There is significant research on the motivations and migration experiences of South Asian international students in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK); however, the employability journeys of this group are not well understood. This article addresses this gap, illuminating the specific employability challenges experienced and perceived by South Asian postgraduate international students enrolled in Australia and the UK. Drawing on qualitative research comprising semi-structured interviews with 30 South Asian postgraduate international students studying at a university in Australia and in the (...) UK, the findings highlight significant barriers to employability along four key axes: time pressures from study and adjustment issues (micro); lack of internship opportunities offered at the universities (meso); lack of culturally tailored university career services (meso) and perceptions of employers’ as well as Government policy implications (macro). Acknowledging and understanding these findings are important for universities to support South Asian international student employability experiences and graduate outcomes to remain competitive in the global job market. The findings suggest recommendations to enhance the employability of South Asian students in the UK and Australia. (shrink)

It has been argued that organs should be treated as individual tradable property like other material possessions and assets, on the basis that this would promote individual freedom and increase efficiency in addressing the shortage of organs for transplantation. If organs are to be treated as property, should they be inheritable? This paper seeks to contribute to the idea of organs as inheritable property by providing a defence of a default of the family of a dead person as inheritors of (...) transplantable organs. In the course of discussion, various succession rules for organs and their justifications will be suggested. We then consider two objections to organs as inheritable property. Our intention here is to provoke further thought on whether ownership of one's body parts should be assimilated to property ownership. (shrink)

This new study provides a thorough analysis of the ethical reasoning of doctors and nurses. Based on extensive interviews, Soren Holm's work demonstrates how qualitative research methods can be used to study ethical reasoning, and that the results of such studies are important for normative ethics, that is, the analysis of how health care professionals ought to act.

With the increasing use of algorithms in high-stakes areas such as criminal justice and health has come a significant concern about the fairness of prediction-based decision procedures. In this article I argue that a prominent class of mathematically incompatible performance parity criteria can all be understood as applications of John Broome’s account of fairness as the proportional satisfaction of claims. On this interpretation these criteria do not disagree on what it means for an algorithm to be _fair_. Rather they express (...) different understandings of what grounds a claim to a good being allocated by an algorithmic decision procedure. I then argue that an important implication of the Broomean interpretation is that it strengthens the case for outcome-based criteria. Finally, I consider how a version of the levelling-down objection to performance parity criteria arises within the Broomean account. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between medical ethics (ME) and common morality (CM), professional norms, and moral philosophy. It proceeds by analyzing two recent book-length critical analyses of this relationship by Bob Baker in “The Structure of Moral Revolutions—Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion, Death, and the Bioethics Revolution” and Rosamond Rhodes in “The Trusted Doctor—Medical Ethics and Professionalism.” It argues that despite the strengths of these critical arguments, there is nevertheless a relationship between ME, understood as the (...) professional ethics of the healthcare professions, and both CM and moral philosophy. It also argues that ME cannot and should not be understood purely as the internally developed professional norms of the medical or healthcare professions. (shrink)

When is it justified to use opaque artificial intelligence (AI) output in medical decision-making? Consideration of this question is of central importance for the responsible use of opaque machine learning (ML) models, which have been shown to produce accurate and reliable diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment suggestions in medicine. In this article, I discuss the merits of two answers to the question. According to the Explanation View, clinicians must have access to an explanation of why an output was produced. According to (...) the Validation View, it is sufficient that the AI system has been validated using established standards for safety and reliability. I defend the Explanation View against two lines of criticism, and I argue that within the framework of evidence-based medicine mere validation seems insufficient for the use of AI output. I end by characterizing the epistemic responsibility of clinicians and point out how a mere AI output cannot in itself ground a practical conclusion about what to do. (shrink)

The increased use of information technology in every day health care creates vast amounts of stored health data that can be used for research. The secondary research use of routinely collected data raises questions about appropriate consent mechanisms for such use. One option is meta consent where individuals state their own consent preferences in relation to future use of their data, e.g. whether they want the data to be accessible to researchers under conditions of specific consent, broad consent, blanket consent (...) or not at all. This study investigates whether meta consent preferences can be successfully elicited by a smartphone application in the adult Danish population. A smartphone app was developed for the elicitation of meta consent preferences. An invitation to use the app was distributed to a stratified, representative sample of the Danish adult population. The meta consent choices, the use of the app, user experience data, and demographic data were logged and analysed statistically using IBM SPSS version 20. Of 1000 potential respondents 221 used the app. One hundred eighty-eight of the respondents were female and 103 male. The age range was 19 to 79 years with an average of 51 years. Most users indicate 1) that they find the choices they are asked to make easy to understand, 2) that the application is easy to use, and 3) that this kind of choice should be offered to people. It is possible to collect meta consent preferences in the general, adult population using a smartphone app. (shrink)

