Anthropology,human rights and justice

Anthropologists have a special obligation to promote the human rights of the peoples they study. This paper discusses various ways anthropologists can meet that obligation by working with various United Nations and regional intergovernmental human rights convention committees, their own state government's human rights and humanitarian affairs commissions, and human rights non-governmental organizations.     

Synthetic biology, patenting, health and global justice

The legal and moral issues that synthetic biology (SB) and its medical applications are likely to raise with regard to intellectual property (IP) and patenting are best approached through the lens of a theoretical framework highlighting the “co-construction” or “co-evolution” of patent law and technology. The current situation is characterized by a major contest between the so-called IP frame and the access-to-knowledge frame. In SB this contest is found in the contrasting approaches of Craig Venter’s chassis school and the BioBricks school. The stakes in this contest are high as issues of global health and global justice are implied. Patents are not simply to be seen as neutral incentives, but must also be judged on their effects for access to essential medicines, a more balanced pattern of innovation and the widest possible social participation in innovative activity. We need moral imagination to design new institutional systems and new ways of practising SB that meet the new demands of global justice.     

Suffering, justice, and the politics of becoming

To suffer is to undergo, to bear, to endure. Suffering exists on the underside of agency; it is as important to ethics as agency. The experience of suffering is never entirely captured by the ethical, political, medical and spiritual categories in which it is represented. Perhaps an engagement with suffering can open up hidden connections between these domains. After examining John Caputo and Friedrich Nietzsche comparatively on the relation between suffering and ethics, this essay explores the relation of the politics of becoming to suffering. The politics of becoming is a paradoxical process by which a new cultural identity is drawn into being and yet is irreducible to the energies and motives that spurred its initiators to action. To exemplify and think the politics of becoming is to call into question the sufficiency of existing paradigms of morality. A critical examination of the Rawlsian model of justice brings out, for example, the insufficiency of justice to the politics of becoming. It suggests the need, first, to pursue an ethics of engagement between several parties drawing upon a variety of sources of ethical inspiration and, second, to cultivate ldcritical responsiveness to new social movements that struggle to place new identities onto the cultural register. If the latter movements sometimes modify general understandings of suffering, identity, justice and medical practice they also indicate the role cultural thinkers can play in re-examining periodically established codes of interaction between these domains.A paper presented, with commentaries, as the 1995 Roger Allan Moore Lecture at Harvard Medical School, Center for the Study of Culture and Medicine, May 11, 1995.     

Genetic therapy, identity and the person-regarding reasons

It has been argued that there can be no person-regarding reasons for practising genetic therapy, since it affects identity and causes to exist an individual who would not otherwise have existed. And there can be no such reasons for causing somebody to exist because existing cannot be better for an individual than never existing. In the present paper, both of these claims are denied. It is contended, first, that in practically all significant cases genetic therapy will not affect the identity of beings of our kind. This is so irrespective of whether, essentially, we are beings with minds or beings of a certain biological species, the human one. Second, it is contended that, even if genetic therapy were to affect our identity, there could be person-regarding reasons for conducting it, for existence can be better than non-existence for the individual.     

Physical anthropology,peace and justice: Some observations

Human biological well being is a concern of physical anthropology. Genetic determinants and also sociocultural factors, which operate through biological bases, affect human biological quality. Several populations from different parts of the globe have been identified where varieties of detrimental genes occur in considerable numbers influencing health and some other related biological aspects of human life. Injustice will be done to those populations if necessary measures are not undertaken to improve their biological qualities. Peace cannot prevail in an atmosphere where people are deprived of the basic amenities for survival and maintenance of good health.     

Rationing mental health care: parity,disparity, and justice

Recent policy debates in the US over access to mental health care have raised several philosophically complex ethical and conceptual issues. The defeat of mental health parity legislation in the US Congress has brought new urgency and relevance to theoretical and empirical investigations into the nature of mental illness and its relation to other forms of sickness and disability. Manifold, nebulous, and often competing conceptions of mental illness make the creation of coherent public policy exceedingly difficult. Referencing a variety of approaches to ethical reflection on health care, and drawing from the empirical literature on therapeutic efficacy and economic efficiency, we argue that differential rationing, 'disparity,' is unjustifiable.     

Global health and justice

In Australia, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, the average life expectancy is now greater than 80 years. But in Angola, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy is less than 40 years. The situation is even worse than these statistics suggest because average figures tend to mask inequalities within countries. What are we to make of a world with such inequal health prospects? What does justice demand in terms of global health? To address these problems, I characterize justice at the local level, at the domestic or social level, and at the international or global level. Because social conditions, structures, and institutions have such a profound influence on the health of populations, I begin by focusing attention on the relationship between social justice and health prospects. Then I go on to discuss health prospects and the problem of global justice. Here I distinguish two views: a cosmopolitan view and a political view of global justice. In my account of global justice, I modify and use the political view that John Rawls developed in The Law of Peoples. I try to show why an adequate political account must include three duties: a duty not to harm, a duty to reconstruct international arrangements, and a duty to assist.     

