Selective Appropriation, Medical Ethics, and Health Politics: The Complementarity of Baker, McCullough, and Me

Baker and McCullough (2007) criticize a 1979 article by this author for insufficiently appreciating how physicians have appropriated ideas from moral philosophy. This rejoinder argues that the two articles are complementary. The 1979 article summarized evidence that leading physicians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appropriated ideas from moral philosophy and related disciplines that reinforced their political goals of self-regulation and dominance of the allocation of resources for health. In retrospect the 1979 article also urged bioethicists to appropriate ideas from other disciplines, including moral philosophy, which would contribute to improving the health of populations.