exposome is said to represent “the nature of nurture.” Against this influential idea, we argue that the adoption of the nature-versus-nurture debate into the exposome research program is a mistake that needs to be undone to allow for a proper bioethical assessment of exposome research. We first
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Cryonics: Traps and transformations Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Daniel Story
Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best
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Treating the innocent victims of trolleys and war Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Michael L. Gross
Both trolleys and war leave innocent victims to suffer death and injury. Trolley problems accounting for the injured, and not only the dead, tease out intuitions about liability that enhance our understanding of the obligation to provide compensation and medical care to civilian victims of war. Like many trolley victims, civilians in war may suffer justifiable, excusable, or negligent harms that demand
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A critical take on procreative justice Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Joona Räsänen, Andreas Bengtson, Hugo Cossette-Lefebvre, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to
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Translational bioethics Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Jordan A. Parsons, Pamela Cairns, Jonathan Ives
Bioethics as a field has sometimes struggled to have, and demonstrate, “real-world” impact. Notwithstanding the fact that bioethics lies at the practical/applied end of the ethics spectrum, and for some can only really be understood as a field concerned with ‘practical ought questions’,1 it is hopefully not too controversial to say that bioethics has tended to adopt a relatively passive ‘if we build
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Abolishing morality in biomedical ethics Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Parker Crutchfield, Scott Scheall
In biomedical ethics, there is widespread acceptance of moral realism, the view that moral claims express a proposition and that at least some of these propositions are true. Biomedical ethics is also in the business of attributing moral obligations, such as “S should do X.” The problem, as we argue, is that against the background of moral realism, most of these attributions are erroneous or inaccurate
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The role of the concept of solidarity for just distribution of bioethical goods in the international area Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Nadja Wolf
This analysis investigates whether solidarity is an appropriate concept for thinking about justifications for a just distribution of bioethical goods in the international arena. This will be explored by looking at the national origins of the idea of justifying solidarity in the form of the health care that welfare states offer. Following that, ‘life’ and ‘health’ will be placed within a philosophical
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The Declaration of Helsinki in bioethics literature since the last revision in 2013 Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Hans-Jörg Ehni, Urban Wiesing
The World Medical Association has announced that a new revision process of the Declaration of Helsinki has been started. This article will identify the criticisms that have been made in the bioethics literature, particularly since the last revision. In addition, criticisms are discussed that were made in the literature even before the last revision and have not fallen silent. The plausibility of the
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Social egg freezing and reproductive rights justification: A perspective from China Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-02-16 Zhaochen Wang, Yuzhi Fan, Wenchen Shao
Divergences and controversies are inevitable in the discussion of freedoms and rights, especially in the matter of reproduction. The Chinese first social egg freezing lawsuit raises the question: is the freedom to freeze eggs for social reasons justified because it is an instance of reproductive rights? This paper accepts social egg freezing as desirable reproductive freedom, but following Harel's
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Ethics of a pandemic of deliberate health misinformation: From abortion care to vaccines Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-13 Udo Schuklenk
Much has been written about the decline of legacy publishing models like newspapers. Much has also been written about the parallel rise of misinformation disseminated on internet platforms like X, TikTok, Instagram, and others. For someone belonging to an older generation, it is stunning to see that a convicted child abuser like Ruby Franke, who gave child education advice to parents on her popular
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Dying a lonely death: A conceptual and normative analysis Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-12 Zohar Lederman
This paper argues that a lonely death is, by definition, a bad death and that society as a whole, as well as individuals in society are obligated to assure a certain degree of well-being, flourishing, or care among and for fellow individuals. Individuals can then be said to have a right against dying a lonely death. Such a right has corresponding duties. The paper further specifies what such duties
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Can digital health democratize health care? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Tereza Hendl, Ayush Shukla
Much has been said about the potential of digital health technologies for democratizing health care. But how exactly is democratization with digital health technologies conceptualized and what does it involve? We investigate debates on the democratization of health care with digital health and identify that democratization is being envisioned as a matter of access to health information, health care
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The social epistemology of eating disorders: How our gaps in understanding challenge patient care Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Ji-Young Lee
In this article, I argue that various epistemic challenges associated with eating disorders (EDs) can negatively affect the care of already marginalized patient groups with various EDs. I will first outline deficiencies in our understanding of EDs—in research, healthcare settings, and beyond. I will then illustrate with examples cases where discriminatory misconceptions about what EDs are, the presentation
