Books
Giubilini, A., Savulescu, J., Schuklenk, U. and Minerva, F., (2025), 'Rethinking Conscientious Objection in Health Care', (Oxford University Press)
The book provides an argument against a right to conscientious objection by health care professionals. In increasingly multicultural societies inspired by pluralism, and given the range of controversial medical procedures that are or will be legal in many countries, claims about health care professionals’ right to abide by their own moral or religious views in the exercise of their profession become more frequent. This book explains why arguments for pluralism, tolerance, and diversity that support a right to freedom of conscience in society at large do not support the same right within the health care profession, or indeed any profession governed by internal norms of professionalism that someone freely decides to enter.
This open access book is free to read and download.
Published: 21 March 2025 | Publisher: Oxford University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197786567.001.0001
Online ISBN: 9780197786567 | Print ISBN: 9780197786536
by Professor Michael Otsuka, 2020 Uehiro Lecturer
Oxford University Press
How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. The book opens with an investigation of the longevity and investment risk that even a single individual on a desert island would face in providing for her old age. From this atomistic starting point, it builds up, within and across the chapters, to increasingly collective forms of pension provision. By joining together, it is possible to tame the risks we would face as individuals each with our own private pension pot. A collective pension can be justified as a 'social union of social unions': an enduring corporate body, which is formed by agreements to pool risks, in a manner that involves reciprocity between the various individuals that constitute the collective. Even though all individuals age and die, a collective pension scheme remains evergreen, as the average age of members remains relatively unchanged, through the influx of new members to replace those who retire. It is therefore possible to smooth risks indefinitely across as well as within generations, to the mutual advantage of each.
Published: 27 June 2023, Oxford University Press
