This paper seeks to respond to some of the recent criticisms directed toward bioethics by offering a contribution to a “critical bioethics”. Here this concept is principally defined in terms of the three features of interdisciplinarity, self-reflexivity and the avoidance of uncritical complicity. In a partial reclamation of the ideas of V.R. Potter, it is argued that a critical bioethics requires a meaningful challenge to culture/nature dualism, expressed in bioethics as the distinction between medical ethics and ecological ethics. Such a (...) contesting of the “bio” in bioethics arrests its ethical bracketing of environmental and animal ethics. Taken together, the triadic definition of a critical bioethics offered here provides a potential framework with which to fend off critiques of commercial capture or of being “too close to science” commonly directed toward bioethics. (shrink)

The implications of Pope John Paul II's 2004 Allocution on vegetative states remain unclear despite dozens of articles and a recent clarifying statement from the Vatican. Yet few have considered its implications for those with end-stage progressive dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease. Although recent studies suggest tube feeding is burdensome and not beneficial for such patients, the Allocution would nonetheless seem to forbid patients from forgoing it. But this seems to be in tension with the Catholic bioethical tradition as a (...) whole and may therefore be a consequence that the pope did not intend. Because the recent Vatican clarification specifically addresses Alzheimer’s, it is especially important to know what duties it intends to impose on those with dementia. Problems with how it would apply to such patients casts doubt on whether it should be applied to patients in vegetative states at all. (shrink)

Medical ethicists have assumed a role in justifying public voyeurism of human "curiosities." This role has precedent in how scientists and natural philosophers once legitimized the marketing of museums of "human curiosities." At the beginning of the twentieth century, physicians dissociated themselves from entrepreneurial displays of persons with anomalies, and such commercial exhibits went into decline. Today, news media, principally on television, promote news features about persons that closely resemble the nineteenth century exhibits of human curiosities. Reporters solicit medical ethicists (...) for soundbites to affirm the newsworthiness and propriety of public voyeurism of these medical stories. Ethicists' soundbites are usually ambiguous or self-evident and rarely enable viewers to morally engage the issues. The precedent of early twentieth century physicians disengaging from such exploitive public shows is a useful example for medical ethics. (shrink)

is a review of 5 ethically based healthcare funding models discussed in the literature that are currently used to justify funding choices. If healthcare professionals and managers are better informed about the ethical reasoning behind funding choices, they could better determine which resource allocation alternatives to support. But where should we spend our resources? Although healthcare professionals have a duty to advocate for all healthcare recipients to receive a fair share of resources, the author concludes that our greater duty as (...) a profession is to the good of society as a whole. Balancing allocation decisions by considering all of the competing healthcare funding models and the ethical bases for them is suggested rather than to advocate too strongly for favored models.... (shrink)