What Justice Demands

Dyck, Arthur J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21707-5_1

Arthur J. Dyck⁹

Part of the book series: Library of Public Policy and Public Administration ((LPPP,volume 13))

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Abstract

Drawing upon the neurosciences and other empirical observations, I argue that the moral demands of justice are expressed in our natural inhibitions and proclivities, namely inhibitions of avoiding harming one another and in our proclivities to spawn offspring, nurturing and sustaining them, and protecting and rescuing their lives. These key moral demands undergird the two main conclusions of chapter one: healthcare ought to be universal; and that this goal is possible if the money to provide it comes from the profits generated by all individuals and entities that provide healthcare, and by avoiding unethically generated harmful medical practices.

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Notes

1.
Oswei Temkin, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 30.
2.
Ibid., 219.
3.
Ibid., 223.
4.
Stanley J. Reiser , William J. Curran, and Arthur J. Dyck., eds., Ethics in Medicine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 39.
5.
Chapter 2 will present, analyze, and critique the works of three very influential scholars who advocate a universally accessible decent minimum of medical care. They are: Norman Daniels , Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Martha C. Nussbaum , Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Amartya Sen , The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
6.
Daniels, Just Health, I and II refers to justice as what we owe one another but as the discussion of this work in Chap. 2 will document, he applies a much narrower version of justice in his assessment of health policy .
7.
John Stuart Mill , “Utilitarianism,” in The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Marshall Cohen, ed. (New York: Random House, 1961), 380.
8.
Ibid, 384.
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid., 391.
11.
Ibid., 392. Note that Mill includes good for good as one of the dictates of justice and argues that it is a grievous harm when good is denied. This he does on pages 392 and 293.
12.
Ibid., 385.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Mill distinguishes justice and beneficence. We have no right to beneficence in his view (Ibid., 380–381). This distinction persists. See, for example, the widely used introduction to ethics by William K. Frankean, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1963).
16.
Mill, “Utilitarianism,” 385.
17.
Mary Ann Glendon , Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 84–85.
18.
Ibid, 88. Glendon is taking issue with the impression to the contrary created by certain court decisions and legal textbooks.
19.
See, for example, Allan N. Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), 348–354.
20.
See, for example, Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Note that Hoffman distinguishes caring and justice but does portray empathy as the source of our knowledge of both and of our motivation to care and to behave justly.
21.
Atonio Damasio, Decartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 379. See also, Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, 351–354.
22.
Robert W. Levinson and Ann M. Ruef, “Empathy: A Physiological Substrate,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 6:2 (1992), 234.
23.
Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, 348–354.
24.
Ibid., 350–351.
25.
Ibid., 351.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid., 352–353.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Ibid., 354.
30.
For a detailed analysis of relativism, see Arthur J. Dyck, On Human Care: An Introduction to Ethics (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1977), 114–134.
31.
Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development, 273–283.
32.
Ibid., 274. See also Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006).
33.
These observations were inspired by the distinction between prima facie duties and duty proper found in W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), 16–47.
34.
Oswei Tempkins , Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians, 29.
35.
Ibid., 30.
36.
Ibid., 20.
37.
Ibid., 31.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Ibid., 28.
40.
Jones, W. H. S ., Hippocrates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923), Vol. I, xxi.
41.
Daniel Callahan, “Curbing Medical Costs,” America 198:8 (March 10, 2008), 9–12. On page 9, he notes that, “health care economists estimate that 40 percent to 50 percent of annual cost increases can be traced to new technologies or the intensified use of old ones.”
42.
Stanley Joel Reiser , Technological Medicine: The Changing World of Doctors and Patients (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
43.
Ibid., 31.
44.
Ibid., 42.
45.
Ibid.
46.
Ibid.
47.
Ibid., 42–44. A complete list of the Medical Advisory Committee’s criteria is on page 44.
48.
Ibid., 44–46.
49.
Ibid., 46.
50.
Ibid., 46–47.
51.
Ibid., 47.
52.
Ibid.
53.
Ibid., 48.
54.
Ibid., 48–50.
55.
Ibid., 50.
56.
Ibid., 50–51.
57.
Ludwig Edelstein, “The Professional Ethics of the Greek Physician,” in Ethics in Medicine, Stanley Joel Reiser, Williams J. Curran, and Arthur J. Dyck, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 40–51.
58.
Ibid., 41. See also Tempkin, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians, 13, 24–25, and 225.
59.
Robert M. Veatch . Hippocratic , Religious and Secular Medical Ethics: The Points of Conflict (Georgetown University Press, 2012), 27–29.
60.
Ibid., 29 and 68–72.
61.
Allen Frances , Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2013), 241–242.
62.
Ibid., 43.
63.
Ibid.
64.
Veatch , Hippocratic , Religious and Secular Medical Ethics, 159.
65.
Ibid., 73.
66.
Tempkin , Hippocrates in the World of Pagans and Christians, 220.
67.
Ibid., 220–221.
68.
Ibid. 221.
69.
Ibid.
70.
Ibid., 223–225.
71.
Ibid. 26.
72.
Ibid., 27.
73.
Veatch , Hippocratic , Religious and Secular Medical Ethics, 14.

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The Divinity School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Arthur J. Dyck

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Dyck, A.J. (2019). What Justice Demands. In: Achieving Justice in the U.S. Healthcare System. Library of Public Policy and Public Administration, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21707-5_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21707-5_1
Published: 06 July 2019
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21706-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21707-5
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