This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

In the months preceding the writing of this review, bioethics has been in the news a great deal. In congressional and public policy debates surrounding stem cell research, human cloning, and the Human Genome Project, bioethics and bioethicists have gained national attention and been subject to public scrutiny. Commentators have asked who these self-appointed moral experts are to tell us what is right and wrong.

"Be All You Can Be," the Army recruiting poster urges young men and women. Many parents share the sentiment. They want their children to be the best they can be. For many parents, their most important project in life is to pursue that goal, and they make sacrifices to see it happen. And why shouldn't parents aim to make their offspring the best they can be?

Fichte’s Ethical Thought follows a format familiar to those who have read Allen Wood’s books on the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel: Wood integrates Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work into topical chapters, each discussing an important component of Fichte’s ethical system. The text he focuses on, of course, is Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics, but Fichte scholars will likely be pleased to find that Wood discusses a wide range of Fichte’s Jena-era writings. Wood makes use of (...) Addresses to the German Nation, The Closed Commercial State, and earlier works such as Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, especially in the final two chapters, which cover Fichte’s thought on public life, the... (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

We expect that consensus meetings, where researchers come together to discuss their theoretical viewpoints, prioritize the factors they agree are important to study, standardize their measures, and determine a smallest effect size of interest, will prove to be a more efficient solution to the lack of coordination and integration of claims in science than integrative experiments.

Massimo Renzo has recently argued in this journal that Allen Buchanan’s account of the ethics of intervention is too permissive. Renzo claims that a proper understanding of political self-determination shows that it is often impermissible to intervene in order to establish a regime that leads to more self-determination for a group of people if that group was or would be opposed to the intervention. Renzo’s argument rests on an analogy between individual self-determination and group self-determination, and once we see (...) that there are differences between the two kinds of self-determination, his argument against Buchanan fails, and thus there are more cases of permissible intervention than Renzo countenances. However, understanding these differences also reveals that Buchanan’s account is also not permissive enough. There are cases of justified intervention beyond even what Buchanan compasses. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss James Buchanan’s contribution in the narrow domain of understanding committee voting under majority rule. We then go on to discuss Charles Plott’s seminal experimental work on the topic that sparked a wave of public choice experimental work. However, given Plott’s claims that Buchanan influenced him significantly, it is puzzling that his work with Morris Fiorina explores a question outside of those which Buchanan and Tullock found interesting. We suggest several ways to resolve (...) this tension. Our chapter concludes by discussing a lacuna in the experimental public choice literature in which Buchanan was particularly interested—logrolling, or vote trading. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell’s The Evolution of Moral Progress (EMP) is likely to become a landmark. It adeptly builds on much of the recent empirical work, weaving it together with philosophical material drawn from a series of essays published by the two authors. EMP makes the case that moral progress is not only consistent with human psychology but—under some conditions—likely. At its heart is a careful, well-developed rebuttal to the idea that there are evolved constraints endogenous to human (...) minds that place significant limits on various forms of moral progress, especially on the spread and sustainability of inclusive values. The alternative picture they present acknowledges that evolutionary history has shaped how our minds produce behaviour, but emphasizes that the contexts in which they currently operate are just as pivotal. While safe and stable ecological and social circumstances are hospitable to cosmopolitanism and encouraging of inclusive values, dangerous and threatening circumstances are more favourable to parochialism, exclusivist values, and morally regressive outgroup hostility (also see Buchanan and Powell [2015], [2016], [2017]). Overall, EMP is a compelling, well-researched, and timely book. It articulates arguably the most persuasive naturalistic theory of moral progress to date, and lays the groundwork for important and impactful research. (shrink)

