Behavioral economists increasingly argue that violations of rationality axioms provide a new rationale for paternalism – to “de-bias” individuals who exhibit errors, biases and other allegedly pathological psychological regularities associated with Tversky and Kahneman’s (in Science 185:1124–1131, 1974) heuristics-and-biases program. The argument is flawed, however, in neglecting to distinguish...

Mental health legislation has received enormous attention internationally in the era of deinstitutionalization, particularly as societies become more risk averse. The response has been framed within a libertarian tradition and the language is almost exclusively about autonomy and partnership. Apart from risk, patient autonomy has gone from being one of the principles in the discourse surroundin...

It is well known that when agents are fully rational, compulsory public insurance may make all agents better o¤ in the Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) model of insurance markets. We …nd that when su¢ ciently many agents underestimate their personal risks, compulsory insurance makes low-risk agents worse o¤. Hence, behavioral biases may weaken some of the well-established rationales for governmen...

Alliance among nature and medicine As said by Aristotle (384 BC-322 B.C.), Nature favors utilities and, therefore, when a RHVD occurs, it is the natural heart plasticity, held as Adaptation for Beneficial Cardiac Ontological Remodeling (AB-COR), or simply heart remodeling1, that sustains the preservation of good ejection performance. Medicine validates AB-COR "therapeutic" effect and advises ag...

BACKGROUND Psychiatric staff members have the power to decide the options that frame encounters with patients. Intentional as well as unintentional framing can have a crucial impact on patients' opportunities to be heard and participate in the process. We identified three dominant ethical perspectives in the normative medical ethics literature concerning how doctors and other staff members shou...

Some bioethicists have argued in favor of a sliding scale notion of competence, paternalistically requiring greater competence in relation to more significant risk. I argue against a sliding scale notion, taking issue with the positions of Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Ian Wilkes, and Joel Feinberg. Rejecting arguments that a sliding scale is supported by legal cases, by ordinary usage, a...

There is an apparent contradiction in the economic approach to government policy. On one hand, neoclassical economists are champions of ‘consumer sovereignty’. This is the idea that individuals are the best judges of what is in their interests and should be able to make their own decisions. For example, economists would tend to oppose a regulation that required airbags to be installed in new ca...