Week 1: Public Health Ethics: Core Questions & Frameworks [Jan 23]

Questions to Guide Reading:

• What role should government play in promoting behaviours that produce good health and discouraging or forbid behaviours that lead to ill health and early death?
• What different kinds of justification are given for government playing these roles?

Readings

• Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2007). Public Health: Ethical Issues. London: The Council. (Chapter 2)
• Coggon, J. (2008) "Harmful rights-doing? The perceived problem of liberal paradigms and public health", J Med Ethics 34:798–801.
• Goodin, R. (1989) "The ethics of smoking," Ethics 99: 574-624.

Week 2: Health Promotion through Libertarian Paternalism (Nudge) [Jan 30]

Questions to guide reading:

• What does the phrase 'libertarian paternalism' mean?
• How is it different from other kinds of paternalism?
• Are 'liberal paternalistic' interventions morally problematic?

Readings:

• Sunstein & Thaler (2008). Nudge excerpts (pp. 1--15; pp. 184--92; 235--252).
• Schmidt & Engelen (2020). "The ethics of nudging: An overview." Philosophy Compass 2020;15:e12658.