Susan Dodds

• PhD
• Deputy Vice-Chancellor at La Trobe University

Human brain organoids provide a remarkable opportunity to model prenatal human brain biology in vitro by recapitulating features of in utero molecular, cellular and systems biology. An ethical concern peculiar to human brain organoids is whether they are or could become capable of supporting sentience through the experience of pain or pleasure and/...

The precautionary principle justifies anticipatory action to prevent the occurrence of harm despite incomplete scientific evidence.1 This commentary discusses the application of the precautionary principle in pathogen control using the examples of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as it emerged in the latter part of the twentiet...

Background Contact Precautions (CP) were developed to control multi-resistant organisms (MROs) in hospitals. However, MROs persist and harms are associated with CP. Research objectives were to understand the bioethical impact of CP on patients and health-professionals, and make recommendations for ethically-improved management of MRO-colonised pati...

The increasing dementia prevalence worldwide is driving the testing of novel therapeutic approaches, such as invasive brain technologies, despite limited clinical evidence and the risk of accelerating cognitive decline. Our manuscript (a) reviews the NIH Clinicaltrials.gov database for deep brain stimulation, stem cell implantation, and gene therap...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now recognised as a social, cultural, economic and political phenomenon, positioning the social sciences as central in responding to this global health threat. Yet efforts to address AMR within hospital settings, for example through antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs, continue to focus primarily on the prescr...

Wendy Rogers ist Professorin für klinische Ethik und Catriona Mackenzie ist Professorin für Philosophie. Beide lehren an der Macquarie University in Sydney, Australien. Susan Dodds ist Professorin für Philosophie an der La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australien. Alle drei befassen sich seit Jahren intensiv mit feministischer Theorie, angewandter...

The world’s first clinical trial using advisory brain implant operated by artificial intelligence (AI) has been completed with significant success. The tested devices predict a specific neuronal event (epileptic seizure), allowing people implanted with the device to be forewarned and to take steps to reduce or avoid the impact of the event. In prin...

3D bioprinting involves engineering live cells into a 3D structure, using a 3D printer to print cells, often together with a compatible 3D scaffold. 3D-printed cells and tissues may be used for a range of purposes including medical research, in vitro drug testing, and in vivo transplantation. The inclusion of living cells and biomaterials in the 3D...

Background: Nurses face challenges when providing information about multi-resistant organisms (MROs), and related hospital policies, to patients found to be colonised, and may be concerned for their own safety when caring for MRO-colonised people. Resultant emotional responses may influence behaviours of staff caring for these patients. This study...

Public policy decisions about patients' access to limited healthcare resources must be defensible and responsive to the interests of those affected. Decision‐makers should articulate their reasoning and recommendations so that citizens can judge them. While the context of policy decisions will differ, their legitimacy depends upon the transparency...

Recent developments of three-dimensional printing of biomaterials (3D bioprinting) in medicine have been portrayed as demonstrating the potential to transform some medical treatments, including providing new responses to organ damage or organ failure. However, beyond the hype and before 3D bioprinted organs are ready to be transplanted into humans,...

Hospital infection control practices known as Contact Precautions are recommended for the management of people with pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or vancomycin-resistant Enterococci. Background: The patient is isolated, and staff are required to wear gloves, and a gown or apron when providing care. A notice is displa...

There has been a surge in mass media reports extolling the potential for using three-dimensional printing of biomaterials (3D bioprinting) to treat a wide range of clinical conditions. Given that mass media is recognised as one of the most important sources of health and medical information for the general public, especially prospective patients, w...

This essay articulates the overall approach utilized in this book for examining contentious policy questions associated with controversial and emerging issues in bioethics, which we term ‘Big Picture Bioethics.’ We explore conventional and more novel methodological tools that bioethics can use to evaluate and critique policy processes in these doma...

