Transplantation of vital organs has been premised ethically and legally on "the dead donor rule" (DDR)—the requirement that donors are determined to be dead before these organs are procured. Nevertheless, scholars have argued cogently that donors of vital organs, including those diagnosed as "brain dead" and those declared dead according to cardiopulmonary criteria, are not in fact dead at the time that vital organs are being procured. In this article, we challenge the normative rationale for the DDR by rejecting the (...) underlying premise that it is necessarily wrong for physicians to cause the death of patients and the claim that abandoning this rule would exploit vulnerable patients. We contend that it is ethical to procure vital organs from living patients sustained on life support prior to treatment withdrawal, provided that there is valid consent for both withdrawing treatment and organ donation. However, the conservatism of medical ethics and practical concerns make it doubtful that the DDR will be abandoned in the near future. This leaves the current practice of organ transplantation based on the "moral fiction" that donors are dead when vital organs are procured. (shrink)

Risk–benefit assessment is a routine requirement for research ethics committees that review and oversee biomedical research with human subjects. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how to weigh and balance risks to research participants against the social benefits that flow from generating biomedical knowledge. In this article, we address the question of whether there are any reasonable criteria for defining the limit of permissible risks to individuals who provide informed consent for research participation. We argue against any a priori limit to permissible (...) research risks. However, attention to the uncertainty of potential social benefit that can be derived from any particular study warrants caution in exposing prospective research participants to a substantial likelihood of serious harm. (shrink)

Although established in the law and current practice, the determination of death according to neurological criteria continues to be controversial. Some scholars have advocated return to the traditional circulatory and respiratory criteria for determining death because individuals diagnosed as ‘brain dead’ display an extensive range of integrated biological functioning with the aid of mechanical ventilation. Others have attempted to refute this stance by appealing to the analogy between decapitation and brain death. Since a decapitated animal is obviously dead, and ‘brain (...) death’ represents physiological decapitation, brain dead individuals must be dead. In this article we refute this ‘decapitation gambit.’ We argue that decapitated animals are not necessarily dead, and that, moreover, the analogy between decapitation and the clinical syndrome of brain death is flawed. (shrink)

The practice of transplantation of vital organs from “brain-dead” donors is in a state of theoretical disarray. Although the law and prevailing medical ethics treat patients diagnosed as having irreversible total brain failure as dead, scholars have increasingly challenged the established rationale for regarding these patients as dead. To understand the ethical situation that we now face, it is helpful to revisit the writings of the philosopher Hans Jonas, who forcefully challenged the emerging effort to redefine death in the late (...) 1960s. (shrink)

Payment for research participation has raised ethical concerns, especially with respect to its potential for coercion. We argue that characterising payment for research participation as coercive is misguided, because offers of benefit cannot constitute coercion. In this article we analyse the concept of coercion, refute mistaken conceptions of coercion and explain why the offer of payment for research participation is never coercive but in some cases may produce undue inducement.

Mechanisms that help people in their lives have existed for centuries, and every year they become not only more and more complex and perfect, but also smarter. It is impossible to imagine modern production without smart machines, but today, with the advent of robotic android robots, their participation in our private lives and, consequently, their influence on us, becomes much more obvious. After all, the robots that are increasingly taking root in our lives today, are no longer perceived by us (...) simply as mechanisms, we endow them with human properties of character and often experience different emotions in relation to them. The appearance of a robot capable of experiencing emotions can be considered a qualitatively new step in the life of a person with robots. With such robots, it will be possible to be friends with them, to look for support from them. It is expected that they will be able to brighten up the loneliness of a variety of people, including disabled people, lonely old people, to help in caring for the sick and at the same time entertain them with communication. Speaking about the relationship with robots, it is difficult not to mention such an important aspect of human communication as sex, which, on the one hand, is not only a need, as in all living beings, but also the highest form of human love and intimacy, and on the other - can exist and be satisfied completely separate from love. It is this duality of human nature that has contributed to the transformation of sex and the human body into a commodity and the development of prostitution, pornography and the use of sexual images in advertising. The emergence of android robots can radically change our lives, including the most intimate areas of life. The development of the artificial intelligence sex industry opens up a whole new era of human-machine interaction. When smart machines become not only comfortable and entertaining, but literally enter our flesh, become our interlocutors, friends and lovers who share our feelings and interests, what will be the consequences of this unprecedented intimacy between man and machine? (shrink)