Sean Valles’ Philosophy of Population Health marks an important contribution to the analysis of philosophical issues relevant to a broad range of issues at the interface of population and public health. The book exemplifies the constructive contributions scholars from philosophy of science and ethics can make to advance our understanding core issues in this area, […]
An interdisciplinary quarterly journal dedicated to philosophical bioethics.
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Editor's Pick, Uncategorized
Editor’s Pick, December 2018: Alison Reiheld
Our Editor’s Pick for our December 2018 issue is Alison Reiheld’s paper, “Rightly or for Ill: The Ethics of Individual Memory.” This paper takes up a rich issue that has yet to receive significant philosophical attention: the ethics of memory. The paper asks questions such as: when are we morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for remembering, […]
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Book Reviews
Carl Cranor, Tragic Failures: How and Why We are Harmed by Toxic Chemicals, Oxford University Press, 2017
Long before there were any professional philosophers who identified as doing socially engaged or socially relevant philosophy of science, Carl Cranor was demonstrating exactly how philosophical reflections on science can and should inform law and policy. Cranor is a philosopher who also is a professor of law. He is thus in a unique position to […]
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Book Reviews
Cathy Gere, Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: from the Panopticon to the Skinner box and beyond, University of Chicago Press, 2017
The opening pages to Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good read almost like an historical mystery or an ethical “whodunit,” (hint: it was the Utilitarians), capturing the reader’s attention immediately. It is certainly pleasing to encounter a work on utilitarianism that is not another dry philosophical text. Yet, ultimately, do the author’s philosophical points get […]
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Book Reviews
Katie Watson, Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, Oxford University Press, 2018
“This book isn’t a blueprint for a new conversation. It’s an explanation of why we need one, and an invitation to participate in moving that forward,” (12) says Katie Watson in the introduction to her book Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion. She does herself a disservice with this; in many […]
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Book Reviews
Sergio Sismondo, Ghost-Managed Medicine: Big Pharma’s Invisible Hands, Mattering Press, 2018
Sergio Sismondo coined the term “ghost-management” to characterize the broad behind-the-scenes activities of the pharmaceutical industry after he successfully infiltrated publication planning conferences and seminars from 2007 to 2017 as sort of academic spy. His academic espionage mission provided valuable intelligence. In addition to revelations from lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry and accounts from former […]
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Book Reviews
Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, Oxford University Press, 2016
Some books can be said to represent ‘new beginnings’, opening up new spaces for academic discourse and new methods and perspectives. Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues can rightfully be claimed to be one of those books. There is much about this book that is not only laudable but also urgent. First, it has managed […]
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Book Reviews
John S. Haller Jr., Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative Therapies, Columbia University Press, 2014
Placebos are much discussed in both the medical and philosophy of medicine literatures. Once narrowly defined as inert “sugar pills,” (Holman 2015), they now are now most often taken to be “treatments that appear similar to experimental treatments, but that lack their characteristic components” (Howick et. al. 2013). In addition to their use in the control […]
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Book Reviews
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics, Duke University Press, 2016
The brain matters. Says the opening line from Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics. On the face of it, the human brain matters inasmuch as it is the body’s central information processing organ; the CEO that presides over many of our executive bodily functions. But the brain matters beyond the ways in […]
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Editor's Pick
Editor’s Pick, September 2018: Lauren Freeman and Saray Ayala López
Our Editor’s Pick for our September 2018 issue is Lauren Freeman and Saray Ayala López’s paper, “Sex Categorization in Medical Contexts: A Cautionary Tale.” In this paper, Freeman and Ayala López question the completely standard practice of sorting patients into male and female (and in unusual, ‘abnormal’ cases, ‘other’) as a first step in providing […]