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Ectogenesis and the value of gestational ties Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-06 Susan Kennedy
Ectogenesis technology would make it possible to support the complete gestational development of a human being outside the female body. Proponents argue that this technology offers a welcome opportunity to expand reproductive options for those unable or unwilling to gestate. However, by completely bypassing pregnancy, the use of ectogenesis prevents the formation of gestational family ties. Consequently
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Xenograft recipients and the right to withdraw from a clinical trial Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-06 Christopher Bobier, Daniel J. Hurst, Daniel Rodger, Adam Omelianchuk
Preclinical xenotransplantation research using genetically engineered pigs has begun to show some promising results and could one day offer a scalable means of addressing organ shortage. While it is a fundamental tenet of ethical human subject research that participants have a right to withdraw from research once enrolled, several scholars have argued that the right to withdraw from xenotransplant
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Translational bioethics: Reflections on what it can be and how it should work Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-06 Kristine Bærøe
Translational ethics (TE) has been developed into a specific approach, which revolves around the argument that strategies for bridging the theory-practice gap in bioethics must themselves be justified on ethical terms. This version of TE incorporates normative, empirical and foundational ethics research and continues to develop through application and in the face of new ethical challenges. Here, I
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Medical ethics education as translational bioethics Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Peter D. Young, Andrew N. Papanikitas, John Spicer
We suggest that in the particular context of medical education, ethics can be considered in a similar way to other kinds of knowledge that are categorised and shaped by academics in the context of wider society. Moreover, the study of medical ethics education is translational in a manner loosely analogous to the study of medical education as adjunct to translational medicine. Some have suggested there
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Should the European Medicines Agency consider ageing a disease? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Guillermo Marín Penella
The classification of ageing as a disease is fundamental to developing new pharmacological strategies that can target said phenomenon. The European Medicines Agency does not do this and maintains a questionable perspective based on the traditional naturalistic argument and the value-free ideal. An alternative is proposed which, inspired by consequentialism, is committed to considering ageing as a disease
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Euthanasia, consensual homicide, and refusal of treatment Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Eduardo Rivera-López
Consensual homicide remains a crime in jurisdictions where active voluntary euthanasia has been legalized. At the same time, both jurisdictions, in which euthanasia is legal and those in which it is not, recognize that all patients (whether severely ill or not) have the right to refuse or withdraw medical treatment (including life-saving treatment). In this paper, I focus on the tensions between these
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Anchor bias, autonomy, and 20th-century bioethicists' blindness to racism Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Robert Baker
The central thesis of this article is that by anchoring bioethics' core conceptual armamentarium in a four-principled theory emphasizing autonomy and treating justice as a principle of allocation, theorists inadvertently biased 20th-century bioethical scholarship against addressing such subjects as ableism, anti-Black racism, classism, and other forms of discrimination, placing them outside of the
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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: Lessons from Africa: Ubuntu, solidarity, dignity, kinship, and humility Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Nancy S. Jecker
This paper addresses bioethics in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The Introduction (Section 1) highlights that at the field's inception, infectiousness was not front and center. Instead, infectious disease was widely perceived as having been conquered. This made it possible for bioethicists to center values such as individual autonomy, informed consent, and a statist
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Therapeutic misunderstandings in modern research Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-19 Sarah Heynemann, Wendy Lipworth, Sue-Anne McLachlan, Jennifer Philip, Tom John, Ian Kerridge
Clinical trials play a crucial role in generating evidence about healthcare interventions and improving outcomes for current and future patients. For individual trial participants, however, there are inevitably trade-offs involved in clinical trial participation, given that trials have traditionally been designed to benefit future patient populations rather than to offer personalised care. Failure
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Advancing ethics support in military organizations by designing and evaluating a value-based reflection tool Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-17 Eva van Baarle, Steven van Baarle
Military employees face all sorts of moral dilemmas in their work. The way they resolve these dilemmas—how they decide to act based on their moral deliberations—can have a substantial impact both on society and on their personal lives. Hence, it makes sense to support military employees in dealing with these dilemmas. Military organizations already support their personnel by adopting compliance-based
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Whose (germ) line is it anyway? Reproductive technologies and kinship Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-17 Evie Kendal
