Fertilisation and moral status: a scientific perspective.

Fertilisation and moral status: a scientific perspective.

The debate about the moral status of the embryo has gained new impetus because of the advances in reproductive technology that have made early human embryo experimentation a possibility, and because of the public concern that this arouses. Several philosophical arguments claiming that fertilisation is the event that accords moral status to the embryo were initially formulated in the context of ...

In vitro fertilisation and moral equivalence.

Moral bioenhancement: a neuroscientific perspective

founded in emotions against demands endorsed by reason. The intuitive judgment that it is morally permissible to place your child’s welfare ahead of the welfare of two strangers is endorsed by the intuitions of people who have a normal pattern of emotional responses to loved ones. The intuitive judgment that it would be wrong to torture 10 strangers to somewhat enhance the welfare of that child...

Moral Distress: A Different Perspective

Over the past three decades, a literature has emerged identifying, defining, and addressing the phenomenon of moral distress in health care professionals. Since the concept was originated in 1984, many writers have discussed moral distress as a nursing ethics issue, or more broadly as a clinical ethics issue, but there has not been literature addressing moral distress in health care professiona...

The Status of Moral Status

This paper investigates whether moral status talk gets us anywhere in our search for answers to questions in the ethics of marginal cases. I consider the usefulness of moral status talk first on the assumption that an individual’s possession of moral status is not a further fact about that individual, and then on the assumption that it is. Finally, I offer an expressivistic interpretation of mo...