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 of science who also is a professor of law. He is thus in a unique […]
An interdisciplinary quarterly journal dedicated to philosophical bioethics.
Recent Posts
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 […]
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Book Reviews
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, Rethinking Reprogenetics, Oxford University Press, 2016
Rethinking Reprogenetics: Enhancing Ethical Analyses of Reprogenetic Technologies is a compact, rigorously argued volume that packs quite a punch. Inmaculada de Melo-Martin aims to provide a crucial corrective to the analyses of bioethicists who have taken to cheerleading the development and use of reprogenetic technologies1 (p.7). She argues that they should instead carefully evaluate the […]
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Book Reviews
Kevin C. Elliott, Daniel Steel, eds. Current Controversies in Values and Science, Routledge, 2017
As a general claim, most philosophers of science accept that science is not value-free. The disagreements lie in the proverbial details. The essays in Current Controversies in Values and Science, edited by Kevin Elliott and Daniel Steel focus on such details. Like other volumes in the Routledge Current Controversies in Philosophy’s series, this one asks […]