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Editor's Note, December 2022
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2022;32(4):vii-ix. doi: 10.1353/ken.2022.0026.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588214 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2022.0026 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Virtual Reality and Technologically Mediated Love
This article considers whether and to what extent philosophical arguments leveled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that, while some worries about the pharmacological case do not extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies are not insurmountable and, thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimist...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Emma Gordon Source Type: research

Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2022;32(4):359-399. doi: 10.1353/ken.2022.0022.ABSTRACTWhile the literature on psychedelic medicine emphasizes the importance of set and setting alongside the quality of subjective drug effects for therapeutic efficacy, few scholars have explored the therapeutic frameworks that are used alongside psychedelics in the lab or in the clinic. Based on a narrative analysis of the treatment manual and post-session experience reports from a pilot study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for tobacco smoking cessation, this article examines how therapeutic frameworks interact with the psychedelic substance in wa...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Ne şe Devenot Aidan Seale-Feldman Elyse Smith Tehseen Noorani Albert Garcia-Romeu Matthew W Johnson Source Type: research

Medicalization, Contributory Injustice, and Mad Studies
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2022;32(4):401-434. doi: 10.1353/ken.2022.0023.ABSTRACTOne recent body of work has concerned medicalization and how it can create epistemic injustice. It focuses on medicalization as a hermeneutical process that shapes the conceptual framework(s) we use to refer to some conditions/experiences. In parallel, some scholars with lived experience of madness have started to explore the epistemic harms suffered by the Mad community. Building on this, I argue that the process of medicalization in psychiatry affects the Mad community in a specific way that has been overlooked in the literature on medicalizati...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Anne-Marie Gagn é-Julien Source Type: research

"White, Fat, and Racist": Racism and Environmental Accounts of Obesity
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2022;32(4):435-461. doi: 10.1353/ken.2022.0024.ABSTRACTThis paper offers a novel argument for the claim that "environmental" explanations of obesity meant to help address racial health disparities may actually reinforce racism. While some contend that these explanations reinforce racist and sizeist interracial dynamics, we argue that environmental explanations can bolster intraracial hierarchies of whiteness that reinforce white supremacy. Deployments of environmental accounts in contexts like the U.S. invoke and intertwine two damaging dichotomies: the "good fatty/bad fatty" and the "good white pers...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Megan Dean Nabina Liebow Source Type: research

Editor's Note March 2023
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(1):vii-ix. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a899456.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588124 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2023.a899456 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Varieties of Community Uncertainty and Clinical Equipoise
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(1):1-19. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a899457.ABSTRACTThe judgments of conscientious and informed experts play a central role in two elements of clinical equipoise. The first, and most widely discussed, element involves ensuring that no participant in a randomized trial is allocated to a level of treatment that everyone agrees is substandard. The second, and less often discussed, element involves ensuring that trials are likely to generate social value by producing the information necessary to resolve a clinically meaningful uncertainty or disagreement about the relative merits of a set of intervent...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Alex John London Patrick Bodilly Kane Jonathan Kimmelman Source Type: research

Screening Out Neurodiversity
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(1):21-54. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a899458.ABSTRACTAutistic adults suffer from an alarmingly high and increasing unemployment rate. Many companies use pre-employment personality screening tests. These filters likely have disparate impacts on neurodivergent individuals, exacerbating this social problem. This situation gives rise to a bind. On the one hand, the tests disproportionately harm a vulnerable group in society. On the other, employers think that personality test scores are predictors of job performance and have a right to use personality traits in their decisions. It is difficult to say ...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Jada Wiggleton-Little Craig Callender Source Type: research

How Should Urban Climate Change Planning Advance Social Justice?
This article addresses the normative question: How should urban climate change planning advance social justice? It gathers empirical literature documenting the inclusivity and equity impacts of urban climate change planning and thematically analyses that literature for dimensions of social justice drawn from philosophical and urban justice theory. Study findings demonstrate that four characteristics of climate change planning in cities-underlying neoliberal ideology, unequal treatment, green gentrification, and exclusion from decisionmaking-comprise, create, or worsen social injustices across six dimensions. These characte...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bridget Pratt Source Type: research

Equality and a Complete Ban on the Sale of Cigarettes
This article argues that a complete ban is likely to be guilty of both, especially when one of its aims is to reduce unequal rates of smoking between groups. A complete ban on the sale of cigarettes thus exhibits a curious feature: in aiming to reduce inequality it threatens to be inegalitarian. This is characteristic of a wider class of public health policies that deserves further attention by egalitarians.PMID:38588129 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2023.a899460 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Nethanel Lipshitz Source Type: research

Editor's Note
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(3):ix-xi. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a917927.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588132 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2023.a917927 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Quill Kukla Source Type: research

Minding Brain Injury, Consciousness, and Ethics: Discourse and Deliberations
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(3):227-248. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a917928.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588134 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2023.a917928 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Joseph J Fins James Giordano Source Type: research

Social Robots to Fend Off Loneliness?
This article clarifies and critically evaluates this response. It sets forth a framework for loneliness, which characterizes one kind of loneliness as involving an affective experience of lacking human relations that provide certain social goods. Next, the article discusses social robots and critically reviews the literature on the ethics of using them in light of this loneliness characterization. Third, we present a normative argument connecting the philosophical critique of loneliness-as-absence with the design and deployment of social robots. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for public health and fo...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Zohar Lederman Nancy S Jecker Source Type: research

The First Smart Pill: Digital Revolution or Last Gasp?
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(3):277-319. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a917930.ABSTRACTAbilify MyCite was granted regulatory approval in 2017, becoming the world's first "smart pill" that could digitally track whether patients had taken their medication. The new technology was introduced as one that had gained the support of patients and ethicists alike, and could contribute to solving the widespread and costly problem of patient nonadherence. Here, we offer an in-depth exploration of this narrative, through an examination of the origins and development of Abilify, the drug that would later become MyCite. This history illuminate...
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Anna K Swartz Phoebe Friesen Source Type: research

Editor's Note, June 2023
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2023;33(2):vii-x. doi: 10.1353/ken.2023.a904079.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588226 | DOI:10.1353/ken.2023.a904079 (Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Source: Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal - April 8, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Savannah Pearlman Mark Lance Source Type: research