The Baby Fae experiment has highlighted the growing trend in medicine of using animal parts in the treatment of humans. This paper raises the question of the logical and moral justification for these current practices and their proposed expansion. We argue that the Cognitive Capacity Principle establishes morally justified necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of non-human animals in medical treatments and research. Some alternative sources for medical uses are explored as well as some possible programmes for their implementation.

The long ongoing and partly heated debate on the concept of disease has not led to any consensus on the status of this apparently essential concept for modern health care. The arguments range from claims that the disease concept is vague, slippery, elusive, or complex, and to statements that the concept is indefinable and unnecessary. The unsettled status of the concept of disease is challenging not only to health care where diagnosing, treating, and curing disease are core aims, but also (...) to the branch of philosophy that tries to clarify concepts. This article discusses three claims about the concept of disease: that it is vague, complex, and that it is indefinable. It investigates (a) what is meant by these claims (b) what their implications are, and (c) whether the claims are sound or not. It is argued that some of the arguments are flawed and miss important points about concept analysis. This does not mean, however, that disease is a clear concept with a crisp definition. It only rules out speculative claims that disease necessarily is vague, complex, and indefinable. It appears at least as hard to show that disease is indefinable as it is to define it. (shrink)

It is common to think of medical and ethical modes of thought as different in kind. In such terms, some clinical situations are made more complicated by an additional ethical component. Against this picture, we propose that medical and ethical modes of thought are not different in kind, but merely different aspects of what it means to be human. We further propose that clinicians are uniquely positioned to synthesise these two aspects without prior knowledge of philosophical ethics.