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At least 631 records · Page 35Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Cloning, killing, and identity.

One potentially valuable use of cloning is to provide a source of tissues or organs for transplantation. The most important objection to this use of cloning is that a human clone would be the sort of entity that it would be seriously wrong to kill. I argue that entities of the sort that you and I essentially are do not begin to exist until around the seventh month of fetal gestation. Therefore to kill a clone prior to that would not be to kill someone like you or me but would be only to prevent one of us from existing. And even after one of us begins to exist, the objections to killing it remain comparatively weak until its psychological capacities reach a certain level of maturation. These claims support the permissibility of killing a clone during the early stages of its development in order to use its organs for transplantation.

Beginning of Human Life↗
PubMed1999

Persons and their copies.

Is cloning human beings morally wrong? The basis for the one serious objection to cloning is that, because of what a clone is, clones would have much worse lives than non-clones. I sketch a fragment of moral theory to make sense of the objection. I then outline several ways in which it might be claimed that, because of what a clone is, clones would have much worse lives than non-clones. In particular, I look at various ideas connected with autonomy. I conclude that there is no basis to the claim that, because of what a clone is, clones would have much worse lives than non-clones. I therefore reject the claim that cloning human beings is morally wrong.

Cloning, Organism↗
PubMed2000

The morality of abortion and the deprivation of futures.

In an influential essay entitled Why abortion is wrong, Donald Marquis argues that killing actual persons is wrong because it unjustly deprives victims of their future; that the fetus has a future similar in morally relevant respects to the future lost by competent adult homicide victims, and that, as consequence, abortion is justifiable only in the same circumstances in which killing competent adult human beings is justifiable. The metaphysical claim implicit in the first premise, that actual persons have a future of value, is ambiguous. The Future Like Ours argument (FLO) would be valid if "future of value" were used consistently to mean either "potential future of value" or "self-represented future of value", and FLO would be sound if one or the other interpretation supported both the moral claim and the metaphysical claim, but if, as I argue, any interpretation which makes the argument valid renders it unsound, then FLO must be rejected. Its apparent strength derives from equivocation on the concept of "a future of value".

Aborted Fetus↗
PubMed2002

Analogy in moral deliberation: the role of imagination and theory in ethics.

This paper develops themes addressed in an article by Eric Wiland in the Journal of Medical Ethics 2000;26:466-8, where he aims to contribute to the debate concerning the moral status of abortion, and to emphasise the importance of analogies in moral argument. In the present paper I try to secure more firmly a novel understanding of why analogy is an essential component in the attempt to justify moral beliefs. I seek to show how analogical argument both encapsulates and exercises the notions of rationality and imagination and that the construction, development, and comparison of analogies fundamentally underpins ethical argument. In so doing, it enables us to adopt imaginative and ethically illuminating perspectives but in a manner that does not relinquish any claims to intellectual rigour. I present a critique of a brand of "moral particularism" by showing how it cannot, if construed in a certain way, adequately conceive of how we use analogies and imaginary cases in ethics. Although such a particularism is thus impotent with regard to ethical debate, I show that the wider motivation behind particularism that can be extracted is of clear relevance and importance to medical practitioners.

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMed1983

Whole-brain death reconsidered--physiological facts and philosophy.

Four main areas generating confusion in discussion on brain death are identified as a) the relation of criteria of death to concepts of death, b) the argument about whether death is an event or a process, c) the inadequate differentiation of different neurological entities having different cardiac prognoses, and d) insufficient awareness of the separate issues of 'determining death' and 'allowing to die'. It is argued that if by death we mean the dissolution of the human 'organism as a whole', then whole-brain death is death. Behavioural patterns, legitimate in the presence of a cadaver, should be legitimate from the time whole-brain death is diagnosed.

Brain Death↗
PubMed1984

Involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill as a moral issue.

Conflict exists between medical model and civil liberties approaches to involuntary hospitalization for mental illness. The amassing and analysis of data will not resolve this conflict because the two sides view the problem from differing moral vantage points. Medical model adherents are influenced chiefly by utilitarian or consequentialist considerations, while the civil libertarians take more of a deontological or absolutist position. Opinions about such issues as hospitalization criteria of dangerousness versus medical necessity and the relative role of rights versus obligations and of autonomy versus paternalism can be seen largely to depend on such underlying value judgments. Neither side has a monopoly on truth or right in the question of involuntary hospitalization.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1984

The ethics of therapeutic modality choice.

Psychiatrists usually select therapeutic modalities for their patients on the basis of empirical and theoretical considerations. Only in special circumstances (e.g., psychosurgery) are ethical concerns primary. Yet every therapeutic decision involves questions of value and requires ethical justification. The author outlines four resources for ethical direction in therapy: a general systems or biopsychosocial formulation of the clinical problem, the historic ethical commitments of the medical profession, the patient's informed perspective, and the psychiatrist's own values. Finally, a method is proposed for the resolution of conflicts among these four perspectives in individual cases.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1985

Patients' rights: a cultural challenge to Western psychiatry.

To some degree, all psychiatric encounters, by constraining behavioral variation and autonomous decision making, threaten a personhood already impaired by illness. The challenge presented by this and other factors in Western psychiatry is how to resolve the ethical dilemmas of justice, autonomy, and beneficence inherent in contemporary hospitalization and treatment practices for severely mentally ill persons. The author discusses this challenge in terms of the physician-patient contract, clinical standards for limiting autonomy, and the Kantian concept of equality of mutual respect. The legal code in relation to psychiatry has evolved into a contemporary interpreting mechanism for Kantian cultural tradition.

Behavior Control↗
PubMed2003

A life not worth living?

The work of Dan Brock and Helga Kuhse is typical of the current stream of thought rejecting the validity of sanctity of life appeals to instill objective inviolable worth in human life regardless of the quality of life of the patient. The context of a person's life is supremely important. In their systems life can have high value, yet the value of life can be outweighed by the force of other disvalues. The notion of quality of life has increasingly come to signify the measurement of the worth of a person's life itself. Having a life equals a personal life. Any objectivity to life resides in 'personal', 'biographical', or 'creative' life, not mere biological life. Personal life represents the minimal threshold for any objective worth. In responding to this challenge, John Finnis has argued extensively that life is an intrinsic good--a basic human good. Following from our grasp of human life as a basic incommensurable good, it cannot be practically reasonable both to affirm that (a) 'human life is a basic human good', and (b) that 'human life qua human life can be intentionally acted against to its destruction'. Yet, if the good of human life can be considered self-evident, the self-evidence of the basic human good qua good does not mean that dialectical reasoning cannot be engaged in to indirectly support the practical reasonableness of respecting the good of human life in the deliberative choices that persons make concerning their actions. It is to the use of such dialectical reasoning, supportive of the status of human life as such a basic human good, that the article is primarily concerned to draw out and articulate.

Attitude to Death↗