BioethicsPub Date : 2025-03-20DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13409
Jason Adam Wasserman
{"title":"Slow codes as ethical disobedience","authors":"Jason Adam Wasserman","doi":"10.1111/bioe.13409","DOIUrl":"10.1111/bioe.13409","url":null,"abstract":"<p>KEY: Patients or families sometimes demand interventions that are of no benefit or are even harmful. Even in cases where cardiopulmonary resuscitation is futile or medically inappropriate, instituting a do not attempt resuscitation order requires either consent of the patient or family, or working through a cumbersome and conflictual institutional process to change code status over their objection. Sometimes they contest these decisions in court and sometimes they win. Avoiding such conflicts gave rise to the practice of “slow codes,” a situation in which the healthcare team responds to cardiac arrest in a patient in a deliberately slow or perfunctory manner, with the intention of not resuscitating the patient at all. Slow codes have been nearly universally decried as unethical in the literature, at least over the last three decades. After all, a slow code is fundamentally dishonest. But critics tend to avoid the socio-political and clinical realities that motivate the use of slow codes in the first place. In this article, I argue that in the context of judicial and legislative overreach into medical decision-making, the slow code serves a distinctly moral purpose beyond promoting the welfare of the patient: It is an act of disobedience against an unethical system.</p>","PeriodicalId":55379,"journal":{"name":"Bioethics","volume":"39 4","pages":"368-374"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143671893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioethicsPub Date : 2025-03-18DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13412
Brandon Long
{"title":"Moral enhancement and behavioral trait variance","authors":"Brandon Long","doi":"10.1111/bioe.13412","DOIUrl":"10.1111/bioe.13412","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Proponents of moral enhancement often link certain traits to virtuous behavior but typically focus on average trait scores, neglecting individual behavioral trait variance. Behavioral trait variance refers to the range of behaviors a person exhibits within a trait, which may partly arise from genetic factors independent of mean scores. Using Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach and virtue ethics, I argue that increasing behavioral trait variance could promote moral flourishing. For example, a consistently disagreeable teacher might excel in specific contexts, like a philosophy seminar. However, such a teacher will struggle to find Aristotle's moral meaning of friendliness, limiting their virtue across diverse contexts. Since social virtues are context-dependent, reducing behavioral trait variance through personality enhancement could also hinder an individual's ability to achieve virtues or capabilities. This article investigates behavioral trait variance's moral role within virtue ethics and calls for other moral enhancement theories to address the ethical significance of behavioral trait variance and its potential impact on moral flourishing.</p>","PeriodicalId":55379,"journal":{"name":"Bioethics","volume":"39 6","pages":"602-611"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143651932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioethicsPub Date : 2025-03-17DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13411
Dorian Accoe, Clemence Van Ginneken, Michiel De Proost, Seppe Segers
{"title":"Definitions as boundaries: Bioethics, Palestine and climate catastrophes","authors":"Dorian Accoe, Clemence Van Ginneken, Michiel De Proost, Seppe Segers","doi":"10.1111/bioe.13411","DOIUrl":"10.1111/bioe.13411","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55379,"journal":{"name":"Bioethics","volume":"39 5","pages":"523-524"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143651899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioethicsPub Date : 2025-03-17DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13408
Patricia A. Mayer
{"title":"Slow codes without regret","authors":"Patricia A. Mayer","doi":"10.1111/bioe.13408","DOIUrl":"10.1111/bioe.13408","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55379,"journal":{"name":"Bioethics","volume":"39 4","pages":"378-380"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143652009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioethicsPub Date : 2025-03-13DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13405
Dorcas Gadri, Rachel Gur-Arie, Karen M. Meagher
{"title":"Inducing immunity? Justifying immunization policies in times of vaccine hesitancy By \u0000 Roland Pierik and \u0000 Marcel Verweij, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2024. pp. 248. US $45.00. (Paperback). ISBN: 9780262547796","authors":"Dorcas Gadri, Rachel Gur-Arie, Karen M. Meagher","doi":"10.1111/bioe.13405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13405","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55379,"journal":{"name":"Bioethics","volume":"39 5","pages":"519-522"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143908922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}