Trading participation for access to healthcare: the COMPAS trial

Posted on October 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

This short paper is an open-peer commentary (OPC) to Dave Wendler‘s new justification of paediatric research without therapeutic benefits. Synflorix packshotWendler argues that pediatric clinical research that offers no therapeutic benefits to the participants can be justified on the basis that participating in clinical research qualifies as contributing to a valuable project. Matteo Mameli and I disagree and argue that Wendler’s argument is unsatisfactory in that it fails to consider the context of clinical research, i.e. the conditions in which participants find themselves and, more specifically, the kind of access to health care that they have. In our OPC we provide a concrete example to our arguments, by focusing on the recent COMPAS-Synflorix trial (Argentina, 2008).

Camporesi S, Mameli M. (2012) The context of clinical research and its ethical relevance: The COMPAS trial as a case study. Am Journal Bioethics, 12(1):39-40.

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Posted in Research Ethics

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Hyperandrogenism, unfair advantage and the myth of the level playing field in competition

Posted on July 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

In this paper, published on the American Journal of Bioethics and co-authored with Katrina Karkazis (Department of Biomedical Ethics, Stanford), Rebecca Jordan-Young (Barnard College, NYC), and Georgiann Davis (Southern Illinois University), I analyse and question the 2011 IAAF  policies on the eligibility of female athletes with hyperandrogenism to compete in the female category.

Caster Semenya

Caster Semenya

We argue that the policies are  flawed on at least three grounds: 1) the underlying scientific assumptions; 2) the policy-making process; and 3) the concept of fairness for female athletes, and that they should be withdrawn.

The new IAAF policies aim at  isolating the presumed positive effect of increased androgen levels on athletic performance from a myriad of other factors. However, as we show in the paper, such a move is logically flawed, and consequently, the new regulations themselves are logically flawed—it is impossible to reduce the complexity of athletic excellence to a univocal relationship between androgen levels and performance.

Read more: my post for Somatosphere.

Karkazis K, Jordan-Young R, Davis G, Camporesi S. (2012) Out of bounds? A critique of the new policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes,  Am Journal Bioethics; 12(7):3-16. 

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Posted in Bioethics, Ethics & Sports

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Is fMRI the new ‘pain-ometer’?

Posted on December 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

In “Considering the lobster”, David Foster Wallace wrote: “Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience, we do not have access to pain except our own“. That was the year 2004. What has changed in our access to pain experiences (ours and of others) since then? Is it still true that we cannot have any kind of access to other people’s pain? fmri_scan

This paper is part of a special issue of the journal entirely devoted to ‘pain’ which includes many other contributions spanning from philosophy, biology, psychology, neurology, physiology, ethics, and the law. In this contribution we assess the implications of brain imaging techniques – in particular, functional MRI- to make pain visible, measurable and, to some degree, verifiable, and therefore to serve as a new kind of scientific evidence in the numerous legal claims of chronic pain where the jury has to assess the truthfulness of the claimants.

Read more on this: my post for the Centre for the Humanities & Health blog.

Camporesi S, Bottalico B, Zamboni G. (2011). Can we finally ‘see’ Pain?: Brain imaging techniques and implications for the law. J Consciousness Studies, 18(9-10):257-276.

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Posted in Philosophy of Medicine

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