Bioethics: Exploitation, Suicide, Abortion, Commodification, and Human Rights

Comprehensive practice flashcards reviewing core topics from Bioethics lectures: exploitation in medical research, ethics of suicide and voluntary euthanasia, philosophical debates on abortion, commodification of kidneys, and the foundations of human rights and public health.

According to Alan Wertheimer, how should the fairness of gains in consensual, mutually beneficial transactions be evaluated?

The fairness of gains must be measured against a normative standard of how much the parties ought to gain (what each party is entitled to), rather than how much a party gains relative to their pre-transaction baseline or relative to the other party's gains.

What is Alan Wertheimer's "fair market" view of defining what a party is entitled to?

The terms of a transaction are fair if they are the terms that would be agreed to by rational, informed bargainers in a competitive market environment.

What are the five arguments for prohibiting consensual, mutually beneficial exploitation?

1. Strategic intervention (prohibiting transactions to pressure exploiters to offer better terms)
2. Harm to others (preventing unagreed-to negative externalities)
3. Prophylactic argument ("better safe than sorry" prohibition to prevent harmful or nonconsensual cases)
4. Justice argument (prohibiting transactions simply because they are unfair or unjust)
5. Symbolic argument (expressing the state's moral condemnation of the exploiter's behavior)

What is Alan Wertheimer's "Principle of permissible exploitation" regarding mutually advantageous transactions?

In the absence of good reasons to the contrary, society should generally permit mutually advantageous and consensual exploitation to go forward rather than legally or professionally prohibiting it.

Why does Alan Wertheimer challenge the claim that clinical researchers owe subjects in developing countries the standard of care normal in developed countries?

He argues that this principle requires independent moral justification—especially when insisting on it fails to promote subjects' welfare—and that ethical obligations from doctor-patient relationships do not automatically transfer to medical researchers.

How does Thomas Hill define suicide?

Suicide is defined as "the intentional taking of one's own life."

How do voluntary euthanasia (VE) and physician-assisted dying/suicide (PAD/PAS) differ in definition?

Voluntary euthanasia involves ending a clearly competent person's life upon their voluntary and enduring request, whereas physician-assisted dying/suicide involves assisting a person in ending their own life with means that must be activated by the patient.

What is Stephen Darwall's analysis of "good-for" or what is in a person's interest?

A person's good is what would be rational to want for their sake, or what is rational to want out of concern for that person.

How does J. David Velleman use the "regress argument" to establish Kantian human dignity?

A person is rationally obliged to care about their good only insofar as they care about the person whose good it is (themselves). Because concern for persons cannot depend on personal interests without setting off an infinite regress, persons must possess an intrinsic, interest-independent value: dignity.

Why does J. David Velleman conclude that committing suicide to obtain benefits or escape harms is impermissible?

Because it denigrates a person's dignity by trading the person for interest-relative goods, treating an intrinsically valuable end as if it were a mere interest-relative commodity.

Under what specific circumstance does J. David Velleman consider ending one's life morally acceptable?

When a person can no longer live with dignity, which occurs at least when they have irreversibly lost their capacity for rational agency.

What is Don Marquis's "loss of valuable future" (LOF) account of the wrongness of killing?

Killing someone is primarily wrong because it deprives the victim of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have made up their future, inflicting one of the greatest possible losses on the victim.

How does Don Marquis reply to the "desire account" and the "discontinuation account" of killing's badness?

He argues the desire account fails because killing is still wrong when done to the unconscious or suicidal, and the discontinuation account fails because what matters is whether one's future experiences are valuable, not the existence of ongoing past experiences.

Why does Don Marquis argue that the loss of valuable future account does not imply that contraception is immoral?

Because there is no moral obligation to maximize the number of valuable futures brought into existence, and prior to conception there is no existing individual or victim who is deprived of a future.

What is Judith Jarvis Thomson's central thesis regarding abortion?

Abortion is morally permissible in many cases even if one grants, for the sake of argument, that the fetus is a person with a right to life from conception.

What does Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiment involving the famous unconscious violinist demonstrate?

It shows that having a right to life does not entail having a right to use, or be allowed continued use of, another person's body to sustain that life.

What is the "extreme view" on abortion and how does Judith Jarvis Thomson refute it?

The view that abortion is impermissible even to save the pregnant woman's life; Thomson refutes it by arguing that an innocent person's right to life does not eliminate one's right to defend one's own life against a fatal threat (illustrated by the "tiny house" analogy).

According to Judith Jarvis Thomson, what does the right to life guarantee and what does it exclude?

It guarantees the right not to be killed unjustly; it does not guarantee a right to be given whatever bare minimum is needed for continued life (e.g., the continued use of another's kidneys or the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand).

What two explicit caveats does Judith Jarvis Thomson state regarding the permissibility of abortion?

1. Abortion is not always permissible (e.g., late-stage abortions to avoid minor inconveniences are indecent).
2. The parent does not have the right to secure the death of the fetus if it can survive detached from the woman's body.

Why does Debra Satz argue that organ selling is characterized as a "desperate exchange"?

Because it is an exchange that a person would never make unless they faced no reasonable alternative, making the kidney an "organ of last resort" undertaken under conditions where the person is deprived of basic entitlements.

How can legalizing kidney markets worsen the choice sets of third parties, according to Debra Satz?

If kidney selling becomes widespread, kidneys may be viewed as loan collateral by moneylenders, leading to higher interest rates or credit denials for poor individuals who refuse to sell their kidneys.

What normative entitlement does Debra Satz invoke to object to kidney markets restricting choice sets?

The principle that people should not have to pay a cost or be penalized for their unwillingness to sell their own body parts.

What does Joel Feinberg's "Nowheresville" thought experiment argue about the moral significance of rights?

In a world with duties and benevolence but no rights, people lack claims against one another; having rights allows individuals to make moral claims, which serves as the foundation for self-respect and human dignity.

What are the two foundational pillars of James Griffin's "bottom-up" theory of human rights?

1. "Personhood" (protection of human agency)
2. "Practicalities" (what is psychologically and logistically feasible in human nature and human societies)

What are the three core elements of personhood or agency in James Griffin's framework?

1. Autonomy: choosing one's own path through life rather than being dominated by others
2. Real choice: having the minimal education, information, and material resources needed to pursue choices
3. Liberty: freedom from forcible interference by others when pursuing one's conception of a worthwhile life

How does James Griffin's conception of agency differ from the Kantian view?

The Kantian view holds agency to be of incomparable value that can almost never be overridden, whereas Griffin views agency as one important component of a good life among others, allowing trade-offs with values like accomplishment, understanding, and deep personal relations.

According to Jonathan Mann, how do medicine and public health differ fundamentally?

Public health focuses on populations by identifying collective threats, developing governmental policies, and shaping societal conditions; medicine focuses on individuals through diagnosis, treatment, relief of suffering, and rehabilitation.

What distinction does Jonathan Mann draw between ethics and human rights?

Ethics is primarily a language for guiding individual behavior, whereas human rights is a framework for guiding societal-level analysis and response ($\text{Ethics} : \text{human rights} :: \text{medicine} : \text{health}$).

What are Jonathan Mann's three relationships between health and human rights?

1. Public health policies and practices can burden human rights (e.g., coercive quarantines, discrimination).
2. Violations of human rights produce severe adverse health impacts (e.g., torture, restricting association harming harm-reduction programs).
3. Promoting health and protecting human rights are inextricably linked (e.g., reproductive health, addressing vulnerabilities driving HIV transmission).