(a six-post series) Privacy & Disclosure of Personal Data As people spend more time online and using apps that collect massive amounts of information, government entities grapple with how to define and protect privacy through regulation. To deem privacy waived by a click that allows access, e.g., by acknowledging cookies, seems unprincipled. But there is…
Virtue signaling is disingenuous behavior; sometimes it is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Virtue signaling’s chilling and polarizing effects are far broader than a few politically correct topics demonstrate. When people take a position vocally in public for the purpose of expressing their moral rightness, moral superiority, or virtue, they close the…
The current estimated life expectancy of a Black man in the US is now 68 years. That is seven years less than White and Hispanic male life expectancy. It is a gap that cannot be explained entirely by the medical causes of death in the CDC report. To solve the disparity, people must look to…
Antitrust is one of the biggest current issues in bioethics. Yet, beyond hospital and pharmaceutical industry mergers, it is overlooked by the field. Healthy competition in the corporate or business landscape would impact health. A lack of antitrust enforcement negatively affects health, access to healthcare goods and services, and access to those other goods and…
Through a feminist lens, the self-help industry is sometimes ethically problematic, as noted by various scholars. In particular, the personal growth self-help industry presents a bioethics issue surrounding mental and physical health, equality, justice, employment discrimination, and child care. It challenges the balance between pursuing more and being content with what one has. Some self-help…
My effort to add critical thinking to bioethics, a choppy path at best, sparked me to question some fundamentals about academic publishing. From long ago on the Urban Law Journal at Fordham Law School to my current position at Voices in Bioethics, Columbia University’s journal, I have encountered and managed viewpoint discrimination. In training peer…
Bioethics must recognize a syndemics approach to ethical solutions to the obesity epidemic in the US. The line between public health and personal health is artificial. Economic, political, and social structures influence the body in the doctor’s office. Public health approaches obesity various ways—usually by recommendations of exercise and lifestyles that are unattainable. Public programs…
Self-driving cars, warehouse robots, EZ-pass, do-it-yourself check-outs, and ATMs threaten the future of work. Work and its many components including pay, atmosphere, feeling of inclusion, and empowerment are social determinants of health. Potential job loss is a valid consideration in ethical arguments to restrict the development or uses of new technologies, yet there is not…
Data-Generating Patents require a broad ethical approach that incorporates business ethics. Ethics should that adhere to the spirit behind antitrust law and competition to protect consumers. Intellectual property rights are expanding. Data-generating patents can preclude competitors from obtaining, collecting, or generating the same type of data. It also deprives people of control over their data…