Skip to content

Guest Post

Guest Post: A Relentless Focus on the Given – Reviewing O. Carter Snead’s What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics

Guest Post by Charles Camosy

Professor Carter Snead, at least in my world, is about as important a contemporary voice in bioethics that we have today. A professor on Notre Dame’s law faculty, he is perhaps better known as director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture—one of the most significant positions in the United States for doing public bioethics. He was heavily involved in the topic before coming to Notre Dame, including when serving as general counsel to the President’s Council on Bioethics chaired by Leon Kass. He currently serves on the Pontifical Academy for Life and as an elected fellow of the Hastings Center.

When Professor Snead came out with a book on public bioethics from Harvard University Press this month, that became good reason for many of us to pay close attention—especially when Alasdair MacIntyre gave a back cover endorsement calling it “indispensable reading” whether “you agree or disagree with Snead’s perspective.” Indeed, Snead makes it clear that he’s not merely preaching to the choir in this book, but instead aiming at making his case to folks with  different perspectives in “the spirit of friendship” and “anchored in the firm belief that we can only govern ourselves wisely, humanly, and justly if we become the kind of people who can make each other’s goods our own.”Read More »Guest Post: A Relentless Focus on the Given – Reviewing O. Carter Snead’s What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics

Guest Post- Pandemic Ethics: Your Freedom Really Matters. So What?

Written by Farbod Akhlaghi (University of Oxford)

The coronavirus pandemic rages on. To the surprise of many, the enforcement of mask wearing, imposition of lockdowns, and other measures taken to try to halt the pandemic’s march have been met with some heavy and vocal resistance. Such resistance has materialised into protests in various countries against these measures taken by states, companies, and other organisations to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

There are a range of reasons one might object to these measures. One reason that has repeatedly been voiced – sometimes shouted through angry un-masked mouths – is that these measures unjustly affect the freedom of those subject to them. The thought is that, for example, being forced to wear a mask, or denied entry into somewhere without a mask, is an unjust restriction of one’s freedom, presumably either to wear whatever they choose or to be free from the interference of others in going about one’s business.

Whatever good reasons there may be to object to these pandemic mitigating measures, I believe this one is simply a mistake. It is certainly true that our freedom, both to do things and from unjust interference, matter morally – they matter a lot too. But the moral significance of freedom, and the mere fact that measures like enforcing mask wearing, imposing lockdowns, and restricting movement do curtail such freedom, does not show that these measures unjustly restrict the freedom of those subject to them during this pandemic.

Failure to see this may be due to a failure to recognise the distinction, drawn by the moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, between the infringement and the violation of a right.

Read More »Guest Post- Pandemic Ethics: Your Freedom Really Matters. So What?

Guest Post: Is it Wrong to Lower Your Chances of Doing What You Ought to Do?

Written by Farbod Akhlaghi (University of Oxford)

Suppose you have a moral obligation to take care of your ailing parent tomorrow. If you did something that would lower your chances of fulfilling that moral obligation – like going out partying all night tonight – would you thereby have done something morally wrong?

We do things that affect our chances of fulfilling our moral obligations all the time. They range from the most mundane, like taking a specific route from one place to another where you ought to be doing something at the latter place, to acts like smoking, abusing drugs, or severely neglecting one’s physical and mental well-being. Call actions that affect our chances of fulfilling our moral obligations in the future chance-affecting actions.

Whilst moral obligations are hotly debated in moral philosophy, there has been little to no direct discussion of the moral status of affecting the chances of fulfilling such obligations. This should surprise us. For they are a pervasive feature of our lives: many daily choices we make affect our chances of ultimately doing what we ought to do in the future. And the mere fact that it is, other things being equal, right to do what we are obligated to and wrong not to does not settle whether it is right or wrong to affect our chances of meeting our obligations. So, it seems morally urgent to ask: might we, for example, act wrongly when we make it less likely that we will fulfil an obligation in the future?

Read More »Guest Post: Is it Wrong to Lower Your Chances of Doing What You Ought to Do?

