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Biomedical subjects

Grant Gillett

Publications and source records attributed to Grant Gillett.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

Clinical medicine and the quest for certainty.

Orthodox medicine works in a scientific framework which often discounts knowledge arising outside biomedical models and the statistical means by which these are tested. Alternative medicine cannot meet these standards because it is holistic and individual in its orientations toward the understanding and treatment of human illness. But in fact the dominant model also has problems with surgery and other areas such as family practice as sub-disciplines where individualised caring solutions are important. These prominently include areas in which wider social and economic concerns directly impinge on health care so that we need a more liberal attitude to medical knowledge and discovery. I suggest that this wider conception is more in keeping with the Hippocratic ethos as a whole and with the idea of a healing praxis. Because our aim as doctors and health care professionals is to help people, and our knowledge is directed towards furthering this end, medicine is a practical science not able to stand apart and build theories in detached contemplation from within the ivory tower of the academy. However the practicality of medicine and the assurance needed to poison people or inflict grievous bodily harm in an effort to help them often puts a premium on certainties in our thinking about clinical medicine before the scientific basis for such certainty has been established. Therefore, hand in hand with the professional calling that is health care, goes the need for a certain style of belief in what one is doing and its ultimate rightness. This leads to an almost unique profile for medicine among the sciences.

Beneficence↗
PubMed2003

Reasoning in bioethics.

It is striking that some arguments in the bioethical literature seem implausible, counterintuitive, and even ridiculous when reported to competent moral agents. When examined, these arguments bear uncanny resemblances to the discourse of patients with debilitating mental disorders. I examine the kinds of irrationality involved, and discuss the fact that such irrationality is worrying in a discipline that purports to serve as a guide for real-life practical reasoning. I offer some thoughts about correctives that we might use to temper some of the odd opinions that bedevil our subject in the name of ethical analysis. It seems that one ought to be suspicious of neatly rational arguments that produce counterintuitive conclusions, but the alternative seems to be that we explore new constructions of old problems in Bioethics such that our discussion of them does justice to what we regard as of fundamental significance to our lives together as human beings.

Bioethics↗
PubMed2003

The bioethical structure of a human being.

Bioethical debates such as those surrounding the manipulation of human embryos are often based on metaphysical assumptions that lack a foundation in the natural sciences. In this paper we support a gradualist position whereby the embryo progressively takes on the form and associated ethical significance of a human being. We support this position by introducing a concept of biological structure or form to show how the gradualist position has its metaphysical foundations in modern biology. The conceptual basis for form and structure are outlined and their compatibility with and basis in current empirical biology is demonstrated by some recent advances in our understanding of the processes of development from single cell to organism. We then briefly explore the ethical significance of accepting a form or structure based conception of biology for the status of the early embryo.

Beginning of Human Life↗
PubMed1994

Killing, letting die and moral perception.

There are a number of arguments that purport to show, in general terms, that there is no difference between killing and letting die. These are used to justify active euthanasia on the basis of the reasons given for allowing patients to die. I argue that the general and abstract arguments fail to take account of the complex and particular situations which are found in the care of those with terminal illness. When in such situations, there are perceptions and intuitions available that do not easily find propositional form but lead most of those whose practice is in the care of the dying to resist active euthanasia. I make a plea for their intuitions to be heeded above the sterile voice of abstract premises and arguments by examining the completeness of the outline form of the pro-euthanasia argument. In doing so, I make use of Nussbaum's discussion of moral perception and general claims to be found in the literature of moral particularism.

Altruism↗
PubMed1990

Consciousness, the brain and what matters.

Grant Gillett argues that it is consciousness which makes a human or other being the 'locus of ethical value'. Since cortical functioning is, in Gillett's view, necessary for conscious activity, an individual whose neocortex is permanently non-functional is no longer a locus of ethical value and cannot be benefited or harmed in a morally relevant sense. This means that there is no obligation to continue treating those who have suffered neocortical death.

Brain↗