What does it mean for algorithmic classifications to be fair to different socially salient groups? According to classification parity criteria, what is required is equality across groups with respect to some performance measure such as error rates. Critics of classification parity object that classification parity entails that achieving fairness may require us to choose an algorithm that makes no group better off and some groups worse off than an alternative. In this article, I interpret the problem of algorithmic fairness as (...) a case concerning the ethics of the distribution of algorithmic classifications across groups (as opposed to, e.g., the fairness of data collection). I begin with a short introduction of algorithmic fairness as a problem discussed in machine learning. I then show how the criticism raised against classification parity is a form of leveling down objection, and I interpret the egalitarianism of classification parity as deontic egalitarianism. I then discuss a challenge to this interpretation and suggest a revision. Finally, I examine how my interpretation provides proponents of classification parity with a response to the leveling down criticism and how it relates to a recent suggestion to evaluate fairness for automated decision-making systems based on risk and welfare considerations from behind a veil of ignorance. (shrink)

In this article we provide an in-depth description of a new model of informed consent called ‘meta consent’ and consider its practical implementation. We explore justifications for preferring meta consent over alternative models of consent as a solution to the problem of secondary use of health data for research. We finally argue that meta consent strikes an appropriate balance between enabling valuable research and protecting the individual.

Pre-diabetes is a risk factor for the development of diabetes, not a disease in its own right. The prevalence increases with age and reaches nearly 50% of those aged over 75 years in the USA. While lifestyle modification and treatment are likely to benefit those with many years of life ahead of them, they are unlikely to benefit patients with a limited life expectancy. Despite this, some very elderly patients in the UK and elsewhere are being labelled as pre-diabetic. While (...) ideal practice would be to carefully consider the impact of any potentially abnormal blood test before it is taken, this is not always possible in routine practice. In this paper, we discuss a pragmatic, ethical approach for clinicians managing pre-diabetic blood tests in very elderly patients. We argue that a ‘see-saw’ model of paternalism should be used in deciding which patients to inform that they can be labelled as pre-diabetic. Those patients that may benefit from the label should be informed, and those that will not, should not. Where the benefits/drawbacks are unclear, the result and its potential significance should be discussed in depth with the individual patient. We do not advocate withholding information from any patient. Instead we suggest clinicians use individual patient circumstances to contextualise the relevance of pre-diabetes to the patient and consider the benefits and drawbacks before informing them. This approach has the potential to be used for other pre-conditions and risk factors in addition to pre-diabetes. (shrink)

Phenomenology gives rise to certain ontological considerations that have far-reaching implications for standard conceptions of patient autonomy in medical ethics, and, as a result, the obligations of and to patients in clinical decision-making contexts. One such consideration is the phenomenological reduction in classical phenomenology, a core feature of which is the characterisation of our primary experiences as immediately and inherently meaningful. This paper builds on and extends the analyses of the phenomenological reduction in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (...) in order to identify and explain its implications for our current understanding of the principle of respect for patient autonomy and the norms of clinical decision making. (shrink)

In this article I consider two pertinent questions that practitioners must consider when they deploy an algorithmic system as support in clinical shared decision‐making. The first question concerns how to interpret and assess the significance of different performance measures for clinical decision‐making. The second question concerns the professional obligations that practitioners have to communicate information about the quality of an algorithm's output to patients in light of the principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. In the article I review the four (...) standard performance measures used to evaluate and validate algorithms, outline their role in the discussion of algorithmic fairness, and discuss the professional responsibilities that practitioners face when communicating information about these measures to patients. (shrink)

