An influential argument in bioethics involves appeal to disgust, calling on us to take it seriously as a moral guide (e.g. Kass, Miller, Kahan). Some argue, for example, that genetic enhancement, especially via human reproductive cloning, is repellant or grotesque. While objectors have argued that repugnance is morally irrelevant (e.g. Nussbaum, Kelly), I argue that the problem is more fundamen...

At the age of thirty-nine, Flannery O'Connor succumbed to her body's battle with itself. Stricken when she was twenty-five with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, the autoimmune disorder that eventually took her life and that killed her father before her, O'Connor spent the last fourteen years of her life a dependent invalid in her mother's home. In this essay I will argue that O'Connor's struggle w...

Is there any more grotesque example of an imbalance between the cost and benefit of an immune response than anaphylaxis? On exposure to even minute amounts of material containing the offending allergen (such as peanuts), the unfortunate subject experiences within minutes a reaction that can include nausea and vomiting, hives, difficulty breathing and rapid circulatory collapse. Although anaphyl...