Reproductive biotechnologies can separate concepts of parenthood into genetic, gestational and social dimensions, often leading to a fragmentation of heteronormative kinship models and posing a challenge to historical methods of establishing legal and/or moral parenthood. Using fictional cases, this article will demonstrate that the issues surrounding the intersection of current and emerging reproductive
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Developing a living lab in ethics: Initial issues and observations Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-17 Eric Racine, Bénédicte D'Anjou, Clara Dallaire, Vincent Dumez, Caroline Favron-Godbout, Anne Hudon, Marjorie Montreuil, Catherine Olivier, Ariane Quintal, Vanessa Chenel
Living labs are interdisciplinary and participatory initiatives aimed at bringing research closer to practice by involving stakeholders in all stages of research. Living labs align with the principles of participatory research methods as well as recent insights about how participatory ways of generating knowledge help to change practices in concrete settings with respect to specific problems. The participatory
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Autonomy, power, and place: Ethical considerations at the intersections of substance use care, and the sex trade Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Zamina Zahra Mithani, Abigail M. Judge
Substance use disorder (SUD) care among women in the sex trade poses multiple ethical challenges. We propose a framework with three lenses—autonomy, power, and place—that can inform and help improve more ethical clinical care for people who trade sex seeking SUD treatment. A relational perspective on autonomy, an analysis of power relations in the clinic, and a geographical analysis can inform how
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The ethics of expert communication Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Hugh Desmond
Despite its public visibility and impact on policy, the activity of expert communication rarely receives more than a passing mention in codes of scientific integrity. This paper makes the case for an ethics of expert communication, introducing a framework where expert communication is represented as an intrinsically ethical activity of a deliberative agent. Ethical expert communication cannot be ensured
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Care of the older person and the value of human dignity Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Félix Pageau, Gaëlle Fiasse, Lennart Nordenfelt, Emilian Mihailov
As the world population is rapidly aging, stakeholders must address the care of the elderly with great concern. Also, loss of dignity is often associated with aging due to dementia, mobility problems and diminished functional autonomy. However, dignity is a polysemic term that is deemed useless by some ethicists. To counter this claim, we propose four concepts to define it better and make use accurately
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IAB 16th World Congress Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Voo Teck Chuan, Tenzin Wangmo, Bernice S. Elger
Attended by 691 delegates from 62 countries, the 16th World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) was successfully held in Basel, Switzerland, from 20–22 July 2022. This first-ever hybrid congress in light of the Covid-19 pandemic was hosted by the Institute for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Basel (IBMB) upon the approval of the International Association of Bioethics' (IAB) board of directors in June
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The myth of translational bioethics Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 Michael Dunn, Mark Sheehan
In recent years, the case has been made for special attention to be paid to a branch of research in the field of bioethics called ‘translational bioethics’. In this paper, we start by considering some of the assumptions that those advancing translational approaches to bioethics make about bioethics and compare them to the reality of bioethics as an academic field. We move on to explain how those who
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Building solidarity during COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 Michael Montess
While the WHO, public health experts, and political leaders have referenced solidarity as an important part of our responses to COVID-19, I consider how we build solidarity during pandemics in order to improve the effectiveness of our responses. I use Prainsack and Buyx's definition of solidarity, which highlights three different tiers: (1) interpersonal solidarity, (2) group solidarity, and (3) institutional
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Anti-natalism is incompatible with Theory X Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Fumitake Yoshizawa
The anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar defends a position asserting that all life is harmful, and that it is, therefore, wrong to have children. In this paper, I critique Benatar's less-discussed claim that his anti-natalism provides solutions to population ethics problems, such as the Non-Identity Problem, the Repugnant Conclusion, and the Mere Addition Problem, all of which are presented in
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Conspiracy theories, clinical decision-making, and need for bioethics debate: A response to Stout Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Jukka Varelius
Although people who endorse conspiracy theories related to medicine often have negative attitudes toward particular health care measures and may even shun the healthcare system in general, conspiracy theories have received rather meager attention in bioethics literature. Consequently, and given that conspiracy theorizing appears rather prevalent, it has been maintained that there is significant need
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From book to bedside? A critical perspective on the debate about “translational bioethics” Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Alexander Kremling, Jan Schildmann, Marcel Mertz
The concept of “translational bioethics” has received considerable attention in recent years. Most publications draw an analogy to translational medicine and describe bioethical research that aims at implementing and evaluating ethical interventions. However, current accounts of translational bioethics are often rather vague and seem to differ with regard to conceptual and methodological assumptions
