A request that an ethics committee or consultant analyze the ethical issues in a case, delineate ethical options, or make a recommendation need not automatically but often does elicit legal information. In a recent book in which ethics consultants described cases on which they had worked, almost all cited a legal case or statute that had shaped the consultation process. During a period of just a few months, case consultation done under the auspices of one university hospital ethics committee involved (...) interpretation of statutes on living wills, durable powers of attorney, competency, confidentiality, guardianship, AIDS testing, and disability. At another hospital, 30% of ethics consultations were thought to involve legal issues. Attorneys at a third hospital estimated that virtually every case involves legal issues. The notion that ethics consultation is an “amalgam” of medicine, ethics, interpersonal skills, and law is gaining currency. Ethics consultation has become a channel through which law enters the clinical setting. (shrink)

This paper attempts some predictions about the social consequences of nanotechnology and the ethical issues they raise. I set out four features of nanotechnology that are likely to be important in determining its impact and argue that nanotechnology will have significant social impacts in—at least—the areas of health and medicine, the balance of power between citizens and governments, and the balance of power between citizens and corporations. More importantly, responding to the challenge of nanotechnology will require confronting “philosophical” questions about (...) the sort of society we wish to create and the role that technology might play in creating it. This in turn will require developing institutions and processes that allow the public to wield real power in relation to technological trajectories. My ultimate contention is that the immediate task established by the likely social impacts of nanotechnology is not so much to develop an ethics of nanotechnology as to facilitate an ethical conversation about nanotechnology. (shrink)

The medical ethicist is a fairly recent addition to the clinical setting. The following four potential roles of the clinical ethicist are identified and discussed: consultant in difficult cases, educator of health care providers, counselor for health care providers and finally patient advocate to protect the interests of patients. While the various roles may sometimes overlap, the roles of educator and counselor are viewed as being more congruent with the education and training of medical ethicists than are the roles of (...) consultant and patient advocate. (shrink)

First published in 1966, this book was written to serve as an introductory textbook in the philosophy of education, focusing on ethics and social philosophy. It presents a distinctive point of view both about education and ethical theory and arrived at a time when education was a matter of great public concern. It looks at questions such as 'What do we actually mean by education?' and provides a proper ethical foundation for education in a democratic society. The book will appeal (...) to both teachers and students of philosophy as well as education. (shrink)

Energy insecurity is felt, and energy security is desired on a global, regional, national and local level and on the level of households, communities, groups, sectors, regions, countries and cultures. Different strategies and priorities for gaining energy security and avoiding energy insecurity are envisioned and employed by different households, communities, groups, sectors, regions, countries and cultures. This paper introduces the concept of ableism as an analytical framework to analyse strategies and priorities for gaining energy security and for avoiding or reducing (...) energy insecurity, as well as envisioning governance solutions. (shrink)

I reflect on the past, present, and future of the field of bioethics. In so doing, I offer a very situated overview of where bioethics has been, where it now is, where it seems to be going, where I think we could do better, and where I dearly hope the field will be heading. I also propose three ways of re‐orienting our theoretic tools to guide us in a new direction: (1) adopt an ethics of responsibility; (2) explore the responsibilities (...) of various kinds of actors and relationships among them; (3) expand the types of participants engaged in bioethics. (shrink)

More than 1 billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and 2.6 billion to sanitation. Halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation is a Millennium Development Goal. According to a DFID research project description, 60 million physically disabled people have difficulties related to water supply, use, and sanitation. However, access to clean water and sanitation and other water related problems disabled people face are not mentioned and dealt with in high level policy documents (...) such as the three existing editions of the world water report, the memorandum for a World Water Protocol or the Human Development Report 2007/2008 ‗Fighting climate change: human solidarity in a divided world‘ which covered water scarcity and floods. Disabled people are invisible in these documents and although all of these documents mention other marginalized groups such as indigenous peoples, women in developing countries, the rural poor and their children, young people workers/peasants‖, ‗the poor‘, farmers and displaced people. This paper submits that certain forms of ableism are responsible for the invisibility of disabled people in various water discourses. (shrink)