This article critically examines how solidarity has been enacted in the first 2 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly, but not exclusively, from a United Kingdom perspective.1 Solidaristic strategies are framed in two ways: aspirations to overcome COVID-19 ; and those that are illusory, incompatible, contradictory, and disrupting of solidaristic ideals. Solidarity can also be understood more widely from a biocentric perspective. In the context of COVID-19 a lack of biocentric solidarity points to a probable cause of the pandemic; where (...) COVID-19, harmless in bats, jumped species as a consequence of closer contact with humans. Solidarity, therefore, is not only expressed in a fight against a viral “enemy” but is also a reminder of human activity that has upset balances within ecosystems. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is not to affirm or deny particular philosophical positions, but to explore the limits of intelligibility about what post-mortem harm means, especially in the light of improper post-mortem procedures at Bristol and Alder Hey hospitals in the late 1990s. The parental claims of post-mortem harm to dead children at Alder Hey Hospital are reviewed from five different philosophical perspectives, eventually settling on a crucial difference of perspective about how we understand harm to the dead. On (...) the one hand there is the broadly 'analytical' tradition1 of thinking that predicates the notion of harm on the basis of an existing subject. Since the dead are non-existent persons, it makes little sense to view the dead as being harmed. On the other hand, there is a phenomenological perspective, where the dead, in respect to the experience of grief, are existentially absent. This forms the basis that it is possible to harm grieving parent's experiences of how their dead are treated. The article ends with a short examination of what harming the dead implies for traditional bioethical concerns, namely, obtaining informed consent from significant others when planning medical research on the newly dead. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates bettering human life. Because this involves lives that do not exist yet, the article investigates human eugenics and enhancement through the social prism of ‘the imaginary’ (defined ‘as a set of assumptions and concepts for thinking and speaking about human enhancement and its future direction’) [1]. “Exploring basic assumptions underlying the idea of human enhancement” investigates underlying assumptions and claims for human enhancement. Firstly, human eugenics and enhancement entangles a factual as well as a normative claim (...) about what improvement/betterment maybe constitutive of. Secondly, claims about what a better life is, is often a future orientated claim about whether certain kinds of life that do not exist yet should ever exist. Moral images of thought are introduced and how they work to make normative judgments about lives that do not exist. This implicates the moral problem of difference, where an image of a ‘better’ life—classically expressed in eugenics as a ‘superior’ and/or ‘normal’ life—necessarily entails inferiority and/or deviance from a norm. “Moral imagination in contemporary fiction and the history of old eugenics”, introduces moral images in history of eugenics and demonstrates how examples fall foul of the problem. “The new (liberal) eugenics and the moral image of therapy” examines progress in contemporary debates, the move from authoritarian to non-authoritarian eugenics (human enhancement), and how, to some extent, this has solved the problem of difference, through liberal defence of personal choice. “The heart of the eugenic issue” suggests that personal choice in liberal non-authoritarian eugenics is not immune to basic drive behind all eugenic arguments; desire as lack which is expressed as the continual dissatisfaction of not having our future expectations met. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Treatment and the Problem of Equality:Whose Justice, Which Rationality?Floris Tomasini (bio)KeywordsInvoluntary treatment, democracy, equality, impartialityCraig Edwards in his article "Ethical Decisions in the Classification of Mental Conditions As Mental Illness" provides the reader with a socially normative, rather than a naturalistic understanding of mental illness, one that, in particular, promotes a normative understanding of mental illness as a form of evaluating dysfunctional personhood. In doing so, Edwards is (...) not interested in undermining psychiatric expertise, but exploring some of the practical consequences that flow from it, such as involuntary psychiatric treatment.My concern about psychiatric treatment in general and involuntary psychiatric treatment in particular, is three-fold, the third concern adding to the arguments already rehearsed by Edwards and others. The first concern is about the value neutrality of mental illness. Any dysfunctional conception of mental illness is not value neutral according to Fulford; dysfunction is, straightaway, a normative concept and is heavily influenced by a patient's desires and values. The second concern is about competing and conflicting values that arise in a person's psychiatric treatment. Again, there exists a legitimate variation in people's evaluative judgments about mental health conditions, for which a degree of democratic compromise might be required in negotiating conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Without wishing to examine any of the philosophical foundations or counter-arguments to these claims in this short discussion paper, my third concern is about how to ethically negotiate between conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment. In other words, what might democratic compromise consist in? How might democratic compromise be implemented in terms of an ethically relevant principle?Any democratic enterprise, by definition, favors or is characterized by social equality and is egalitarian in nature (New Oxford English Dictionary 1999, 490). To be able to negotiate in the spirit of democratic compromise between competing and conflicting values in the process of psychiatric treatment, a principle of equal consideration of interests is vital.The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests is that we give equal weight in our [End Page 101] moral deliberation to the like interests of all those affected by our actions (Singer 1979, 19). In other words, an interest is an interest whoever's interest that may be. So, for example, if the principle is about relieving pain, then the moral principle is about relieving the undesirability of pain as such, and not the undesirability of A's pain, which might be different from the undesirability of B's pain. Naturally, one may be able to distinguish that A's pain is greater than B's pain, in which case, under the equal consideration of interests principle, A's pain should be given greater weighting than B's pain in any conflict of interests. In short, in the evaluation of like interests, major interests outweigh minor interests.The significance of the principle of equal consideration of interests in decisions about mental health treatment in general, and about involuntary psychiatric detention and treatment more specifically, is that it should be possible (in theory at least) to able to democratically arbitrate on the basis of utility, whose interests take precedence when legitimate conflicts arise. The great practical advantage to the principle of equal consideration of interests is that it weighs' interests impartially—like well-balanced weighing scales; they favor where the interest is stronger or where several interests combine to outweigh a smaller number of similar interests. Most important, in the case of psychiatric treatment, it is a principle that takes no account of whose interests they are, avoiding any discriminatory stigma that may arise because of having made certain assumptions about being mentally ill. From the point of view of the equal consideration of interests, who the bearer is and how they are classified is, in itself, incidental to what the actual bearer's interests are and how they compete and conflict with others who have like interests. There are a number of practical consequences that flow from the principle of equal consideration when applied to psychiatric treatment (voluntary and involuntary) that need to be pinned down.Simple Negative DiscriminationClearly... (shrink)

