The evolution of research participant as partner: the seminal contributions of Bob Veatch
AbstractWell before patient-centered or patient-controlled research became trendy, and earlier than calls to preferentially refer to research subjects as participants, Bob Veatch wrote “The Patient as Partner” Veatch presciently argued that research patients should not be thought of as passive subjects nor material from which to obtain data, but rather as partners in discovery. In this manuscript, I will explore Veatch’s conception of patient as partner in research and how that idea has evolved and been implemented over time and consider some of the remaining challenges. Complexities of patient partnership include: ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - August 18, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
S. Clarke, H. Zohny and J. Savulescu (eds), Rethinking Moral Status, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, ISBN: 978-0-19-289407-6
Abstract“Rethinking moral status” provides a forum for philosophers to reason on the usual presuppositions and intuitions about moral status, especially now with new scientific advances like non-human chimeras, cyborgs, human brain organoids, and post-human minds. There are a number of ways we could res pond to the new challenges these technological developments raise: this volume explores such responses and tries to clarify the concept of moral status itself. (Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - August 10, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The patient experience of medically unexplained symptoms: an existentialist analysis
This article explores the patient experience of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) from an existentialist standpoint. Drawing on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, I explore their concepts of existential situation, existential project, authenticity, and praxis. I then analyze the situation of MUS patients in the current cultural and institutional context, elucidating that a lack of explanation for their symptoms puts MUS patients in an existential bind. I illustrate the effects of the experience of MUS on patients ’ existential projects. Last, I develop an ethical response in the existentialist tradit...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - August 5, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The principle of procreative beneficence and its implications for genetic engineering
AbstractMolecular genetic engineering technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 have made the accurate and safe genetic engineering of human embryos possible. Further advances in genomics have isolated genes that predict qualities and traits associated with intelligence. Given these advances, prospective parents could use these biotechnologies to genetically engineer future children for genes that enhance their intelligence. While Julian Savulescu ’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB) argues for the moral obligation of prospective parents to use in-vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to make eugenic ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 26, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Global justice in the context of transnational surrogacy: an African bioethical perspective
AbstractThe ongoing debate on how best to regulate international commercial surrogacy defies consensus, as the most cogent normative and jurisprudential grounds for and against non-altruistic surrogacy remain controversial. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on social justice issues arising from transnational, moneymaking surrogacy, with a focus on the Global South. I t argues that existing theoretical perspectives on balancing interests, rights, privileges, and resources in the context of cross-border surrogacy—such as cosmopolitanism, communitarianism, liberal feminism, radical feminism, and neorealism...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 25, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Rosamond Rhodes: The trusted doctor: medical ethics and professionalism
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 25, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Towards a systematic evaluation of moral bioenhancement
This article reviews the discussion on MBE, showing that a lack of consensus about enhancements ’ desirable features and the constant development of the debate calls for a more rigorous ethical analysis. I identify a list of factors that may be of crucial importance for illuminating the matters of moral permissibility in the MBE debate and which could help us move beyond the current lack of consensus. More precisely, I propose three important theoretical and normative standards that MBE should satisfy if we wish to mitigate the concerns about its utter impermissibility. Systematically assessing MBE interventions across t...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 24, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
How many ways can you die? Multiple biological deaths as a consequence of the multiple concepts of an organism
AbstractAccording to the mainstream position in the bioethical definition of death debate, death is to be equated with the cessation of an organism. Given such a perspective, some bioethicists uphold the position that brain-dead patients are dead, while others claim that they are alive. Regardless of the specific opinion on the status of brain-dead patients, the mere bioethical concept of death, according to many bioethicists, has the merit of being unanimous and univocal, as well as grounded in biology. In the present article, we challenge such a thesis. We provide evidence that theoretical biology operates with a plurali...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 20, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
‘Experimental pregnancy’ revisited
AbstractIn this paper, I reflect on an important article by Bob Veatch in the inaugural issue of theHastings Center Report, entitled “Experimental Pregnancy.” It is a report and elegant analysis of the Goldzieher Study, in which nearly 400 women were randomized to receive hormonal contraception or placebo absent consent or disclosure about placebo use, resulting in several pregnancies. Noting the study’s limited notoriety, I first consider the narratives that have instead dominated bioethics’ approach to pregnancy and research: thalidomide and diethylstibesterol (DES). These narratives have facilitated a narrow foc...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 20, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Procreative responsibilities and the parental obligation objection
AbstractThis essay presents a challenge to the parental obligation objection. This objection is usually made by abortion opponents who argue that because child support laws hold men postnatally responsible for children they helped bring into existence (even when they did not intend to become parents), women too have prenatal parental responsibilities that should prevent them from ending pregnancies through abortions. My essay draws on recent publications in bioethics that distinguishprocreative fromparental responsibilities. This distinction was originally developed to clarify the duties of third-party participants in assi...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 20, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Kathleen Benton and Renzo Pegoraro (ed.): Finding dignity at the end of life: A spiritual reflection on palliative care
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 20, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
A festschrift in memory of Robert M. Veatch
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 20, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Robert Veatch ’s Disrupted Dialogue and its implications for bioethics
AbstractIn hisDisrupted Dialogue: Medical Ethics and the Collapse of Physician-Humanist Communication (1770 –1980) Robert Veatch presents a scholarlytour de force of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglophone medical ethics to demonstrate how the easy communication between physicians and humanists in the Scottish Enlightenment progressively dissipated as medicine became detached from humanistic disciplines. In this paper I offer two comments —that the discourse of medical ethics in the Scottish Enlightenment was a discourse of Baconian moral science and that nineteenth-century medical ethics in the United States bec...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 18, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The philosopher as partner: an introduction to the scholarship of Robert M. Veatch
AbstractA diverse group of scholars reflect on the scholarship of Robert M. Veatch, the breadth of which is unmatched in modern day bioethics. Essays were written by both philosophers and clinician-philosophers, by contemporaries and mentees. They span the breadth of Bob ’s work and include analyses of his ideas about death, dying and organ transplantation, human experimentation and research ethics, disability, equality and justice, the doctor-patient relationship, the history of bioethics, as well as his pedagogical approach to teaching bioethics to clinicians ac ross the health care spectrum. Recognition of Bob’s inf...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - July 13, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Robert Veatch ’s transplantation ethics: obtaining and allocating organs from deceased persons
AbstractThis essay appreciatively and critically engages the late Robert Veatch ’s extensive and important contributions to transplantation ethics, in the context of his overall ethical theory and his methods for resolving conflicts among ethical principles. It focuses mainly on ways to obtain and allocate organs from deceased persons, with particular attention to express don ation, mandated choice, and presumed consent/routine salvaging in organ procurement and to conflicts between medical utility and egalitarian justice in organ allocation. It concludes by examining the unclear relations between Veatch’s ideal moral ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - June 10, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
