Research

Current

Current research focuses on global bioethics

  • Research in this area has resulted in two recent publications: the Dictionary of Global Bioethics (in cooperation with Maria do Céu Patrão Neves, University of the Azores, Portugal), and The Covid-19 pandemic and global bioethics, an analysis of the ethical challenges of the pandemic. Both books have been published by Springer/Nature.
  • Work has been completed on the book Bioethics and women’s rights in Islamic contexts in the era of reproductive technologies. This book is a collection of 20 chapters, edited by Nouzha Guessous (Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco) and Henk ten Have, and is an outcome of a conference at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Research in Marseille, France.
  • Research and writing has started to explore and analyze the main challenges for global bioethics. Potter’s priority problems (the 6 Ps) identified in the 1970s are still the major challenges of today: poverty, war, environmental degradation, hunger and malnutrition, corruption, and the myth of growth. How will global bioethics be able to deal with them?

New

New research projects have focused on critical examination of the philosophical and ethical presuppositions of contemporary bioethical debate.

  • Two projects are finished, and the results published in books. First, Bizarre Bioethics – Ghosts, monsters, and pilgrims focuses on significant metaphors and narratives such as ghosts, monsters, pilgrims, prophets that guide the relevancy of bioethical debates. The second book is Bioethics, healthcare and the soul, written in cooperation with Renzo Pegoraro (Pontifical Academy for Life), and exploring the complaint that the soul has been lost in healthcare as well as in bioethics. The book examines how and why the soul has been lost from scientific discourses, healthcare practices, and ethical discussions. It also provides proposals for different approaches, emphasizing the need for different images and metaphors, so that new approaches can emerge.
  • A new project has started to explore the associations between color, bioethics, and healthcare. The impact of color on well-being and health is extensively documented; diseases are often identified with a specific color. The question is whether ethical approaches have colors, particularly in global discourses associated with racism, discrimination, migration, environmentalism, and theories of white supremacy. How can moral associations be projected beyond black and white?

International cooperation:

  • VAD project: A new direction in end of life care? Assessing the impact and outcomes of the Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Act, 2019 -2023. Coordinated by Paul Komesaroff, Monash University, Australia.