This paper provides a history of the development of Harold Hochman and James Rodgers’ theory of Pareto optimal redistribution, which modeled income transfers as a public good. Pareto optimal redistribution provided an economic efficiency case for redistribution policy. After reviewing the emergence of Pareto optimal redistribution at the University of Virginia and its elaboration at the Urban Institute in the early 1970s, the paper describes James M. Buchanan’s efforts to grapple with his colleague’s ideas in the context of public (...) choice theory. Initially, Buchanan provided an even more expansive argument for redistribution than Hochman and Rodgers. By the mid-1970s, though, Buchanan largely rejected his earlier approach to redistribution and theorized new criteria for redistribution that were narrower in scope. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: There is general agreement amongst those involved in the normative discussion about geoengineering that if we are to move forward with significant research, development, and certainly any future deployment, legitimate governance is a must. However, while we agree that the abstract concept of legitimacy ought to guide geoengineering governance, agreement surrounding the appropriate conception of legitimacy has yet to emerge. Relying upon Allen Buchanan’s metacoordination view of institutional legitimacy, this paper puts forward a conception of legitimacy appropriate for (...) geoengineering governance, outlining five normative criteria an institution ought to fulfill if it is to justifiably coordinate our action around geoengineering. (shrink)

In recent decades, environmental rights have been increasingly developed at both the national and international level, along with increased adjudication of these rights in both national (constitutional) courts and international human rights courts. These parallel trends raise a question as to whether it is better to develop and adjudicate environmental rights at the national or international level. This article considers the case made by James May and Erin Daly in favor of developing environmental rights at the national constitutional level and (...) adjudicating these rights in domestic courts. I consider the limitations of this case by showing that international environmental human rights can play a role that systematically benefits environmental protection, with adjudication in international human rights courts a key part of that process. This involves drawing on an argument offered by Allen Buchanan to justify a system of international legal human rights, which appeals to a number of benefits that such a system can provide. The argument is developed and applied to adjudication of environmental human rights in international human rights courts. First, it is shown how these benefits are realized in the area of environmental human rights. Second, it is shown how adjudication can enhance these benefits, both by providing a mechanism for their realization and by facilitating a mutually supportive relationship among them. On the basis of these enhanced benefits and the value that they add, it is concluded that there is strong justification for developing and adjudicating environmental human rights at the international level. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge of how genes work is giving human beings unprecedented power to shape future human lives, for better or for worse. People involved in government, business and science are facing new questions related to the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Our technical knowledge is growing fast, but does our moral wisdom grow at the same rate?

With over 10 000 bases of DNA being sequenced around the world per minute, it is vital that ethical discussion continues to keep pace with genetic research. This contribution by four top theorists in bioethics carefully considers the implications of the many ways genetic information will influence human health and reproduction, by considering “the most basic moral principles that would guide public policy and individual choice concerning the use of genetic interventions in a just and humane society” (4–5). Proceeding with (...) the themes of rights, justice, and harm, problems addressed by the authors include: the significance of the moral difference between treating genetic disease and altering personality characteristics; whether the utilisation of prenatal interventions to avoid disability discriminates against the disabled, and who should have control …. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide an argument for saying that a publicly funded health care system, available to all free at the point of delivery, is morally superior to a market system, and to provide a framework for deciding questions about which forms of health care should be included in such a public system. The argument presents health care as a ‘head’, in the sense of something to which human beings are morally entitled as a necessary condition for a life (...) worthy of human dignity. Alternative arguments for similar conclusions, proposed by Daniels and Buchanan, are critically examined and rejected. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide an argument for saying that a publicly funded health care system, available to all free at the point of delivery, is morally superior to a market system, and to provide a framework for deciding questions about which forms of health care should be included in such a public system. The argument presents health care as a ‘head’, in the sense of something to which human beings are morally entitled as a necessary condition for a life (...) worthy of human dignity. Alternative arguments for similar conclusions, proposed by Daniels and Buchanan, are critically examined and rejected. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan and Daniel Brock, in a widely influential account, Deciding for Others (1990), advocate a sliding scale approach to the determination of whether a patient is competent to make a decision regarding his/her health care. An analysis of two critiques of their position (Beauchamp and Childress (1994), Wicclair (1991 a,b)) reveals a tacit presumption by all of these authors that the greater cognitive challenge often posed by high risk therapies constitutes grounds for an elevated standard of competence. (...) This presumption cannot be consistently maintained in cases where the patient's decision involves experimental therapies. It implies either that informed consent can never take place in such situations, or, perhaps even more counter-intuitively, that a lower standard of competency should be used than when the patient is asked to choose only among standard therapies. (shrink)