Simona Giordano (2010) claims that whether or not anorexics should be allowed to die should not primarily depend on their competence, but on the extent of whether the condition can be alleviated. This implies two outcomes. First, that if an anorexic has a reasonable chance of recovery, competent refusal of treatment can be overridden. Second, that if an anorexic has no realistic chance of recovery, patient refusal needs to be upheld—not, exclusively, on the basis of patient’s decision-making competence, but on (...) the basis of their prolonged and unnecessary suffering. Giordano is right, in my view, to suggest that there are good moral grounds to uphold patient wishes to refuse life-saving treatment, when .. (shrink)

This book offers new direction in disability studies, by integrating the medical and social model of disability. The first aim is to provide an integral approach to thinking about impairment and disability through the integrative lens of being vulnerable. The second aim is to transcend the normative trap which impairment and disability debate finds itself locked in. Disability debate is trapped in a normative struggle to escape oppressive norms. Either, by legitimizing the desire to be free from impairment, where a (...) legitimization identity is promoted through the medical model. Or, by resisting discriminative social norms, where the desire is to be free from oppressive social barriers that exist on top of having impairment. Identifying with one’s vulnerability, or embodied uncertainty, allows for the possibility of forging meaning and building new identity. It allows freedom to express embodied difference, rather than to transform or defend it. (shrink)

The question what is bioethics is a controversial area of debate amongst practitioners of bioethics, not least because it sets out disciplinary boundaries to practise the subject, which involve deeper assumptions about how one should approach and practise the subject. There are at least four ways of answering the question “what is bioethics?” that raise the controversy aforementioned. These can be identified in the following ways: (1) what has the word bioethics come to mean? What limits of scope should we (...) place on an answer to what is bioethics?; (2) what discipline does bioethics involve? Does it involve a single disciplinary perspective or does it involve many disciplines?; (3) are there different cultural principles or values to be contested in bioethics?; and (4) conclusions - what methodological approach should we adopt in answering the question what is bioethics? (shrink)