Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: ethics
- All Subjects: Genetics
- Creators: Robert, Jason
Description
At present, the ideological bias in the human enhancement debate holds that opponents to human enhancement are primarily techno-conservatives who, lacking any reasonable, systematic account of why we ought to be so opposed, simply resort to a sort of fear-mongering and anti-meliorism. This dissertation means to counteract said bias by offering just such an account. Offered herein is a heuristic explanation of how, given a thorough understanding of enhancement both as a technology and as an attitude, we can predict a likely future of rampant commodification and dehumanization of man, and a veritable assault on human flourishing.
ContributorsMilleson, Valerye Michelle (Author) / McGregor, Joan (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / French, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Noninvasive prenatal testing using cell-free fetal DNA (CffDNA) testing is a rapidly developing area in prenatal diagnosis. Fetal genetic testing can occur with a simple maternal blood sample, since CffDNA can be found in maternal plasma. Thus, no harm is caused to mother or fetus to obtain this genetic information, providing significant benefits for those users. How the test should be integrated in existing prenatal programs has yet to be seen. CffDNA testing is an exciting technology and has attracted attention from many stakeholders, yet the lack of regulation and guidance has left legal, ethical, and social questions unanswered. This paper outlines a number of those issues expressed in the present literature on the matter.
ContributorsVeeder, Shaylynn Lee (Author) / Marchant, Gary (Thesis director) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Milleson, Valerye (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The knowledge of medical genetics is currently used with prenatal testing, and the advancements in the field of behavioral genetics may someday allow for its use with prenatal testing as well. The use of prenatal procedures for medical phenotypes has its own implications and should these techniques be used for behavioral phenotypes, such implications can also apply. The complexity of behavior in terms of the factors that may affect it, along with the way it is conceptualized and perceived, adds further implications for prenatal testing of it. In this thesis, I discuss the qualitative, quantitative, and historical facets of prenatal testing for medical and behavioral phenotypes and the undercurrent of eugenics. I do so by presenting an example of the medical phenotype (cystic fibrosis) as a case for envisioning the implications of medical phenotypes before delving into examples of behavioral phenotypes (aggression, impulsivity, extraversion, and neuroticism) in order to explore the implications shared with those for medical phenotypes as well as those unique to it. These implications then set the foundation for a discussion of eugenics, and the considerations for how behavioral genetics with prenatal testing may give way to a modern form of it.
ContributorsMinai, Mandana (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Magnus, David (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
American Indian literature is replete with language that refers to broken or hollow promises the US government has made to American Indians, one of the most prominent being that the US government has not kept its promises regarding health services for American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/AN). Some commenters refer to treaties between tribes and the US government as the origin of the promise for health services to AI/AN. Others point to the trust relationship between the sovereign nations of American Indian tribes and the US government, while still others assert that the Snyder Act of 1921 or the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (IHCIA) contained the promise for health care. While the US has provided some form of health care for AI/AN since the country was in its infancy, and continues to do so through the Indian Health Service, the promise of health services for AI/AN is not explicit.
Philosophers have articulated that a promise contains a moral obligation to fulfill it because of others’ expectations created by that promise. As the US government made its first promises in early treaties with AI/AN tribes and subsequently made promises in the years since, it is morally obligated to fulfill those promises, be they lying promises or not, because of resulting expectations. Yet, the US government has historically acted to restrict the rights of AI/AN—rights that include access to health services—through assimilation, separation, or termination policies. Further, the policies of the US government have kept the AI/AN populations socioeconomically impoverished, dependent on the US government for basic needs, and susceptible to health-compromising conditions.
Using case studies, this dissertation looks not only at the policies and events that directly affected health services and health status, but also at how those policies and events contributed to health outcomes and the expectations of AI/AN. Given the history of the US government in fulfilling (or not fulfilling) its promises, this dissertation examines the expectations of AI/AN for their own future health outcomes under the policy of self-governance.
Philosophers have articulated that a promise contains a moral obligation to fulfill it because of others’ expectations created by that promise. As the US government made its first promises in early treaties with AI/AN tribes and subsequently made promises in the years since, it is morally obligated to fulfill those promises, be they lying promises or not, because of resulting expectations. Yet, the US government has historically acted to restrict the rights of AI/AN—rights that include access to health services—through assimilation, separation, or termination policies. Further, the policies of the US government have kept the AI/AN populations socioeconomically impoverished, dependent on the US government for basic needs, and susceptible to health-compromising conditions.
Using case studies, this dissertation looks not only at the policies and events that directly affected health services and health status, but also at how those policies and events contributed to health outcomes and the expectations of AI/AN. Given the history of the US government in fulfilling (or not fulfilling) its promises, this dissertation examines the expectations of AI/AN for their own future health outcomes under the policy of self-governance.
ContributorsDrago, Mary (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Herkert, Joseph (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Trujillo, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
ContributorsSavarese, Erica (Author) / Robert, Jason (Thesis director) / Hurlbut, Ben (Committee member) / Verrelli, Brian (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Memory augmentation will play a vital role in the development of our future. The predicted introduction of downloadable brains will be the first of many neurocognitive technologies that will alter our lives at both the societal and individual levels. These technologies can affect everything from educational institutions to the judicial system, meanwhile raising issues such as autonomy, human psychology, and selfhood. Because of its tremendous potential, memory augmentation and its implications should thoroughly be examined.