The roles, reasons and restrictions of science blogs

Over the past few years, blogging ('web logging') has become a major social movement, and as such includes blogs by scientists about science. Blogs are highly idiosyncratic, personal and ephemeral means of public expression, and yet they contribute to the current practice and reputation of science as much as, if not more than, any popular scientific work or visual presentation. It is important, therefore, to understand this phenomenon.     

Beyond justice

Bioethicists have generally looked after the contractual and fiduciary obligations of health care professionals to patients by their adherence to and insistence on the principles of ethical action--autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. But these principles, while necessary, only serve the best interests of people already recognized as patients. If we truly want to help vulnerable populations--those who fall outside the margin--then we need to go beyond justice to embrace the theological principles of mercy and grace; that is, we need to rely more completely on the way medicine was before secularization and commercialism. Competency and compassion intertwine in western medicine.     

Ectogenesis, justice and utility: a reply to James

In one chapter of their 1984 book The Reproductive Revolution (published in North America as Making Babies), Wells and Peter Singer make a case for the development of ectogenesis, the complete gestation of a human fetus outside the womb. David N. James responded with "Ectogenesis: a reply to Singer and Wells" (Bioethics, 1987 Jan; 1(1): 80-99), in which he refuted one of their arguments at length, opposed two briefly, and set two aside. Here Wells answers James, devoting most of his essay to reiterating an argument for ectogenesis based on the justice of remedying a correctable disability (infertility) by allocating resources to develop a biotechnology (ectogenesis). Wells then touches upon James's response to the Wells/Singer argument for ectogenesis as a possible solution to the abortion dilemma. He concludes by commenting briefly on the arguments about ectogenesis and parenting, and on ectogenesis as a source of transplantable tissue and organs.     

Environmental needs and social justice

Despite the growth in awareness and practical action to maintain biodiversity, environmental degradation and ecosystem destruction has continued at a high rate over the last 20 years. The roots of this lie in the predominant international economic order, underpinned by lifestyle demands for increased material consumption. Net flow of wealth from South (less developed) to North (more developed) nations has exacerbated a spiral of increased poverty and environmental degradation in the former. Global environmental conservation depends upon a radical change of direction with the principle of equity as the starting point. Notwithstanding the importance of continuing to add to local and small-scale conservation achievements, the prospect of radical change happening seems small, despite it being in the long-term self-interest of the North. The concept of equity is, apparently, unacceptable to Northern electorates.     

Wild justice and fair play: cooperation,forgiveness, and morality in animals

In this paper I argue that we can learn much about ‘wild justice’ and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be empathic and moral beings. By asking the question ‘What is it like to be another animal?’ we can discover rules of engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. When I study dogs, for example, I try to be a ‘dogocentrist’ and practice ‘dogomorphism.’ My major arguments center on the following ‘big’ questions: Can animals be moral beings or do they merely act as if they are? What are the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality? What do animals do when they engage in social play? How do animals negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, to develop trust? Can animals forgive? Why cooperate and play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does ‘being fair’ mean being more fit – do individual variations in play influence an individual's reproductive fitness, are more virtuous individuals more fit than less virtuous individuals? What is the taxonomic distribution of cognitive skills and emotional capacities necessary for individuals to be able to behave fairly, to empathize, to behave morally? Can we use information about moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? I conclude that there is strong selection for cooperative fair play in which individuals establish and maintain a social contract to play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may be also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. I also claim that the ability to make accurate predictions about what an individual is likely to do in a given social situation is a useful litmus test for explaining what might be happening in an individual's brain during social encounters, and that intentional or representational explanations are often important for making these predictions.     

Genetic therapy, person-regarding reasons and the determination of identity

It has been argued for example by Ingmar Persson, that genetic therapy performed on a conceptus does not alter the identity of the person that develops from it, even if we are essentially persons. If this claim is true then there can be person-regarding reasons for performing genetic therapy on a conceptus. Here it is argued that such person-regarding reasons obtain only if we are not essentially persons but essentially animals. This conclusion requires the defeat of the origination theory, which says that personal identity is determined by the identity of the foetus from which one originates. It is argued that the origination theory is false in the special case relevant to performing genetic therapy on a conceptus for person-regarding reasons.