bioethics

_Jurisprudence_. forthcomingA normative power is the authority to effect a normative change through a declaration of will. This paper uncovers a fundamental asymmetry between potestative concepts (related to normative powers) and deontic concepts (related to duties). The deontic conceptual network consists of three mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive positions: obligatory, forbidden, and op…

This individual may have regularly sucked on betel nuts, known for their mind-altering properties, leading to worsening dental disease. Researchers say the discovery sheds light on addiction in prehistoric environments

Recently, two very different but equally thought-provoking articles were published within a day of each other on the Bioethics Today blog. After reading both, I found they were like two sides of the same coin when thinking about disability ethics. Wolfe and Escandon wrote about a difficult surrogacy story involving hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, and […] The post When Bioethical Neutral…

BackgroundFertility preservation is the process of saving or protecting a person's reproductive substance of human origin intended to be used later in that person's life. Fertility preservation technologies have benefits and risks. Among the most discussed issues is the access to these technologies and their funding. Our study aims at the identification and analysis of specific ethical challenges…

Sajal Veer, BA LLB (Hons.), Chanakya National Law University ABSTRACT Every individual in India has the right to life and personal liberty, and their life cannot be taken away except in accordance with the prescribed legal procedure. As one of the fundamental rights, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the protection of life and personal liberty of the individual and ensures certain …

_Law and Philosophy_. forthcomingWe hope that criminal punishment will persuade offenders to morally reform themselves. For instance, the experience of imprisonment ought to guide offenders to reflect on their wrongdoing and recognise the need for change. This ideal of moral persuasion is frequently invoked by philosophers of punishment, but it remains unclear how punishment might communicate thi…

Artificial womb technology is approaching over the scientific horizon. Recent proof-of-principle experiments using foetal animals have prompted a new surge of bioethical interest in the topic: scholars have asked what ectogenesis would mean for individuals, family, oppressed groups, and society at large; how we can or should regulate the technology; and whose interests motivate ectogenic research…

The ethical terrain of lab animals has long been framed as a technical question of biomedical necessity.

Screening Bioethics is a webinar series exploring bioethics topics in popular media with hosts Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD, and Nanette Elster, JD, MPH. In the third episode they will examine and discuss relevant ethical issues about breast cancer and breast cancer risk as depicted in both fictional and documentary film and television. This 45-minute exploration will be followed by a 15-minute Q & A. T…

Our property tradition has exactly two ways of aiming value at anything that is not a person: it can insert persons — guardians, trustees, the purpose trust's appointed enforcer — or it can confer personhood, as it did for the corporation, the idol, the river. For artificial minds the law has lately said no, loudly and repeatedly, and every enacted refusal on the record refuses the second move. N…

_Oxford Studies in Legal Philosophy_. forthcomingCoercion wrongs its victim, invalidates their exercises of normative power and transfers responsibility for their compliance to the coercer. The paper considers two theories of the normative significance of coercion. On a familiar account, one defended by writers such as Hart and Scanlon, coercion wrongs the coerced by depriving them of an option t…

The recording of the VolRethics Meet the Authors webinar with Dr. Jill A. Fisher, Women in Phase I Trials, is now available. If you missed the live event or would like to revisit the discussion, you can watch it here: https://bioethics.unc.edu/talk/volrethics-meet-the-authors-webinar-with-jill-a-fisher-women-in-phase-i-trials/

_Zenodo_. 2026For most of recorded history, one fact needed no defense: whoever sat in judgment of a claim to personhood was, without exception, a product of the same biological process as the claimant being judged. No political theory, no legal system, and no religious tradition has ever had occasion to argue for this premise, because it was never false. Artificial intelligence capable of direct…

_International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC)_. forthcomingCopyright law's treatment of artificial intelligence is usually read as a narrow technical puzzle: may a machine-generated work be registered, and if so, in whose name? This article argues that the puzzle is more consequential than that framing suggests. Across the Berne Convention, United States, European Union…

What do we know about Lindsay Clancy's state of mind when she killed her children, and how may that be legally interpreted in Massachusetts?