Abstract Criminalisation of prostitution, and minority rights for disabled persons, are important contemporary political issues. The article examines their intersection by analysing the conditions and arguments for making a legal exception for disabled persons to a general prohibition against purchasing sexual services. It explores the badness of prostitution, focusing on and discussing the argument that prostitution harms prostitutes, considers forms of regulation and the arguments for and against with emphasis on a liberty-based objection to prohibition, and finally presents and analyses three arguments for a legal exception, based on sexual rights, beneficence, and luck egalitarianism, respectively. It concludes that although the general case for and against criminalisation is complicated there is a good case for a legal exception.
Abstract The publicity surrounding the recent McMath and Muñoz cases has rekindled public interest in brain death: the familiar term for human death determination by showing the irreversible cessation of clinical brain functions. The concept of brain death was developed decades ago to permit withdrawal of therapy in hopeless cases and to permit organ donation. It has become widely established medical practice, and laws permit it in all U.S. jurisdictions. Brain death has a biophilosophical justification as a standard for determining human death but remains poorly understood by the public and by health professionals. The current controversies over brain death are largely restricted to the academy, but some practitioners express ambivalence over whether brain death is equivalent to human death. Brain death remains an accepted and sound concept, but more work is necessary to establish its biophilosophical justification and to educate health professionals and the public.
Bernat JL. Whither Brain Death? The American Journal of Bioethics, 14:8, 3-8, (2014) DOI:10.1080/15265161.2014.925153
Abstract We seek to change the conversation about brain death by highlighting the distinction between brain death as a biological concept versus brain death as a legal status. The fact that brain death does not cohere with any biologically plausible definition of death has been known for decades. Nevertheless, this fact has not threatened the acceptance of brain death as a legal status that permits individuals to be treated as if they are dead. The similarities between “legally dead” and “legally blind” demonstrate how we may legitimately choose bright-line legal definitions that do not cohere with biological reality. Not only does this distinction bring conceptual coherence to the conversation about brain death, but it has practical implications as well. Once brain death is recognized as a social construction not grounded in biological reality, we create the possibility of changing the social construction in ways that may better serve both organ donors and recipients alike.
Abstract This article discusses the moral objection to the efficient breach theory, specifically the objection that it is not based upon a moral obligation to perform a contract. The efficient breach theory endorses the immoral behaviour of breaching a promise whenever the consequences of breach are considered to be superior (in the sense that they are more efficient or better) to those of performance. It considers that contracts (namely, those promises in which legal rules and institutions are involved) are simply vehicles for achieving economic efficiency. The efficient breach theory has been challenged by a number of critics. It is the idea underlying promissory obligations that a promise excludes or ignores the ordinary grounds – for example, utilitarian grounds – that a promisor may bear in mind and consider in the course of making the decision about whether they should perform the promise. This characteristic of promises can be explained by saying that a promise creates an exclusionary reason for action. This article also addresses two crucial questions. First, why do promises create exclusionary reasons for action in the first place? Without answering this question, it would be difficult to argue that promises should be understood differently from the way the efficient breach theory understands them. Second, how do we decide when breaching a promise is or is not immoral? This question is significant because without such knowledge, it would be difficult to argue that the efficient breach theory endorses the immoral behaviour of promise-breaking once a better opportunity presents itself.
Extract If capital punishment is constitutional, as it has long been held to be, then it “necessarily follows that there must be a means of carrying it out.”1 So the Supreme Court concluded in Baze v. Rees, a 2008 challenge to Kentucky’s lethal-injection protocol . . .
Lethal injection, the primary execution method used in all death-penalty states, was adopted precisely because its sanitized, quasi-clinical procedures were intended to ensure humane deaths consistent with the Eighth Amendment. But experiences like Clayton Lockett’s . . .demonstrate the dearth of safeguards for ensuring that this goal is actually achieved. . . Nevertheless, states have demonstrated their willingness to continue with lethal injections, and most federal courts have allowed executions to proceed in the face of constitutional challenges. The time is therefore ripe for the medical and scientific communities to consider, once again, their role in this process.
Kenneth Chambaere, Ilse Loodts, Luc Deliens, Joachim Cohen
Journal of Medical Ethics
Abstract OBJECTIVES: To examine the frequency and characteristics of decisions to forgo artificial nutrition and/or hydration (ANH) at the end of life. DESIGN: Postal questionnaire survey regarding end-of-life decisions (including ANH) to physicians certifying a large representative sample (n=6927) of Belgian death certificates in 2007.
SETTING: Flanders, Belgium, 2007.
PARTICIPANTS: Treating physicians of deceased patients.
RESULTS: Response rate was 58.4%. A decision to forgo ANH occurred in 6.6% of all deaths (4.2% withheld,3.0% withdrawn). Being female, dying in a care home or hospital and suffering from nervous system diseases(including dementia) or malignancies were the most important patient-related factors positively associated with a decision to forgo ANH. Physicians indicated that the decision to forgo ANH had had some life-shortening effects in 77% of cases. There had been no consultation with the patient in 81%, mostly due to incapacity (coma or dementia). The family, colleague physicians and nurses were involved in decision making in 76%,41% and 62%, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: A substantial number of deaths are preceded by a decision to forgo ANH in Belgium. These decisions, ethically laden and involving a considerable chance of life shortening, are mostly not preceded by discussion with the patient despite existing patient rights legislation. It is recommended that physicians and patients and their families alike dedicate ample time to the discussion of treatment options and communication about the possibility of forgoing ANH and that this discussion takes place earlier as part of overall end-of life care planning rather than at the very end of life..
Abstract Perimortem gamete retrieval has been a possibility for several decades. It involves the surgical extraction of gametes which can then be cryo-preserved and stored for future use. Usually, the request for perimortem gamete retrieval is made by the patient’s partner after the patient himself, or herself, has lost the capacity to consent for the procedure. Perimortem gamete retrieval allows for the partner of a dead patient to pursue jointly held reproductive aspiration long after their loved one’s death. But how can we know if the dying patient would have consented to gamete retrieval? In the UK, consent is a legal necessity for storing or using gametes – but this is not always enforced. Moreover, although the issues related to posthumous reproduction have been discussed at length in the literature, few commentators have addressed the specific question of retrieval. Gamete retrieval is an invasive and sensitive operation; as with any other intervention performed on the bodies of dead or dying patients, the nature and justification for this procedure needs to be carefully considered. In particular, it is important to question the idea that consent for such an intervention can be inferred solely from a person’s known wishes or plans concerning reproduction.
Abstract While conscientious objection in healthcare is becoming increasingly studied, the legislative implementation of the principle is often without definition, leading to the question ‘what is conscientious objection?’ As this article will demonstrate, it is useful to reconceptualise conscientious objection as ‘resistance’ to dominant discourses and understandings in society, which have been internalised and co-opted as a way of acting as a ‘safety-valve’ for individualised dissent, as well as reinforcing perceptions of freedom, choice and tolerance in liberal democratic society. This non-normative assessment of conscientious objection therefore seeks to provide a framework for understanding why certain forms of resistance may be considered conscientious and some may not, before then applying this understanding to issues such as abortion and female genital mutilation.
Abstract In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of the central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner.
Extract In an opinion dissenting from a Supreme Court decision to deny review in a death penalty case, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote, “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” In the wake of the recent botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma, however, a group of eminent legal professionals known as the Death Penalty Committee of The Constitution Project has published a sweeping set of 39 recommendations that not only tinker with, but hope to fix, the multitude of problems that affect this method of capital punishment.