In Australia, members of a political party are expected to vote as a block on the instructions of their party. Occasionally a ‘conscience vote’ (or ‘free vote’) is allowed, which releases parliamentarians from the obligation to maintain party discipline and permits them to vote according to their ‘conscience.’ In recent years Australia has had a nu...

This chapter identifies and evaluates Australian processes for developing policy with regard to embryo research, including the legislative process, the work of a legislative review committee, parliamentary debates, and the production of the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines for such research. We examine various mechanisms used...

In 2007 the National Medical Health and Research Council (NHMRC) released a revised National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. This was the result of two rounds of public consultation by a working committee of the Australian Health and Ethics Committee (AHEC), a principal committee of the NHMRC. Drawing on the public consultation docu...

Public engagement in policy making is on mechanism used in an effort to improve the legitimacy of policy decisions surrounding ethically contentious health policy or medical technologies. Citizens’ trust in the process and in the medical, science and democratic institutions surrounding the policy is vital to the success of efforts to engage publics...

This book addresses the problem of how to make democratically-legitimate public policy on issues of contentious bioethical debate. It focuses on ethical contests about research and their legitimate resolution, while addressing questions of political legitimacy. How should states make public policy on issues where there is ethical disagreement, not...

doi: 10.1080/21507740.2015.1037469

In their article published in Nanoethics, “Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Brain-Implants Using Nano-Scale Materials and Techniques”, Berger et al. suggest that there may be a prima facie moral obligation to improve neuro implants with nanotechnology given their possible therapeutic advantages for patients [Nanoethics, 2:241–249]. Although we...

Several foundational documents of bioethics mention the special obligation researchers have to vulnerable research participants. However, the treatment of vulnerability offered by these documents often relies on enumeration of vulnerable groups rather than an analysis of the features that make such groups vulnerable. Recent attempts in the scholarl...

Feminist bioethics is an area of applied philosophy that explores ethical issues arising from healthcare, medical technology, or health policy from a feminist perspective. It is a subfield of both bioethics (see Bioethics) and feminist ethics (see Feminist Ethics), and extends into sociology, law and history, and philosophy of science and medicine....

Concern for human vulnerability seems to be at the heart of bioethical inquiry, but the concept of vulnerability is under-theorized in the bioethical literature. The aim of this article is to show why bioethics needs an adequately theorized and nuanced conception of vulnerability. We first review approaches to vulnerability in research ethics and p...

Concern for human vulnerability seems to be at the heart of bioethical inquiry, but the concept of vulnerability is under-theorized in the bioethical literature. The aim of this article is to show why bioethics needs an adequately theorized and nuanced conception of vulnerability. We first review approaches to vulnerability in research ethics and p...

Concern for human vulnerability seems to be at the heart of bioethical inquiry, but the concept of vulnerability is under-theorized in the bioethical literature. The aim of this article is to show why bioethics needs an adequately theorized and nuanced conception of vulnerability. We first review approaches to vulnerability in research ethics and p...

In Australia members of a political party are expected to vote as a block on the instructions of their party. Occasionally a 'conscience vote' (or 'free vote') is allowed, which releases parliamentarians from the obligation to maintain party discipline and permits them to vote according to their 'conscience.' In recent years Australia has had a num...

Despite the amount of public investment in nanotechnology ventures in the developed world, research shows that there is little public awareness about nanotechnology, and public knowledge is very limited. This is concerning given that nanotechnology has been heralded as 'revolutionising' the way we live. In this paper, we articulate why public engag...

Women's access to health and medicine in developed countries has been characterized by a range of inconsistent inclusions and exclusions. Health policy has been asymmetrically interested in women's reproductive capacities and has sought to regulate, control, and manage aspects of women's reproductive decision making in a manner unwitnessed in relat...

This paper investigates the recent public policy processes in Australia with regard to embryo research, including the work of the legislative review committee, parliamentary debates, and the production of the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines for embryo research. We examine various mechanisms used during each of these policyma...