“Bodily autonomy” has received significant attention in bioethics, medical ethics, and medical law in terms of the general inviolability of a patient’s bodily sovereignty and the rights of patients to make choices (e.g., reproductive choices) that concern their own body. However, the role of the body in terms of how it can or does contribute to a patient’s capacity for, or exercises of their autonomy in clinical decision-making situations has not been explicitly addressed. The approach to autonomy in this paper (...) is aligned with traditional theories that conceive autonomy in terms of an individual’s capacities for, and exercises of rational reflection. However, at the same time, this paper extends these accounts by arguing that autonomy is, in part, embodied. Specifically, by drawing on phenomenological conceptions of the experience of autonomy, we argue that, in principle, the body is a necessary component of the capacity for autonomy. Secondly, through the presentation of two different cases, we highlight ways in which a patient’s body can contribute to the autonomy of treatment choices. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to explore additional conditions under which a concept of embodied autonomy should be employed in medical decision making, how its underlying principles might be operationalised in clinical situations, and its consequences for approaches to patient autonomy in healthcare practice, policy, and law. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 60-61.

In the debates regarding the ethics of human organoid biobanking, the locus of donor autonomy has been identified in processes of consent. The problem is that, by focusing on consent, biobanking processes preclude adequate engagement with donor autonomy because they are unable to adequately recognise or respond to factors that determine authentic choice. This is particularly problematic in biobanking contexts associated with organoid research or the clinical application of organoids because, given the probability of unforeseen and varying purposes for which (...) a donor’s organoids could be employed and given the different ways in which a donor can relate to her biospecimens, a donor can value her organoids differently in different contexts and her reasons for autonomously permitting use of her cells and tissues in one case may not support an autonomous decision in another. In response, this paper has three aims: firstly, to make the case for why organoid biobanks ought to respect donor autonomy conceived as authentic choice; secondly, to explore the autonomy-respecting limits of established and widely prevalent models of biobank consent; and thirdly, to propose certain conditions that organoid biobanks ought to support or facilitate in order to respect donor autonomy. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study whether linguistic analysis and changes in information leaflets can improve readability and understanding. DESIGN: Randomised, controlled study. Two information leaflets concerned with trials of drugs for conditions/diseases which are commonly known were modified, and the original was tested against the revised version. SETTING: Denmark. PARTICIPANTS: 235 persons in the relevant age groups. MAIN MEASURES: Readability and understanding of contents. RESULTS: Both readability and understanding of contents was improved: readability with regard to both information leaflets and understanding with (...) regard to one of the leaflets. CONCLUSION: The results show that both readability and understanding can be improved by increased attention to the linguistic features of the information. (shrink)

This comment responds to Kevin Warwick’s article on predictability and responsibility with respect to brain-machine interfaces in action. It compares conventional responsibility for device use with the potential consequences of phenomenological human-machine integration which obscures the causal chain of an act. It explores two senses of “responsibility”: 1) when it is attributed to a person, suggesting the morally important way in which the person is a causal agent, and 2) when a person is accountable and, on the basis of fairness (...) about rewards and sanctions, has a duty to act responsibly and accept liability. The comment suggests that, in the absence of absolute knowledge and predictability, we continue to engage in practical forms of reasoning about the responsibility for BMI-use in ways which are inclusive of uncertainties about the liability of persons versus devices and those who create them. (shrink)

The use of algorithms to support prediction-based decision-making is becoming commonplace in a range of domains including health, criminal justice, education, social services, lending, and hiring. An assumption governing such decisions is that there is a property Y such that individual a should be allocated resource R by decision-maker D if a is Y. When there is uncertainty about whether a is Y, algorithms may provide valuable decision support by accurately predicting whether a is Y on the basis of known (...) features of a. Based on recent work on statistical evidence in epistemology this article presents an argument against relying exclusively on algorithmic predictions to allocate resources when they provide purely statistical evidence that a is Y. The article then responds to the objection that any evidence that will increase the proportion of correct decisions should be accepted as the basis for allocations regardless of its epistemic deficiency. Finally, some important practical aspects of the conclusion are considered. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study the ethical reasoning of nurses and physicians, and to assess whether or not modified focus groups are a valuable tool for this purpose. DESIGN: Discussion of cases in modified focus groups, each consisting of three physicians and three nurses. The discussion was taped and analysed by content analysis. SETTING: Five departments of internal medicine at Danish hospitals. SAMPLE: Seven discussion groups. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Ethical content of statements, style of statements, time used by each participant. RESULTS: Danish physicians (...) and nurses do not differ in the kind of ethical reasoning they use, but physicians use more of the discussion time than nurses, they use a more assertive style of argumentation, and the solutions chosen are usually first put forward by physicians. CONCLUSION: The results and informal comparisons with similar data from long qualitative interviews indicate that groups of this kind are a useful tool for gathering data on ethical reasoning. (shrink)

In an analysis of artificially intelligent systems for medical diagnostics and treatment planning we argue that patients should be able to exercise a right to withdraw from AI diagnostics and treatment planning for reasons related to (1) the physician’s role in the patients’ formation of and acting on personal preferences and values, (2) the bias and opacity problem of AI systems, and (3) rational concerns about the future societal effects of introducing AI systems in the health care sector.

