Waving not drowning: virtue ethics in general practice

Waving not drowning: virtue ethics in general practice.

of Monty Python. At a more modest level I remember listening to the Beatles' first hit, Love Me Do, blasting out from my elder brother's bedroom on a Sunday afternoon in 1962. Little did I realise that the brown austerity of the 1950s was passing and that the 60s had arrived! Part of the culture Changes in the medical world don't happen in a vacuum. They happen within specific societies and wit...

Genome Biology: Not Drowning but Waving

One could be forgiven for thinking that biology is in turmoil following recent discoveries that seem to undermine conventional wisdom surrounding the role of genomes in evolution (Ball, 2013). Is the vast excess of genomic DNA—hitherto dismissed as junk—indispensable after all? Are the effects of the environment often transmitted between generations regardless of the information in genes? What ...

Drowning or Waving

Talking Virtue: professionalism and virtue ethics

The twentieth century phenomenon of professionalism had a major impact on the economy of nation states and has been recognised as a key element of post-industrial societies. As an anointed class, professionals reserved the right to prescribe their own roles and responsibilities. Critics of professional interests, however, have described professionals’ own definition of their roles and responsib...

Critical Virtue Ethics

Since the publication of Anscombe’s famous paper “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), virtue ethics has become a matter of discussion among scholars. At least four charges have been raised against virtue ethics, one of which is the charge of promoting undue enthusiasm regarding the moral fitness of human beings. This article explores the limits of virtue ethics with regard to the frailty of human ...