In 2007, the Ethics and Governance Council of the UK Biobank commissioned a Report on ‘Concepts of Public Good and Pubic Interest in Access Policies’. This study considered the Biobank’s role as a ‘public good’ in respect to supporting and promoting health throughout society. However, the conditions under which access by third parties to UK Biobank are justified in the public interest have not been well considered. In this article, I propose to analyse the conditions that should allow such access. (...) My argument develops UK Biobank’s function as a ‘public good’ and in terms of its responsibilities as a public health institution; both to protect the rights of the participants and in having a role in reinforcing public goals. Although these two tasks may conflict, it is possible that resolute opposition to some third-party access demands—if properly justified in terms of a public interest—will be damaging to, rather than protective of, participants’ rights. To illustrate my argument, I consider the appropriate response to an extraordinary public emergency , such as a serious criminal investigation or disaster response, in terms of an ethical access policy. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore the idea of human moral responsibility for (the outcomes) of natural disasters. First, I discuss the claim that there is often a human causal contribution to negative outcomes of even such paradigmatic natural disasters as earthquakes, typhoons, and volcano eruptions. Second, I attempt to move away from discussions attributing human causal responsibility to discussions attributing human moral responsibility for such outcomes (and to the obstacles to such attributions). I suggest that in most (...) (perhaps even all) cases of moral responsibility for the outcomes of natural disasters moral responsibility is grounded in culpable negligence, including culpable failure to prevent the side-effects of our actions or omissions. (shrink)

We refer to hospitalized convicted hunger strikers in Padua Hospital who decided to fast for specific reasons, often demanding, to be heard by the judge, to complain about the existing custodial situation or to claim unjust treatment. The medical ethics of hunger strikers are debated because the use of force feeding by physicians is widely condemned as unethical, but courts, in Italy, sometimes order to transfer the convicted person to hospital and oblige healthcare practitioners to perform forcible feeding. This can (...) engender a profound insecurity for the physicians taking action on the one hand, while preventing patients from fully availing themselves of this principle of self-determination on the other. Physicians are mainly concerned about how to manage this situation and they may request ethical consultation. When it comes to managing hospitalized hunger strikers, the ethics consultant may be able to facilitate the relationship between physicians and hunger strikers, enhance the latter’s trust in the former, ensuring that strikers are aware of the risks associated with their fasting, and helping them to arrive of their own free will at the right decision concerning their behavior and their demands. (shrink)