health ethics
systematic reflection on values and norms guiding decisions that affect health
- what ought to be done
key sub-domains of health ethics
- clinical - patient-provider + intuitional decision making
- research ethics - knowledge production with/for humans
- health policy and public health ethics - pop level actions and policies
similarities and differences between sub-groups
shared tools, different units of analysis and kinds of justification
What is at stake
- high stakes
- scarcity and trade-offs
- uncertainty
- pluralism
- legitimacy and trust
normative claims
what ought
descriptive claims
what is
ethics vs law
ethics - what we ought to do, deliberative, plural, evolving, contested
law - what must or must not be done, codified, precedent based, enforceable, rigid but interpretable
ethics, policy, and law as a triangle
ethics = ceiling, aspirational, flexible, evolving
policy - middle , organizational or gov rules and guidelines, more formal than ethics, less rigid than law
law = floor , rigid, precedent based, minimum standard
argument structure
mix normative and descriptive claims, yield normative conclusion
common mistakes in argument structure
missing premises
irrelevant premises
circular reasoning - using the conclusion as a premise
common reasoning errors
- slippery slope - allow one thing, cascade of worse things
- appeal to authority
- conflating facts with values - misuse descriptive facts to make normative judgements
- Ad hominem - attack person
- false dichotomy - present two options only
- Overgeneralization - drawing sweeping moral conclusions from limited examples
what is an ethical dilemma
challenging situation requiring a choice between two or more options, none of which are entirely right or wrong, but each presents conflicting moral imperatives, values, or obligations
What is reflective equilibrium take into account
relevant theories, mid-level principles, belief about specific cases