This paper considers the ethical issues raised by biobanking of material from children who are not mature enough to give ethically valid consent. The first part considers consent requirements for entry of such materials in the biobank, whereas the second part looks at the issues that arise when a competent child later wants to withdraw previously sored materials, and at the issues that arise when there is informational entanglement between information about a parent and information about a child. The paper (...) argues for three main conclusions:That it is in most cases acceptable for parents to give proxy consent to entry of material from their children ino biobanks, even though this is not strictly speaking in the best interest of the child;that a right to withdraw from the biobank is more important when material has been entered with proxy consent; andthat disputes about the withdrawal of entangled information, i.e. information that is both about a parent and a child, should be resolved in favour of the child. (shrink)

Many ICT services require that users explicitly consent to conditions of use and policies for the protection of personal information. This consent may become ‘routinised’. We define the concept of routinisation and investigate to what extent routinisation occurs as well as the factors influencing routinisation in a survey study of internet use. We show that routinisation is common and that it is influenced by factors including gender, age, educational level and average daily internet use. We further explore the reasons users (...) provide for not reading conditions and policies and show that they can be grouped in meaningful ways that may delineate different types of routinsation. (shrink)

This article considers the claim that gender diverse minors and their families should not be able to consent to hormonal treatment for gender dysphoria. The claim refers particularly to hormonal treatment with so-called ‘blockers’, analogues that suspend temporarily pubertal development. We discuss particularly four reasons why consent may be deemed invalid in these cases: the decision is too complex; the decision-makers are too emotionally involved; the decision-makers are on a ‘conveyor belt’; the possibility of detransitioning. We examine each of these (...) reasons and we show that none of these stand up to scrutiny, and that some are based on a misunderstanding of the nature and purposes of this stage of treatment and of the circumstances in which it is usually prescribed. Moreover, accepting these claims at face value could have serious negative implications, not just for gender diverse youth, but for many other minors and families and in a much broader range of healthcare settings. (shrink)

In an analysis of recent work on nudging we distinguish three positions on the relationship between nudging founded in libertarian paternalism and the protection of personal autonomy through informed consent. We argue that all three positions fail to provide adequate protection of personal autonomy in the clinical context. Acknowledging that nudging may be beneficial, we suggest a fourth position according to which nudging and informed consent are valuable in different domains of interaction.

This article introduces the notion of ‘routinisation’ into discussions of informed consent. It is argued that the routinisation of informed consent poses a threat to the protection of the personal autonomy of a patient through the negotiation of informed consent. On the basis of a large survey, we provide evidence of the routinisation of informed consent in various types of interaction on the internet; among these, the routinisation of consent to the exchange of health related information. We also provide evidence (...) that the extent of the routinisation of informed consent is dependent on the character of the information exchanged, and we uncover a range of causes of routinisation. Finally, the article discusses possible ways of countering the problem of routinisation of informed consent. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that we need more research into concussions and other injuries with potential long-term effects in sport because such research underpins effective, evidence-based prevention, management, support, and treatment. This paper provides an analysis of the obligations of sports federations to support and facilitate such research, as well as an analysis of the role active participants in the sport should have in the research process. The paper focuses on concussion and concussion research, though very similar arguments apply to (...) other common sports injuries with potential long-term effects. The paper argues that sports federations have a moral obligation and a prudential interest in initiating, facilitating, and funding concussion research. This follows from their duty of care towards active participants and from considerations of reciprocity. The ability to discharge these research obligations depends on the resources available to a particular federation, but those who can discharge them should do so. The paper further argues that athletes and other active participants in sport should be involved in all aspects of the concussion research process from conception to design, i.e. that Active Participant Involvement and Engagement (APIE) should be a non-negotiable element of concussion research projects. This is supported by instrumental reasons, but also by philosophical argument based on standpoint epistemology and on ethical arguments related to the interests of active participants. Standpoint epistemology is the epistemological position that the knowledge a person has and can have depends on that person’s standpoint in the world. Keywords: Concussion, funding, participant involvement, sport, sport association, sport federation. (shrink)