Women’s access to health and medicine in developed countries has been characterized by a range of inconsistent inclusions and exclusions. Health policy has been asymmetrically interested in women’s reproductive capacities and has sought to regulate, control, and manage aspects of women’s reproductive decision making in a manner unwitnessed in relat...

ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy...

People who are paid to provide basic care for others are frequently undervalued, exploited and expected to reach often unrealistic standards of care. I argue that appropriate social recognition, support and fair pay for people who provide care for those who are disabled, frail and aged, or suffering ill health that impedes their capacity to negotia...

In establishing National Bioethics Organisations (NBOs), liberal democracies seek to acknowledge the diversity of strongly held ethical positions and the imperative to engage in public debate about important bioethical decisions. NBOs are typically given a range of responsibilities, including contributing to and stimulating public debate; providing...

This paper considers the legislative debates in Australia that led to the passage of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act (Cth 2002) and the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act (Cth 2002). In the first part of the paper, we discuss the debate surrounding the legislation with particular emphasis on the ways in which demands for public consultation,...

There has been considerable work in bioethics addressing injustice and gender oppression in the provision of healthcare services, in the interaction between client and healthcare professional, and in allocation of healthcare services within a particular hospital or health service. There remain several sites of continued injustice that can only be a...

The case of Dr. Nancy Olivieri, the Hospital for Sick Children, the University of Toronto, and Apotex Inc. vividly illustrates many of the issues central to contemporary health research and the safety of research participants. First, it exemplifies the financial and health stakes in such research. Second, it shows deficits in the ways in which rese...

Many of those who seek the regulation of human embryonic stem cell research express concern that human cells, tissues, embryos, and gametes are becoming commodified. To understand this concern, it is first necessary to consider both the role of market forces in human stem cell research and current regulation and legislation covering that research....

In Australia, Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) have a vital role to play--as the primary institutional mechanism for ethical review of research--in protecting research participants, and promoting ethical research. Their ability to act effectively in this role is currently threatened by the limited support they receive and their burgeoning w...

This paper critically assesses the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans as a piece of public policy concerning the regulation of research ethics. Two of the stated purposes of the National Statement are the provision of a “national reference point for ethical consideration relevant to all research involving humans” and...

This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essay...

Political theorists have begun to re-examine claims by indigenous peoples to lands which were expropriated in the course of sixteenth-eighteenth century European expansionism. In Australia, these issues have captured public attention as they emerged in two central High Court cases: Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996), which recognize pre-existing common law...

Indigenous Australians and those supporting the cause of Aboriginal justice have used the language of citizenship rights to demand redress for indigenous peoples’ relative disadvantage. In doing so they make an appeal to rights of full participatory citizenship which have their roots in T.H. Marshall's writings. Liberal political theory, however, h...

Despite moves to enhance the autonomy of clients of health care services, the use of a variety of physical restraints on the freedom of movement of frail, elderly patients continues in nursing homes. This paper confronts the use of restraints on two grounds. First, it challenges the assumption that use of restraints is necessary to protect the welf...

KIE Surrogacy contracts pose a sufficiently great number of serious risks to personal autonomy to justify their impermissability. These risks, such as the surrogate mother's loss of control over her body and daily activities during the pregnancy, the powerlessness of having to give up a child to whom one may have formed a deep attachment, and the n...

KIE The authors respond to Laura Purdy's article, "Surrogate mothering: exploitation or empowerment?," in the same issue of Bioethics. They contend that focusing on what is necessarily wrong with surrogate motherhood contracts allows Purdy to overlook the contingent features of classist, patriarchal society that make such contracts morally wrong an...

In establishing National Bioethics Organisations (NBOs), liberal democracies seek to acknowledge the diversity of strongly held ethical positions and the imperative to engage in public debate about important bioethical decisions. NBOs are typically given a range of responsibilities, including contributing to and stimulating public debate; providing...