Pandemic Ethics: Moral Reasoning in a Pandemic [Guest Post]

Cross-Posted with The Boston Review By Professor Frances Kamm, Harvard University Policy discussions during the pandemic have raised concerns for me, as a moral philosopher, about how policy analysts and policy makers are thinking about deaths from COVID-19 and the right way to combat them. The policy discussions I have in mind have ranged from… Read More »Pandemic Ethics: Moral Reasoning in a Pandemic [Guest Post]

Guest Post: Pandemic Ethics. Social Justice Demands Mass Surveillance: Social Distancing, Contact Tracing and COVID-19

  • by

Written by: Bryce Goodman

The spread of COVID-19 presents a number of ethical dilemmas. Should ventilators only be used to treat those who are most likely to recover from infection? How should violators of quarantine be punished? What is the right balance between protecting individual privacy and reducing the virus’ spread?

Most of the mitigation strategies pursued today (including in the US and UK) rely primarily on lock-downs or “social distancing” and not enough on contact tracing — the use of location data to identify who an infected individual may have come into contact with and infected. This balance prioritizes individual privacy above public health. But contact tracing will not only protect our overall welfare. It can also help address the disproportionately negative impact social distancing is having on our least well off.
Contact tracing “can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people,” says a recent paper published in Science. “By targeting recommendations to only those at risk, epidemics could be contained without need for mass quarantines (‘lock-downs’) that are harmful to society.” Once someone has tested positive for a virus, we can use that person’s location history to deduce whom they may have “contacted” and infected. For example, we might find that 20 people were in close proximity and 15 have now tested positive for the virus. Contact tracing would allow us to identify and test the other 5 before they spread the virus further.
The success of contact tracing will largely depend on the accuracy and ubiquity of a widespread testing program. Evidence thus far suggests that countries with extensive testing and contact tracing are able to avoid or relax social distancing restrictions in favor of more targeted quarantines.

Read More »Guest Post: Pandemic Ethics. Social Justice Demands Mass Surveillance: Social Distancing, Contact Tracing and COVID-19

Guest Post: Pandemic Ethics-Earthquakes, Infections, and Consent

David Killoren
Dianoia Institute of Philosophy
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

People often seem to be stubbornly resistant to change. Consider humanity’s collective failure to respond adequately to the climate emergency. Consider the lifelong smoker who won’t quit even after an emphysema diagnosis. Consider the meat-eater who watches Dominion, resolves to go vegan, and then falls off the wagon the next day. Even when we feel that we have excellent reasons to change our lives, we often drag our feet.

Yet when the coronavirus appeared in late 2019, our antipathy to change suddenly seemed to evaporate. Medical experts and politicians called for sweeping changes and huge numbers of people simply heeded the call. To be sure, there are dissenters. America’s deeply strange president is among them. But the degree of compliance with new restrictions and requirements that we’ve seen in recent weeks is extraordinary. Work, education, dating, dining, art, sport, even casual conversations with strangers—all of these facets of life have been dramatically altered, canceled, or paused for an indefinite period that may last two years or more, and there’s been little complaining from the people. If nothing else, the coronavirus crisis demonstrates this: When conditions are ripe, we are willing to upend our lives.

I’m not here to criticize or to defend the way we’re responding to the virus. But I want to raise some questions that I think aren’t receiving due attention.Read More »Guest Post: Pandemic Ethics-Earthquakes, Infections, and Consent

Guest Post: Introducing Charlie’s Law, Bambos Charalambous MP (Labour, Enfield Southgate)

  • by

Bambos Charalambous MP (Labour, Enfield Southgate)

The tragic case of Charlie Gard, who sadly died in 2017 following a serious and protracted illness, attracted significant global attention because of the harrowing dilemmas that it highlighted.
Charlie’s story, was fraught with high tensions and unfurled very much in the public eye as a result of the constant media coverage, highlighted the inadequacy of current processes to prevent prolonged and distressing legal conflicts between the parents of seriously ill children and those responsible for their medical care.

Since Charlie’s death Charlie’s parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard have campaigned with dignity and determination to improve the situation for everyone involved: parents, healthcare professionals, hospitals, and the NHS more broadly; recognising that everyone wants the same thing: to maximise the life chances and general welfare of children suffering from serious illnesses and to reduce any stress on their parents who may be coming to terms with the potential death of their child.Read More »Guest Post: Introducing Charlie’s Law, Bambos Charalambous MP (Labour, Enfield Southgate)

How Should We Regulate Genetic Enhancement Technologies?