ContributorsKim, Jinkyu (Author) / McGregor, Joan (Thesis director) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Helms Tillery, Stephen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The development of computational systems known as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) offers the possibility of allowing individuals disabled by neurological disorders such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and ischemic stroke the ability to perform relatively complex tasks such as communicating with others and walking. BCIs are closed-loop systems that record physiological signals from the brain and translate those signals into commands that control an external device such as a wheelchair or a robotic exoskeleton. Despite the potential for BCIs to vastly improve the lives of almost one billion people, one question arises: Just because we can use brain-computer interfaces, should we? The human brain is an embodiment of the mind, which is largely seen to determine a person's identity, so a number of ethical and philosophical concerns emerge over current and future uses of BCIs. These concerns include privacy, informed consent, autonomy, identity, enhancement, and justice. In this thesis, I focus on three of these issues: privacy, informed consent, and autonomy. The ultimate purpose of brain-computer interfaces is to provide patients with a greater degree of autonomy; thus, many of the ethical issues associated with BCIs are intertwined with autonomy. Currently, brain-computer interfaces exist mainly in the domain of medicine and medical research, but recently companies have started commercializing BCIs and providing them at affordable prices. These consumer-grade BCIs are primarily for non-medical purposes, and so they are beyond the scope of medicine. As BCIs become more widespread in the near future, it is crucial for interdisciplinary teams of ethicists, philosophers, engineers, and physicians to collaborate to address these ethical concerns now before BCIs become more commonplace.
ContributorsChu, Kevin Michael (Author) / Ankeny, Casey (Thesis director) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Frow, Emma (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School for the Future of Innovation in Society (Contributor) / Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Moral status questions, (who and what counts morally) are of central concern to moral philosophers. There is also a rich history of psychological work exploring the topic. The received view in psychology of moral status accounts for it as a function of other mind perception. On this view, entities are morally considerable because they are perceived to have the right sort of minds. This dissertation analyzes and tests this theory, pointing out both empirical and conceptual issues with the received view. The results presented show that important moral intuitions (for example about unjustifiable interpersonal killing) cannot be explained by appealing to other mind perception. Some alternative views of the psychology of moral status are presented, as well as avenues for further research.
ContributorsLaTourelle, Jonathan Jacob (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Becker, D. Vaughn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation investigates the convergence of the nation-state, biomedicine and (bio)capital around the construction of sickle cell disease as a subaltern disorder in the caste-based society of India. It inquires how sickle cell disease that developed evolutionarily due to environmental factors—and that is also globally racialized as a “Black disease”—has come to be associated with subaltern communities, particularly the indigenous, traditionally non-Hindu Adivasi communities of India. Such a subaltern association characterizes Adivasi biologies as inherently genetically “risky” thereby providing a biopolitical mandate to the Hindu-majoritarian Indian State to carry out biomedical interventions through promissory biocapital in the name of democratic inclusion. I center on the illness narratives of subaltern sickle cell sufferers to highlight how the caste-ization of sickle cell bodies in biomedical and policy discourses, and the attendant biocapital prospecting of subaltern biologies, are nonetheless challenged by communities through their lived experiences. Viewing this association from the Adivasi standpoint—marked by continuous dispossession and displacement—illuminates not only the biopolitical governance of subaltern reproduction by the Indian State. A primary objective of my dissertation project is also to use precarity as an epistemic site for interrogating the scopes and limits of a novel biopower formed by the nexus between the State, national biomedicine and transnational biocapital. This dissertation is therefore an attempt at unearthing the subjugated knowledges of Adivasi communities regarding alternative modes of existing in the world that continuously resist the assimilatory power of race, caste and capital. In ethnographically centering narratives of suffering among doubly (socially/economically) marginalized communities, the project illuminates the contradictions between public health measures that emphasize on sickle cell management through biomedical technologies of reproductive screening and the material conditions of sickle cell sufferers struggling to access basic medical care. This dissertation therefore juxtaposes policy interventions against community articulations of reproductive freedom that posits community health work as the fulcrum for developing reproductively just ecologies. At the same time, in utilizing multi-modal and multi-sited ethnographic methods, the project also contributes towards developing decolonial and digital ethnographic methods that are attentive to the aggravated precarity of marginalized communities in a pandemic prone world.
ContributorsDas, Sanghamitra (Author) / Smith, Lindsay A. (Thesis advisor) / Quan, H.L.T. (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Prasad, Indulata (Committee member) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Whistleblowing in Biomedical Research and Medicine: An Analysis of Ethical Expectations and Dilemmas
Description
In biomedical research institutions and medical institutions alike, whistleblowing, or the reporting of misconduct, has been severely retaliated against. Whistleblowers report misconduct by adhering to institutional whistleblowing policies, and do so in order to maintain ethical practice within their institution; it is important to note that by taking this ethical action, whistleblowers are aiming to protect the future of biomedical research and medicine. Despite these intentions, whistleblowing has developed a negative stigma due to the misconception that whistleblowers have self-proclaimed authority and are unable to function as part of a team. The retaliation against whistleblowers has been connected to psychological and professional fallout for the whistleblower, and it has been found that many whistleblowers suffer as a direct result of a lack of institutional support. The problems with whistleblowing culture demonstrate issues surrounding how ethics are maintained in institutions, who ethics policies apply to, and who has authority. The retaliation seen against whistleblowers outlines inherent institutional failures, and highlights the need for institutional change in order to both promote ethical practice and protect the whistleblowers who adhere to ethics policies. This thesis discusses such failures in detail, and outlines several broad solutions in order to combat this issue.
ContributorsTaylor, Kylee Anne (Author) / Robert, Jason (Thesis director) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Johnson, Nate (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05