Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal
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Kennedy Inst Ethics J · Jun 2001
Setting biomedical research priorities: justice, science, and public participation.
This paper addresses the appropriate role for public input into priority setting for federal funding of biomedical research and development. The public should be involved in priority setting because researchers should be publicly accountable, because the public has a right to oversee government activities, and because public input is needed to assess normative questions related to the burden of disease and health care needs. ⋯ When it comes to public input into R & D priority setting, more is not necessarily better. What is needed is the right balance of public and expert decision making with respect to the setting of biomedical R & D priorities.
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Following a long process of revision, a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki was approved by the World Medical Association in 2000. Two provisions of the Declaration address ongoing international controversies regarding research sponsored by industrialized countries and conducted in developing countries. ⋯ Moreover, the Declaration remained silent on other prominent controversies concerning international research. An analysis of these current controversies reveals reasons why they are not likely to be readily resolved, despite apparent agreement by opponents on overarching ethical principles.
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Kennedy Inst Ethics J · Dec 2000
Moral responsibility and respect for autonomy: meeting the communitarian challenge.
The principle of respect for autonomy has come under increasing attack both within health care ethics, specifically, and as part of the more general communitarian challenge to predominantly liberal values. This paper will demonstrate the importance of respect for autonomy for the social practice of assigning moral responsibility and for the development of moral responsibility as a virtue. Guided by this virtue, the responsible exercise of autonomy may provide a much-needed connection between the individual and the community.
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Kennedy Inst Ethics J · Dec 1999
Some reflections on the problem of advance directives, personhood, and personal identity.
In this paper, I consider objections to advance directives based on the claim that there is a discontinuity of interests, and of personal identity, between the time a person executes an advance directive and the time when the patient has become severely demented. Focusing narrowly on refusals of life-sustaining treatment for severely demented patients, I argue that acceptance of the psychological view of personal identity does not entail that treatment refusals should be overriden. Although severely demented patients are morally considerable beings, and must be kept comfortable whilst alive, they no longer have an interest in receiving life-sustaining treatment.