Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Griffin Trotter

Publications and source records attributed to Griffin Trotter.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Bioethics and deliberative democracy: five warnings from Hobbes.

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most ardent and thoroughgoing opponents of participatory democracy among Western political philosophers. Though Hobbes's alternative to participatory democracy-assent by subjects to rule by an absolute sovereign-no longer constitutes a viable political alternative for Westerners, his critique of participatory democracy is a potentially valuable source of insight about its liabilities. This essay elaborates five theses from Hobbes that stand as cogent warnings to those who embrace participatory democracy, especially those (such as most bioethicists) advocating for deliberative democracy based on a rational consensus model. In light of these warnings, the author suggests an alternative, modus vivendi approach to deliberative democracy that would radically alter the current practice of bioethics.

Democracy↗
PubMed2005

Bioethics, Christian charity and the view from no place.

This essay contrasts the notions of charity employed by Traditional Christianity and by liberal cosmopolitan bioethics, arguing that: (1) bioethics attempts to reconstruct the notion of charity in a manner that is caustic to the Traditional Christian moral vision, (2) Christians are, on the whole, more charitable than proponents of bioethics' reconstructed view (even given the standards of the latter), and (3) the theistically oriented conception of charity employed by Traditional Christianity cannot be expressed in bioethics' purportedly neutral public vocabulary. The upshot is that, in the name of neutrality and pluralism, liberal cosmopolitan bioethicists seek to impose an impoverished moral vocabulary that reflects liberal cosmopolitan ideology while excluding input from Traditional Christianity and other non-liberal-humanistic moral visions.

Bioethics↗
PubMed2004

Loyalty in the trenches: practical teleology for office clinicians responding to terrorism.

Were terrorists ever to effectively deploy weapons of mass destruction, medical practice would be quickly transformed. Many ordinary clinicians would be asked or required to treat unfamiliar yet serious medical conditions in a setting of overwhelming urgency and impossible odds. Clinical focus would shift from doing good things for a succession of individual patients to considering many patients at once, a change that could beget loss of trust and rapport with patients. Clinicians might also experience restrictions in personal liberties and appropriation of their property. The purpose of this essay is to develop a teleological framework for undertaking this transformation. In ordinary clinical medicine, the elusiveness of the individual telos (i.e.,the good for the individual) is acknowledged in procedures (such as social history taking,informed consent and outpatient scheduling) designed to protect patients' (and clinicians')prerogatives to interpret the telos for themselves. In mass casualty scenarios, on the other hand, the telos is standardized and regarded as an Immediate Object (usually as a state of affairs in which survival is maximized and permanent disability is minimized). Clinicians who provide mass casualty care will face a number of ethical challenges that can be negotiated by appealing to the political and ethical rationale, and limits, pertaining to the pursuit of aggregate survival as an Immediate Object.

Bioterrorism↗
PubMed2003

Holding civic medicine accountable: will Morreim's liability scheme work in a disaster?

In Holding Health Care Accountable, E. Haavi Morreim differentiates between duties of expertise and resource duties, arguing for tort liability respecting the former and contract liability respecting the latter. Though Morreim's book addresses ordinary clinical medicine, her liability scheme may also be relevant elsewhere. Focusing on disaster medicine, and especially the medical management of violent mass disasters (e.g., where terrorists have deployed weapons of mass destruction), I argue in this essay that Morreim's classification of duties still fits, but that it is difficult to hold government powers accountable for their many resource and expertise duties. This difficulty is compounded by political arrangements that foist under-funded mandates for disaster services on healthcare providers. As a result of such arrangements, hospitals and clinicians are prone to liability for expenditures and clinical interventions that are beyond their scope. This problem can be mitigated, I argue, by examining and clarifying the apparent social compact between society and healthcare.

Bioterrorism↗
PubMed2002

Virtue, foible, and practice--medicine's arduous moral triad.

Moral distress is often discussed as a response to the moral dilemmas that professional and other caregivers encounter in their effort to balance competing moral principles, or to provide care in difficult cases, to difficult patients, in spite of difficult institutional requirements or policy. In this essay, a reforming ER clinician and teaching physician, offers a personal approach to moral distress. Assuming that a clinician's own foibles may sometimes contribute to another's distress, and that attempting to rationalize or subvert these foibles causes moral fatigue, he offers personal guidelines for healthcare providers--four strategies that less-than-perfect practitioners may use while striving to attain the ideal of the competent, compassionate, altruistic, calm, and wise clinician.

Emergency Medicine↗