A Guest Post Written by Jonny Anomaly

 

It’s been 20 years since Allen Buchanan and his colleagues published From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. The book was a landmark, and it repays careful reading.

But there is at least one kind of question that has been largely (if not entirely) ignored in discussions about whether we should regulate parental choice, once parents have access to technologies that allow them to sculpt the genetic endowment of their children. How should we think about reproductive choices that are good for each but not for all? What should we do when there is a conflict between parents selecting the best traits for their children, when a different distribution of traits might be better from a social standpoint? Another way of asking the question is this: how should we think about situations in which there is a potential conflict between the principle of procreative beneficence and the principle of procreative altruism?Read More »How Should We Regulate Genetic Enhancement Technologies?

Guest Post: How Should We Evaluate Deaths?

Written by: Carl Tollef Solberg, Senior Research Fellow, Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS), University of Bergen.
Espen Gamlund, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen.

In 2015, there were 56.4 million deaths worldwide (WHO 2017).[i] Most people would say that the majority of these deaths were bad. If this is the case, why is it so, and are these deaths equally bad?

Death is something we mourn or fear as the worst thing that could happen—whether the deaths of close ones, the deaths of strangers in reported accidents or tragedies, or our own. And yet, being dead is not something we will ever live to experience. This simple truth raises a host of challenging philosophical questions about the negativity surrounding our sense of death, and how and for whom exactly it is harmful. The question of whether death is bad has occupied philosophers for centuries, and the debate emerging in the philosophical literature is referred to as the “badness of death.” Are deaths primarily negative for the survivors, or does death also affect the decedent? What are the differences between death in fetal life, just after birth, or in adolescence? When is the worst time to die? These philosophical questions, although of considerable theoretical interest, is particularly relevant for how we evaluate deaths in global health, and policy-makers spending money to finance different health programs need to know how to answer them. Read More »Guest Post: How Should We Evaluate Deaths?

Caster Semenya, What’s Next?

  • by

Guest Post: Torbjörn Tännsjö, Kristian Claëson Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy

Statistically speaking, women perform less well than men in most sports. Their top results are 10-12 % worse than those of men. If they are to have a chance to compete at the top level, they need a protected space. At least, this has been the received wisdom among sports authorities. The example of Caster Semenya means that this policy has reached the end of the road. What has surfaced is the fact that the idea of a special protected female sphere within sports doesn’t stand up to recent knowledge within medicine and psychology. Caster Semenya is the stone that tipped the scales. The very notion of being female has been put under pressure.

The theory of science teaches us that a fruitful classification must serve an important purpose. In addition to this, the classes used should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Every classified individual should belong to one class only and everyone should belong to some class. Historically, we have tended to think that this is true of the classification of human beings into the classes of being female and male. We were wrong. And today it is common knowledge that we were wrong. However, the sports authorities have turned a blind eye to this knowledge.

To break it down in simple terms, there are three main ways of distinguishing between female and male. We may look at sex chromosomes, at external sex organs, or at perceived identity. It is possible to be male in terms of sex chromosomes but female in terms of both external sex organs and psychological identity. Caster Semenya gives witness to this (See Robert Johnson, ‘What No One is Telling You About Caster Semenya: She Has XY Chromosomes’, LetsRun, 2 May 2019). We know also that some individuals with female sex chromosomes (XX) and external female sex organs don’t identify as female. They seek ‘correction’ of their external sex organs. And it is the other way around with some individuals with male sex chromosomes (XY) and male external sex organs. They don’t identify as male and they seek correction of their external sex organs. Even  classification based purely on sex chromosomes is not as simple as one may think. Some individuals lack an X chromosome (X, Turner syndrome) while some have an extra X chromosome (XXY, Klinefelter). And there are other variations as well.

How should sports authorities best handle this? Should they keep turning a blind eye to these facts or should they try to face up to them?

Read More »Caster Semenya, What’s Next?