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Assisted suicide and the discrimination argument: Can people with mental illness fulfill beneficence- and autonomy-based eligibility criteria? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Esther Braun, Matthé Scholten, Jochen Vollmann
According to the “discrimination argument,” it would be discriminatory and hence impermissible to categorically exclude people with mental illness (PMI) from access to assisted suicide (AS) if AS is accessible to people with somatic illnesses. In objection to this, it could be argued that excluding PMI is not discriminatory, but rather based on their inability to meet certain eligibility criteria for
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A theory of triage Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Greg Bognar
This paper provides a general framework for conceptualizing triage for intensive care unit admissions in public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It applies this framework to some of the guidelines issued during the pandemic and addresses some controversial issues, including the role of age, the use of lives or life years, and the relevance of quality of life considerations. The paper
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The precautionary principle in public health emergency regime: Ethical and legal examinations of Vietnamese and global response to COVID-19 Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Hai Doan, Jing-Bao Nie, Elizabeth Fenton
Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been widely criticized for being too delayed and indecisive. As a result, the precautionary principle has been endorsed, applauded, and proposed to guide future responses to global public health emergencies. Drawing from controversial issues in response to COVID-19, especially in Vietnam, this paper critically discusses some key ethical and legal issues of employing
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Children's right to play in times of war Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Aleksandra Glos
This paper discusses children's right to play and its bioethical importance for children affected by war. Against the background of the current military conflicts, it analyses physical, psychological, and institutional factors that limit children's right to play in a situation involving armed conflict. Considering that the lack of institutional support of play for children affected by war constitutes
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Ethical challenges in accessing and providing healthcare for Syrian refugees in Türkiye Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Maide Barış, Gürkan Sert, Orhan Önder
Türkiye hosts approximately 3.6 million Syrian refugees, which accounts for roughly 4.5% of Türkiye's population. This places undeniable pressure on public institutions, particularly on healthcare services. The objective of this study is to document the healthcare structure for Syrian refugees and various challenges faced by Syrians when seeking healthcare and to highlight the ethical concerns emerging
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Developing translational bioethics—Suggestions for ways forward Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Lucy Frith
This paper will take as its starting point the premise that developing translational bioethics is a worthwhile endeavour. I will develop an account of translational bioethics and discuss what implications this would have for the wider discipline of bioethics and argue that this would be a useful development for bioethics. The paper will conduct a form of ‘translational meta-bioethics analysis’, in
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Reproduction and parenthood among lesbian couples in China: Legal and ethical perspectives Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Huixian Fu, Yue Zhao
In China, neither reproduction and parenthood by lesbian couples nor their marital status are regulated or protected by law. In 2020, the first legal dispute in China involving a lesbian couple over custody of their joint baby was heard in court. This study examines the legal and ethical issues that lesbian couples confront when they decide to give birth to a child of their own. These challenges begin
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The responsibility of bioethicists: The case study of Yemen Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Zohar Lederman, Shmuel Lederman
In this article, we describe in detail the health and general living conditions resulting from the ongoing armed conflict in Yemen, including the historical and geopolitical underpinnings. In addition to mere reporting, we use Yemen as a case study to examine the responsibility of bioethicists in general. We find it unacceptable that bioethics neglects the largest humanitarian crisis taking place in
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Workplace heating and gender discrimination Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Andreas Albertsen, Viki M. L. Pedersen
Across Europe, countries are reducing CO2 emissions and energy demand by lowering the temperature in public office buildings. These measures affect men and women unequally because the latter prefer and, indeed, perform better under higher temperatures than the standard temperature. Lowering the temperature thus further increases an already existing inequality. We show that the philosophical literature
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How moral bioenhancement affects perceived praiseworthiness Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Simon Lucas, Thomas Douglas, Nadira S. Faber
Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition-enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness
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What moral weight should patient-led demand have in clinical decisions about assisted reproductive technologies? Bioethics (IF 2.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Craig Stanbury, Wendy Lipworth, Siun Gallagher, Robert J. Norman, Ainsley J. Newson
Evidence suggests that one reason doctors provide certain interventions in assisted reproductive technologies (ART) is because of patient demand. This is particularly the case when it comes to unproven interventions such as ‘add-ons’ to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycles, or providing IVF cycles that are highly unlikely to succeed. Doctors tend to accede to demands for such interventions because patients