@article {4254561, title = {Health, food, and science: an ethical assessment of research agendas}, journal = {Logique \& Analyse}, volume = {228}, year = {2014}, pages = {701-726}, abstract = {

We offer several new arguments for the view that existing research agendas in the health sciences and the agricultural sciences are morally deficient. More specifically, the following kinds of distortion of the agenda are discussed: in the health sciences, the health problems of the poor are more or less neglected, as well as non-medicinal solutions to health problems, and in the agricultural sciences, insufficient attention is paid to agroecology. We justify the claim that these three kinds of distortion are problematic on ethical grounds, showing that they are moral failures. Instead of starting from one ethical theory to show this, we present different ethical justifications, based on different ethical theories (Bentham’s utilitarianism, Rawls’s theory of justice, Pogge’s rights-based account of minimal justice, Kitcher’s ethical theory, and classical liberalism). This should make our conclusion (i.e. that the distorted research agendas in the health sciences and the agricultural sciences pose a moral problem) at least initially convincing to adherents of different ethical theories.

}, author = {De Winter, Jan and Kosolosky, Laszlo} } @incollection {de_winter_how_2014, title = {How (Not) to Reform Biomedical Research: A Review of Some Policy Proposals}, booktitle = {Responsible Innovation 1}, volume = {1}, year = {2014}, pages = {97{\textendash}110}, publisher = {Springer}, abstract = {

Abstract In a recent article, Julian Reiss has identified some very important epistemic, moral and socio-economic failures in current biomedical research, and he argues that philosophers of science should reflect on how to (re)organize biomedical research in order to remedy these failures. In this chapter, several possible reforms of biomedical research are evaluated. I will reflect on how to tackle the epistemic failures by comparing the solution suggested by Julian Reiss to an alternative policy option. Most attention will, however, be paid to one of the moral failures: the fact that a disproportionately small part of the money devoted to health research goes to research into diseases that mainly affect third-world countries (the problem of neglected diseases). The most important advantages and disadvantages of some prominent proposals for a solution are disclosed – I will consider the proposals of Thomas Pogge, Joseph Stiglitz, Julian Reiss, and James Robert Brown – and I will also draw attention to an alternative policy proposal.

}, doi = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8956-1_7}, author = {De Winter, Jan} } @article {2119436, title = {How to make the research agenda in the health sciences less distorted}, journal = {THEORIA - REVISTA DE TEORIA HISTORIA Y FUNDAMENTOS DE LA CIENCIA}, volume = {27}, number = {1}, year = {2012}, pages = {75{\textendash}93}, abstract = {

A well-known problem in the health sciences is the distorted research agenda: the agenda features too little research that is tailored to the health problems of the poor, and it features too little research that supports the development of other solutions to health problems than medicines (e.g., change of lifestyle). This article analyzes these two sub-problems in more detail, and assesses several strategies to deal with them, resulting in some specific recommendations that indicate what governments should do to make the research agenda in the health sciences less distorted.

}, issn = {0495-4548}, author = {De Winter, Jan} }