This is Volume 9 of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. It contains papers on democracy, the law, political liberalism, voting, social experimentation, state neutrality, equality and incentives, self-ownership, drugs and prostitution, and Lincoln. Chapters include: “Challenging Democratic Commitments: On Liberal Arguments for Instrumentalism About Democracy” (Daniel Viehoff); “Emotional Abuse and the Law” (Elizabeth Brake); “Practical Political Liberalism” (Caleb Perl); “Beyond the Voting Debate” (Brookes Brown); “Social Experimentation in an Unjust World” (Jacob Barrett and Allen Buchanan); “State Neutrality and (...) the Dismantling of the Gendered Division of Labour” (Anca Gheaus); “If It’s Not Your Talent, How Come You’re Getting an Incentive?” (Peter Dietsch); “(Owning) our Bodies, (Owning) our Selves?” (Sean Aas); “Self-Sovereignty, Drugs, and Prostitution” (Peter de Marneffe); “Lincoln as Political Philosopher” (William A. Edmundson). (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction; Part I. Global Health, Definitions and Descriptions: 1. What is global health? Solly Benatar and Ross Upshur; 2. The state of global health in a radically unequal world: patterns and prospects Ron Labonte and Ted Schrecker; 3. Addressing the societal determinants of health: the key global health ethics imperative of our times Anne-Emmanuelle Birn; 4. Gender and global health: inequality and differences Lesley Doyal and Sarah Payne; 5. Heath systems and health Martin McKee; Part (...) II. Global Health Ethics, Responsibilities and Justice: Some Central Issues: 6. Is there a need for global health ethics? For and against David Hunter and Angus Dawson; 7. Justice, infectious disease and globalisation Michael Selgelid; 8. International health inequalities and global justice: toward a middle ground Norman Daniels; 9. The human right to health Jonathan Wolff; 10. Responsibility for global health? Allen Buchanan and Matt DeCamp; 11. Global health ethics: the rationale for mutual caring Solly Benatar, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer; Part III. Analyzing Some Reasons for Poor Health: 12. Trade and health: the ethics of global rights, regulation and redistribution Meri Koivusalo; 13. Debt, structural adjustment and health Jeff Rudin and David Sanders; 14. The international arms trade and global health Salahaddin Mahmudi-Azer; 15. Allocating resources in humanitarian medicine Samia Hurst, Nathalie Mezger and Alex Mauron; 16. International aid and global health Anthony Zwi; 17. Climate change and health: risks and inequities Sharon Friel, Colin Butler and Anthony McMichael; 18. Animals, the environment and global health David Benatar; 19. The global crisis and global health Stephen Gill and Isabella Bakker; Part IV. Shaping the Future: 20. Health impact fund: how to make new medicines accessible to all Thomas Pogge; 21. Biotechnology and global health Hassan Masun, Justin Chakma and Abdallah Daar; 22. Food security and global health Lynn McIntyre and Krista Rondeau; 23. International taxation Gillian Brock; 24. Global health research: changing the agenda Tikki Pang; 25. Justice and research in developing countries Alex John London; 26. Values in global health governance Kearsley Stewart, Gerald T. Keusch and Arthur Kleinman; 27. Poverty, distance and two dimensions of ethics Jonathan Glover; 28. Teaching global health ethics James Dwyer; 29. Towards a new common sense: the need for new paradigms of global health Isabella Bakker and Stephen Gill; Index. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines the value of advance (...) directives, and investigates the role that considerations of cost ought to play in decisions concerning incompetents. Part II applies this theoretical framework to the distinctive problems of three important classes of individuals, many of whom are incompetent: minors, the elderly and psychiatric patients. The authors' approach combines a probing analysis of fundamental issues in ethical theory with a sensitive awareness of the concrete realities of health care institutions and the highly personal and individual character of difficult practical problems. Its broad scope will appeal to health professionals, moral philosophers and lawyers alike. (shrink)

In this essay, I shall discuss ethical issues that arise with our increasing ability to affect the genetic makeup of the human population. These effects can be produced directly by altering the genotype , or indirectly by aborting, not conceiving, or treating individuals because of their genetic makeup in ways made possible by genetic pharmacology. I shall refer to all of these sorts of procedures collectively as the Procedures. Some of the ethical issues the Procedures raise are old, arising quite (...) generally when we can affect the well-being of people, even in the absence of the ability to affect them in the ways just described. My examination of these issues is prompted by the recent at-length discussion of them, From Chance to Choice , by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. (shrink)

In Beyond Humanity a leading philosopher offers a powerful and controversial exploration of urgent ethical issues concerning human enhancement.

