Sunday 22 July 2007

Political Philosophy


I am broadly interested in issues in political philosophy, particularly where these intersect with issues in medical ethics. My thesis concentrates on one of these areas, distributive justice in health care.

PHD: A Luck Egalitarian Account of Distributive Justice in Health Care:
In this thesis I develop a Luck Egalitarian account of distributive justice in health care, broadly based on Ronald Dworkin’s broader theory of distributive justice. I contrast this account with other theories of distributive justice in health care. I argue that the alternative theories do not fare well in part because they cannot balance the intuition that we ought to spare no expense to aid someone if they need it with the contrasting intuition that people do not have to sacrifice all that they value to aid others. This leads these theories implausibly to either argue we should commit all our resources to the provision of health care (the bottomless pit objection) or to argue that health care should not be publicly provided. In the process of developing this account I engage with several major criticisms of luck egalitarianism more generally and show how these criticisms can be over come.

Another area of interest is public health ethics, this interest grew out of my thesis, but also because it is a place where medical ethics and political philosophy meet. I've given several presentations in this area:

Departmental Seminar: 'Health Promotion, Autonomy & Domination' Auckland University of Technology, National Centre for Health and Social Ethics, Auckland, New Zealand, 28th March, 2008.

Departmental Seminar: 'Ensuring access to essential medicines: me-too drugs, incentives & innovation'
University of Waikato, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Hamilton, New Zealand, 27th March, 2008.
Massey University, School of History, Philosophy and Classics, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 20th March, 2008.

'Health Promotion, Autonomy & Domination'
Setting an Ethical Agenda for Health Promotion 18-20 September 2007, Ghent, Belgium.

'Global Justice, Luck Egalitarianism & Global Health'
Global Health, Justice and the ‘Brain Drain' 17th September 2007, Keele University, United Kingdom.

‘Luck Egalitarianism & Public Health’
Public Health Ethics Conference, Birmingham University, UK. 16th-18th May, 2007
21st European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care. 15 – 18 August, 2007 Cardiff, United Kingdom.

'The Challenge of Sperm Ships: The need for global regulation of medical technology' Association of Social and Legal Philosophy Conference: "Aliens and Nations: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Global Politics in the 21st Century”, Keele University UK. 19th-21st April 2007. Co-presented with Stuart Oultram, Keele University.

‘The Stranger at our doorstep: Social Change, Suicide and Political Theory’
Ethics at the margins of life, National University of Ireland, Galway, March, 29th-31st, 2007.


Papers in this area:
Apart from my thesis I have also written several papers in the area of political philosophy:
1. Hunter, D. 'Am I my Brother's Gatekeeper? Professional Ethics & the Prioritisation of Health Care' Journal of Medical Ethics. (2007);33:522-526.
2. Hunter, D. 'Proportional Ethical Review and the Identification of Ethical Issues' Journal of Medical Ethics. (2007);33:241-245. While this a paper about the process of research ethics review it relies heavily on arguments from political philosophy.
3. Hunter, D. Oultram, S. 'The Challenge of Sperm Ships: The need for global regulation of medical technology' Journal of Medical Ethics. In press.
4. Hunter, D. 'Republicanism, Domination and Animals: A question of Scope'
has received a revise and resubmit (which I am in the process of doing) from the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

 
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