Smajdor argues that “recognition” is the solution to the “reifying attitude” that results from “the urge to protect ‘vulnerable’ people through exclusion from research”. Drawing on theories of reification, we argue that it is the concepts of autonomy and vulnerability themselves that have been reified, resulting in the impoverishment of approaches to autonomy at law and in research ethics. Overcoming such reification demands a deeper consideration of the grounds on which vulnerable individuals are owed recognition and thereby the forms such (...) recognition should take. Smajdor argues for a recognition that appeals to autonomy and that manifests in providing vulnerable individuals with the opportunity to assent. The problem is that this kind of recognition is dependent on a more fundamental kind. It is this second form of recognition that would need to do the heavy lifting for assent-based frameworks to avoid the same problems we find with consent. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a health crisis of a scale unprecedented in post-war Europe. In response, a large amount of healthcare resources have been redirected to Covid-19 preventive measures, for instance population-wide vaccination campaigns, large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the large-scale distribution of protective equipment to high-risk groups and hospitals and nursing homes. Despite the importance of these measures in epidemiological and economic terms, health economists and medical ethicists have been relatively silent about the ethical rationales underlying the large-scale (...) allocation of healthcare resources to these measures. The present paper seeks to encourage this debate by demonstrating how the resource allocation to Covid-19 preventive measures can be understood through the paradigm of the Rule of Rescue, without claiming that the Rule of Rescue is the sole rationale of resource allocation in the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence systems—and in particular various types of machine learning models—have significant potential for improving the performance and effectiveness of diagnostics and treatme...

The relationship between first and second language literacy was examined by identifying the skills and processes developed in the first language that were transferred to the second language. The performance of 40 university students from The People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Australia were compared on a series of tasks that assessed phonological awareness and reading and spelling skills in English. The results indicated that the Hong Kong students (with non-alphabetic first language literacy) had limited phonological awareness compared (...) to those students with alphabetic first language literacy. The reading and spelling tasks showed no differences between the groups on real word processing. However, the students from Hong Kong had difficulty processing nonwords because of their poor phonological awareness. The results supported the hypothesis that people learning English as a second language (ESL) transfer their literacy processing skills from their first language to English. When the phonological awareness required in English had not been developed in the first language, ESL students were limited to a whole-word, visual strategy. The findings indicate that students from non-alphabetic written language backgrounds might have difficulties with new, or unfamiliar words when attending universities where English is the medium of instruction. (shrink)

Bioethics is, as is moral philosophy in general, a field spanning a range of different philosophical approaches, normative standpoints, methods and styles of analysis, metaphysics, and ontologies. In discussing bioethics, it is often seen as useful to introduce some kind of order on the field by categorizing individual philosophers or specific arguments into a relatively small number of categories. Such categorization or classification has several functions. It may help to show the relationship between basic assumptions and specific arguments or it (...) may be used argumentatively by arguing not against a single philosopher or her arguments but against the category to which she or they belong or are claimed to belong. In this way, whole lines of argument can be disposed of in one fell swoop and whole groups of philosophers dismissed by showing that they belong to some category that can, in some way, be discounted because it is fallacious. Or, conversely, lines of arguments and groups of philosophers can be celebrated and appropriated as support for yet new arguments. (shrink)

In a recent article in theJournal of Medical Ethics,Neil Manson sets out to show that the meta-consent model of informed consent is not the solution to perennial debate on the ethics of biobank participation. In this response, we shall argue that (i) Manson’s considerations on the costs of a meta-consent model are incomplete and therefore misleading; (ii) his view that a model of broad consent passes a threshold of moral acceptability rests on an analogy that misconstrues how biobank research is (...) actually conducted and (iii) a model of meta-consent is more in tune with the nature of biobank research and enables autonomous choice. (shrink)