This chapter contains section titled: The Biotechnological Solution to Disease Who Benefits from Gene Therapy? Are we Essentially Human Beings or Essentially Persons, and does it Matter? Genetic Influences, Environmental Influences and the Formation of Human Identities Interactionism's Implications for Identity The Scope of Therapy and the Notion of Disease Buchanan, Brock, Daniels and Wikler on Protecting Normal Functioning Therapy, Obligation and Procreative Liberty's Diminishment.

Credences are beliefs about evidential probabilities. We give the view an assessment-sensitive formulation, show how it evades the standard objections, and give several arguments in support.

The aim of this paper is to describe and defend the moving spotlight theory of time. I characterise the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of two theses: permanentism, the thesis that everything exists forever, and the A-theory, the thesis that there is an absolute, objective present time. I begin in Sect. 2 by clearing up some common misconceptions about the moving spotlight theory, focusing on the discussion of the theory in Sider. In doing so, I also fill-out the barebones (...) picture of the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of permanentism and the A-theory. In Sect. 3 I show how moving spotlighters can avoid the two common objections to their view, the McTaggartian argument that the view is contradictory, and the epistemic argument that the view implies that we should believe we are not located at the present moment. I conclude that the moving spotlight theory does not deserve its current relative unpopularity. (shrink)

In this essay, I shall discuss ethical issues that arise with our increasing ability to affect the genetic makeup of the human population. These effects can be produced directly by altering the genotype, or indirectly by aborting, not conceiving, or treating individuals because of their genetic makeup in ways made possible by genetic pharmacology. I shall refer to all of these sorts of procedures collectively as the Procedures. Some of the ethical issues the Procedures raise are old, arising quite generally (...) when we can affect the well-being of people, even in the absence of the ability to affect them in the ways just described. My examination of these issues is prompted by the recent at-length discussion of them, From Chance to Choice, by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In From Chance to Choice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler propose a new way of defending the moral significance of the distinction between genetic treatments and enhancements. They develop what they call a ‘normal function model’ of equality of opportunity and argue that it offers a ‘limited’ defence of this distinction. In this article, I critically assess their model and the support it (allegedly) provides for the treatment‐enhancement distinction. First, I argue that there (...) is a troubling tension in the normal function model. Secondly, I argue that neither of the rationales invoked by Buchanan et al. really serves to justify this model or the results they seek to derive from it with respect to the significance of the distinction between treatments and enhancements. (shrink)

This book is the first in-depth attempt to provide a moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights.

In their jointly written book, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler defend ‘the development and deployment of genetic intervention technologies...’, including genetic enhancements, against charges that they exacerbate injustice. The present paper examines some of their arguments. The first section shows that the authors confuse real societies with just societies. The second shows that without this confusion, their arguments reveal the enormous justice‐impairing potential of deploying genetic enhancements in (...) such societies as the United States. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the concept of wrongful disability. That concept suggests that parents are morally obligated to prevent the genetic transmission of certain conditions and so, if they do not, any resulting disability is ‘wrongful’. In their book From Chance to Choice, Buchanan, Brock, Daniels and Wikler defend the concept of wrongful disability using the principle of avoidability via substitution. That principle is scrutinised here. It is argued that the idea of avoidability via substitution is both conceptually problematic (...) and rather insensitive. Instead, it is suggested that the question of whether or not bringing a particular disability about is wrongful does not simply hinge on whether or not substitution takes place. Rather, it involves an evaluation of parental aspirations and responsibilities. It is argued that the desire not to be responsible for creating challenges for others that lie outside what is perceived to be an acceptable range provides a justification for termination of pregnancy on the grounds of projected disability that neither commits one to a wrongful life claim, nor requires that one substitute a non‐disabled child instead. The ramifications of such an approach are explored. The paper concludes by suggesting that the question of what is considered to be an acceptable range of human capability is an increasingly important one. It is argued that, when addressing that question, we should be acutely aware of the social context that may go some way to define what we consider to be an acceptable range. (shrink)