Project MUSE®: Theoretical & Applied Ethics

Project MUSE®: Theoretical & Applied Ethics - Latest Articles https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645 Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Theoretical & Applied Ethics. daily 1 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 text/html en-US Vol. 2 (2013) - Vol. 2, no. 1 (2014) Latest Articles: Theoretical & Applied Ethics TWO Project MUSE® Theoretical & Applied Ethics 2156-7174 Latest articles in Theoretical & Applied Ethics. Feed provided by Project MUSE® From the Editor https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573630 Benjamin Freedman’s 1987 paper on equipoise in clinical trials not only changed the way scholars discuss clinical trials but also led to changes in the regulations that apply to the use of human subjects in research. Other writers (e.g., Henry Beecher) in research ethics have had this kind of influence, but unlike them, Freedman did not make his splash by playing the role of whistle-blower; instead, he proposed a new look at an old problem surrounding informed consent.The fact that it is difficult to state precisely what that problem is helps to explain the controversy ever since. We know this much: the problem concerns the acceptable threshold of risk in the trial (and what is known about the trial), and the ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall From the Editor 2015-02-21 text/html en-US From the Editor 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 9164 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 What Kind of Principle Is Clinical Equipoise? https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573631 Clinical research is fraught with ethical difficulty. On the one hand, it aims to produce reliable and generalizable knowledge. For this reason, clinical experimentation meets first and foremost what could be described as a collective interest in producing medical knowledge to increase and enhance future treatment options. On the other hand, the collective interest for generalizable medical knowledge cannot outweigh the interest of the individual patients involved in research. Collective interests need to be weighed against the rights of participant patients in order for clinical research to be ethical. This line of reasoning is also enshrined by guidelines for ethical research such as the Helsinki Declaration: ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall What Kind of Principle Is Clinical Equipoise? 2015-02-21 text/html en-US What Kind of Principle Is Clinical Equipoise? 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 67098 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 Projectability, Disagreement, and Consensus: A Challenge to Clinical Equipoise https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573632 Medical research in the form of clinical trials cannot be accidental, in the sense that both the outcomes of medical research must be reasonably anticipated and the methods of any new research protocols must be informed by methods that have been used in the past. Specifically, clinical research requires explicit evidence that, prior to running a proposed experiment, the experiment meets various orthodox ethical requirements. Importantly, this ethical evidence is not independent of equally explicit scientific evidence that the research is likely to generate knowledge, and this is not because it is unethical to do pointless or uninformed medical research. Rather, as a general rule, the methodology of medical ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall Projectability, Disagreement, and Consensus: A Challenge to Clinical Equipoise 2015-02-21 text/html en-US Projectability, Disagreement, and Consensus: A Challenge to Clinical Equipoise 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 55290 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 Uncertainty, Bias, and Equipoise: A New (Old) Approach to the Ethics of Clinical Research https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573633 Although there seems to be a broad consensus that some kind of equipoise is necessary for the ethical conduct of biomedical research using human subjects, commentators continue to debate how best to characterize the requisite equipoise. Freedman’s original, groundbreaking publication (1987) attempted to summarize a number of previous conceptions of equipoise before arguing that clinical equipoise, as opposed to theoretical equipoise, could fill the needed role. Since then there have been continuing discussions of how to understand this critical concept. Some (e.g., Miller & Brody, 2003) have attempted to move the debate away from clinical equipoise in favor of other ways of supporting ethical biomedical research. ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall Uncertainty, Bias, and Equipoise: A New (Old) Approach to the Ethics of Clinical Research 2015-02-21 text/html en-US Uncertainty, Bias, and Equipoise: A New (Old) Approach to the Ethics of Clinical Research 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 84016 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles? https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573634 A basis in general ethical principles is not the only model for the biomedical or health-care ethics of the past fifty years, but it has been and is still the dominant model. It is understood as the application of, commonly but not exclusively, four ethical principles: respect for persons (or autonomy), beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The principles are seen as applicable to a variety of practical biomedical or health-care contexts, such as professional-patient relationships, medical research approvals, health-care resource allocation, and genetic manipulation. The dominant principlist text has been Beauchamp and Childress’s classic work Principles of Biomedical Ethics (1979 and subsequent editions). ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles? 2015-02-21 text/html en-US Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles? 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 70503 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 Asymmetrical Applications, General Norms and Specified Duties: A Commentary on Tapper and Millet’s “Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles?” https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573635 In their article, Alan Tapper and Stephan Millett focus on the apparent logical difficulty of applying general principles (especially autonomy and beneficence) to medical contexts, because there are “symmetrical” implications of such principles for both professional and patient that require “missing” premises in order to make sense of the priority of patient autonomy and physician beneficence in the typical clinical encounter. They do not deny these usual normative priorities in medical ethics; instead, in their words, they offer “an argument against an argument for certain conclusions, not an argument against the conclusions themselves.”According to Tapper and Millett, general ethical principles are meant to ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall Asymmetrical Applications, General Norms and Specified Duties: A Commentary on Tapper and Millet’s “Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles?” 2015-02-21 text/html en-US Asymmetrical Applications, General Norms and Specified Duties: A Commentary on Tapper and Millet’s “Is Professional Ethics Grounded in General Ethical Principles?” 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 17299 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21 Quotidian Confabulations: An Ethical Quandary Concerning Flashbulb Memories https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636 With knowledge comes responsibility. This is a very familiar precept in bioethics: dna testing is a paradigmatic example. Being able to predict a person’s susceptibility to a disease generates a responsibility to use that knowledge wisely. Knowing how to transplant organs generates a responsibility to treat the donors fairly and with dignity and to distribute the organs fairly; knowing how to clone an organism generates the responsibility to consider the health and well-being of the clone.The precept that knowledge brings responsibility is also important in the realm of social psychology. For example, Philip Zimbardo feels that responsibility when he realizes that he had lost his objectivity during the Stanford ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/573636">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/645/image/coversmall Quotidian Confabulations: An Ethical Quandary Concerning Flashbulb Memories 2015-02-21 text/html en-US Quotidian Confabulations: An Ethical Quandary Concerning Flashbulb Memories 2015-02-21 2015 TWO Project MUSE® 85547 2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00 2015-02-21