Books and Book Chapters

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  We are the Ethics Police

  Abram L. Brummett

  Publication Date: 7-2025

  When speaking colloquially about the role of the clinical ethicist, many ethicists declare, “We are not the ethics police.” However, I argue that if not being the “ethics police” means the ethicist should not give moral recommendations when consulted, then the phrase should be retired because it reflects a confused sense of professional identity. If the ethical watchdogs of the hospital are muzzled in the name of a misguided respect for value pluralism, good medical care will be hindered, and egregiously unethical consequences will result. In this chapter, I argue against this confused colloquialism and instead assert, with important qualifications, that we are the ethics police.

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  Reflexive Modernity and the Sociology of Health

  Jason Adam Wasserman and Brian P. Hinote

  Publication Date: 6-2025

  The analysis and explanation of increasingly complex social phenomena represents one of the foremost challenges of sociological theory. This is particularly important in the sociology of health because definitions of health, mechanisms of disease, the nature of clinical medicine, and the structure of health care delivery are all undergoing fundamental transformations in late modernity. In this chapter, we draw upon the insights of Ulrich Beck (1992, 1994, 1999) to demonstrate the requisite elements of a health sociology “on the move” that can engage the multidimensional and dynamic health-related phenomena of late modernity. We employ Beck’s conceptualization of reflexive modernization to analyze critical developments in the relationship between sociological theory, medicine, and the contemporary landscape of health and illness. Connecting these various developments helps us make sense of a contemporary health landscape that can often feel fractured and chaotic, but which is systematically curated by fundamental social forces

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  Should We Change? The Ethics of Human Enhancement

  Jason Adam Wasserman, Parker Crutchfield, and Abram Brummett

  Publication Date: 6-28-2024

  This book is the first edited volume to present multidisciplinary perspectives on various aspects of changes that humans experience. Relevant for empirical and theoretical work, the handbook will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students across psychology, behavioral sciences and social sciences.

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  America's New Vaccine Wars: California and the Politics of Mandates

  Mark C. Navin and Katie Atwell

  Publication Date: 7-2023

  Bioethicist Mark Navin and policy scholar Katie Attwell explore the evolution of American childhood vaccination policy through the prism of political history, contemporary parenthood, and diverse governance strategies.

  America's New Vaccine Wars focuses on the origins and the outcomes of America's recent efforts to eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school and daycare vaccine mandates. These policy developments have increased immunization rates, but they have also ignited polarizing, nationwide debates about parents' rights, democracy, and the authority of the government to use coercion to promote health. This book explores the meaning of these battles for parents, doctors, the politics of public health, and the future of bioethics.

  Navin and Attwell ground the book with a case study of California's efforts to exclude unvaccinated children from school and daycare following the Disneyland Measles Outbreak of 2014. The authors use original interviews with key policymakers and activists to explain the development and execution of California's new vaccination policies, and they connect California's immunization policy developments to similar efforts across America and in other countries.

  America's New Vaccine Wars is a story about how political and community actors fought to exclude unvaccinated children from school in the face of significant opposition and failing public health institutions. The book unpacks the meaning and impact of these efforts for broader debates about America's immunization governance, including conflicts about coercive public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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  Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and bioethics in clinical medicine

  Jason Adam Wasserman and Hedy S. Wald

  Publication Date: 12-2023

  Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), as outlined in this book, promise to assist with certain empirical uncertainties, but may also produce new and vexing ethical questions in the context of clinical care. Similarly, in the context of research, ethical challenges of informed consent, transparency, and equity abound. In this chapter, we present several important concepts to help frame the ethical challenges of AI/ML in medicine and elaborate several key ethical questions that the field will face in the coming decades. We then offer a set of recommendations for radiation oncologists, and clinicians more broadly, to begin to address complexities inherent in existing and emerging AI/ML technologies.

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  Medicine, the Holocaust, and Human Dignity: Lessons from Human Rights

  Jason A. Wasserman and Mark Christopher Navin

  Publication Date: 7-2022

  -Provides a interdisciplinary exploration of the relevance of medicine, ethics, and the Holocaust for modern society

  -Brings together the past, present, and future of Holocaust education

  -Presents a group of top scholars who transcend traditional educational boundaries in Holocaust education