Zahra Ayubi, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College. Her project is “Deciding for Women: Gender and Authority in Islamic Biomedical Ethics.”
Professor Ayubi’s project aims to uncover insights into how Muslim women’s bodies are regulated in male-centered biomedical ethics literature and by male decision makers, in order to develop gender- and religion-sensitive guidelines for clinicians, patients, and their caregivers. In analyzing ontological/philosophical understandings of women’s bodies in difficult biomedical ethics cases, this study will address ethical dilemmas regarding clinical care for Muslim women in the United States.
Holly Fernandez Lynch JD, MBE is the John Russell Dickson, MD Presidential Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her project is “What Makes Health Care Gatekeeping Ethical?”
Patients may exercise their autonomy only to the extent authorized by health care “gatekeepers,” including the government, insurers, clinicians, and industry. Motivated by calls to acknowledge patient expertise, as well as broader attacks on traditional expertise and authority, Professor Lynch’s project aims to generate an ethical framework to interrogate the scope, value, and legitimacy of health care gatekeeping and to develop sound policy approaches, with an emphasis on gatekeeping at the end of life.
Miranda Waggoner, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. Her project is “Tracing the Second Wave of Inclusion: Pregnant Women and Biomedical Research Ethics.”
Professor Waggoner’s project examines recent shifts toward advancing clinical research with pregnant women, specifically new regulations that do not automatically classify pregnant women as vulnerable. It aims to: 1) trace the historical and contemporary trajectory of including pregnant women in clinical research; 2) describe how various actors navigate the risks of clinical research with pregnant women; and, 3) develop a framework for ensuring an adequate knowledge base to inform care of pregnant women. This work will reframe debates about reproductive risk and vulnerability in ethical research.
Danielle Wenner, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her project is ” The Basic Structure Model of Research Stakeholder Obligations.”
Professor Wenner’s project aims to develop a new, justice-based model of research ethics. In particular, she aims to determine what obligations researchers and research sponsors have to promote so-called “social value,” what social value consists in, and how these obligations should inform health research priority-setting, the distribution of health research outputs, and our understanding of intellectual property rights to health interventions.