I am delighted to announce a special seminar by Dr John Barugahare (Makere, visiting Cambridge) on 11th June at 1pm, in Seminar Room 1 in HPS. More details on the talk and speaker below
Best wishes Stephen Abstract Introduction: 'How rigorous should the consenting process be for the resulting consent to be valid in medical and health research?' This is the precise question informing all current discussions on consent in medical and health research. Discussion: The argument of this paper is that this and related questions cannot be fully answered in abstract by using hypothetical cases to arrive at pre-determined ethical rules for research. Rather, precise answers can be arrived at in specific concrete situations. Hence, the current frustration resulting from the insufficiency of official guidelines for obtaining valid consent is a result of two weaknesses: i) failure to appreciate the unavoidable gap between general rules/guidelines and their application in specific cases; ii) reluctance to identify and emphasize the sort of cognitive skills and attitudes needed to close that gap. To demonstrate this point, this paper proposes conceptual tools to guide the understanding and overcoming stubborn difficulties encountered in answering the question at issue. The conceptual tools being proposed are five: Fact-skepticism, Rule-skepticism, Hypothetical guidelines, Real guidelines and ultimately Bioethical reflexivity. The argument is that whereas pre-determined ethical rules/guidelines are supposed to apply to specific facts of individual studies, we can never be certain about all the facts of all future studies (fact-skepticism) to the extent that we design guidelines to sufficiently address every detail of such studies (rule-skepticism). Further, given that the guidelines we have are based on hypothetical facts, then such guidelines can be understood as hypothetical guidelines. Hence, real guidelines as opposed to hypothetical ones, are the final decisions the ethical design of particular studies, and in this specific case, how the processes of consent ought to proceed. Effectiveness at deriving real guidelines requires a reflexive disposition and related skills, hence bioethical reflexivity. Conclusion: The problem with existing bioethics is not that existing guidelines in many cases fail to provide answers to specific and unique questions in the field. The problem is lack of reflexive mindset and the relevant skills needed to close the natural gap between general rules and their application in specific cases. Bio- Dr. John Barugahare (PhD) is a visiting Scholar at HPS under the Cambridge African Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx). He is a lecturer at Makerere University – Kampala in the Department of Philosophy. He also teaches bioethics in the School of Health Sciences at the same institution. His backgrounds is in Philosophy with special interest in applied moral philosophy in medicine and health generally. His current research is in bioethics, specifically the ethics of International Collaborative Medical and Health Research. He will be presenting one of the manuscripts he has drafted and completed while here at here at HPS. The title of his talk is: 'Bioethical Reflexivity' and requirements of valid consent: Conceptual tools. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