Several studies have documented that when presented with data from social media platforms machine learning (ML) models can make accurate predictions about users, e.g., about whether they are likely to suffer health-related conditions such as depression, mental disorders, and risk of suicide. In a recent article, Ploug (Philos Technol 36:14, 2023) defends a right not to be subjected to AI profiling based on publicly available data. In this comment, I raise some questions in relation to Ploug’s argument that I think (...) deserves further discussion. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the explanatory powers of theories of function in the context of products that may result from synthetic biology. The aim is not to develop a new theory of functions, but to assess existing theories of function in relation to a new kind of biological and artifactual entity that might be produced in the not-too-distant future by means of synthetic biology. The paper thus investigates how to conceive of the functional nature of living systems that are (...) not the result of evolution by natural selection, or instantly generated by cosmic coincidence, but which are products of intelligent design. The paper argues that the aetiological theory of proper functions in organisms and artifacts is inadequate as an account of proper functions in such ‘Paley organisms’ and defends an alternative organisational approach. The paper ends by considering the implications of the discussion of biological function for questions about the interests and moral status of non-sentient organisms. (shrink)

In this response to Neil Manson’s latest intervention in our debate about the best consent model for biobank research we show, contra Manson that the ‘expiry problem’ that affects broad consent models because of changes over time in methods, purposes, types of data used and governance structures is a real and significant problem. We further show that our preferred implementation of meta consent as a national consent platform solves this problem and is not subject to the cost and burden objections (...) that Manson raises. (shrink)

The Precautionary Principle is a highly influential feature of an extensive body of environmental law, and is also highly controversial and continues to generate scholarly debates along several dim...

Increasingly, commissioners and providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities are turning to assistive technology and telecare as a potential solution to the problem of the increased demand for services, brought about by an expanding population of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of relatively static or diminishing resources. While there are numerous potential benefits of assistive technology and telecare, both for service providers and service users, there are also a number of ethical issues. The aim of this (...) paper is to raise these issues and to set them within the ethical framework proposed by Beauchamp and Childress. There is a need for a wider debate as a first step in the development of strategies to address the issues raised in the paper. (shrink)

This paper describes the present resource allocation problems in the Danish tax-based public health care system and presents an analysis of the two policy options put forward as a solution to these problems: (1) explicit rationing of services, and (2) the introduction of two-tiered health care. It is argued that a two-tiered system with a private second tier is unlikely to be acceptable and viable in Denmark, whereas an introduction of a second tier within the public system may be more (...) acceptable. It is further argued that present implicit rationing methods may be unethical and ought to be replaced by explicit rationing. Keywords: justice, resource allocation, two-tiered health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Putting a specific value on human life is important in many contexts and forms part of the basis for many political, administrative, commercial, and personal decisions. Sometimes, the value is set explicitly, sometimes even in monetary terms, but much more often, it is set implicitly through a decision that allows us to calculate the valuation of a life implicit in a certain rule or a certain resource allocation. We also value lives in what looks like a completely different way when (...) we evaluate whether a particular life is being or has been lived well. Both of these ways of valuing are done from an outside or third-person perspective, but there is also a third way of valuing a life which is from the first-person perspective, and which essentially asks how much my life is worth to me. Is there any connection between these different ways of valuing life, and if so what is the connection between them? This paper provides an account of John Harris’ analysis of the value of life and discusses whether it can bridge the gap between first-person and third-person evaluations of the value of life, and whether it can do so in a way that still allows for resource allocation decisions to be made in health care and other sectors. (shrink)

Cardiff Law School, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, UK. Tel: +44(0)2920875447, Fax: +44(0)2920874097; Email: Holms{at}cardiff.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract The paper presents a brief overview of current knowledge about (i) the link between parental behaviour and lifestyle and childhood obesity, (ii) the many other factors influencing overweight and obesity rates in children and (iii) the effectiveness of interventions in children who are already overweight and obese. On the basis of this, it is analysed (...) to what extent it is meaningful to attribute causal and moral responsibility to parents in theory and in practice. It is argued that although there is a sense in which many parents are causally and morally responsible for the obesity of their children, most parents are not blameworthy and the attribution of parental responsibility in most cases does not justify intervention in the family context by society on behalf of the children. In the analysis of the possible justification of more general interventions, parallels are drawn to the distinction between hard and soft forms of paternalism. Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22: 6) For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. 1. (Samuel 3: 13) CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In her highly thought-provoking article, “The End of Personhood,” Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) presents a number of reasons why bioethics should “… end talk about personhood.” Some of these rea...