Righting Health Policy: Bioethics, Political Philosophy, and the Normative Justification of Health Law and Policy (Revolutionary Bioethics)

In Righting Health Policy, D. Robert MacDougall argues that bioethics needs but does not have adequate tools for justifying law and policy. Bioethics' tools are mostly theories about what we owe each other. But justifying laws and policies requires more; at a minimum, it requires tools for explaining the legitimacy of actions intended to control or influence others. It consequently requires political, rather than moral, philosophy. After showing how bioethicists have consistently failed to use tools suitable for achieving their political aims, MacDougall develops an interpretation of Kant's political philosophy. On this account, the legitimacy of health laws does not derive from the morality of the behaviors they require but derives instead from their role in securing our equal freedom from each other. MacDougall uses this Kantian account to show the importance of political philosophy for bioethics. First, he shows how evaluating kidney markets in terms of the legitimacy of prohibiting sales rather than the morality of selling kidneys reverses the widely accepted view that Kantian philosophy supports legally prohibiting markets. Second, MacDougall argues that an account of political authority is necessary for settling longstanding bioethics debates about the legal and even moral standards that should govern informed consent. [Editeur] Cover 1 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 The Political Tasks of Bioethics 22 Bioethics and Its Political Philosophy Problem 44 Bioethicists on Kant and the Legalization of Organ Markets 72 Kantian Moral Theory and the Problem of Political Legitimacy 96 Rights as the Basis for Political Legitimacy 114 State Authority and Morally Justifiable Coercion 138 Kidney Markets and the Limits of Legitimacy 170 Legal Standards of Informed Consent and the Authority of the State 194 Conclusion 218 Bibliography 226 Index 236 About the Author 244 "In Righting Health Policy, MacDougall argues that bioethics has not developed the tools best suited for justifying health law and policy. Using Kant's practical philosophy as an example, he explores the promise of political philosophy for making normatively justified recommendations about health law and policy"-- Provided by publisher