CV
If you would like to see my full CV it’s available here.
Articles
Marketing Cancer Care: A Content Analysis of Ethical Compliance in Television Advertising by Top-Ranked U.S. Cancer Centers
with: A. Palmer
Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) in cancer care targets vulnerable patient populations and can significantly influence treatment decisions. Despite established ethical guidelines for healthcare advertising, concerns persist about marketing practices in oncology. We reviewed television advertisements broadcast between 2019-2024 from the top 20 U.S. cancer centers as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. We evaluated these advertisements against ethical guidelines from major medical bodies. All of these ethical guidelines had been published before the advertisements were released. Both authors independently classified advertisements as compliant, borderline, or transgressive based on adherence to established ethical standards. Advertisements were considered transgressive if they explicitly violated guidelines, while borderline cases contained claims subject to multiple interpretations, at least one of which would violate guidelines. Despite widespread agreement on ethical guidelines for cancer care advertising, many leading institutions continue to produce advertisements that may mislead vulnerable patients. Our findings suggest the need for better promulgation and enforcement of ethical standards in cancer care marketing. Future research should investigate mechanisms for improving compliance with ethical guidelines and ensuring that cancer care advertising serves its proper role of informing rather than potentially misleading patient decision-making.
[under review]
Trends in Ethical Transgressions Amongst South African Dietetic Practitioners
with: M. Pontarelli, J. Wilkenson, Y. Gezu, M. Nortje, G. Truong, N. Ravi, N. Nortje, and W.A. Hoffmann
This study investigated ethical transgressions amongst dietetic practitioners in South Africa, using publicly available data from the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) in the period 2014 to 2023. The study is a follow-up on the study by Nortje and Hoffmann (2015) who analyzed HPCSA transgression records for the period 2007 to 2013. The current study found only five transgressions committed by two dietitians out of 1,376 cases across all HPCSA-registered professions. In total, amongst the more than 4,200 registered dietetic practitioners in 2024, this constitutes a transgression rate of <0.05% (2 of ~4,190), a decline from the previously reported 0.24% in 2013.
While we consider possible explanations for the apparent decline in transgressions, no definitive conclusion is reached. Despite limitations, the findings highlight consistently low misconduct rates among dietitians over the past two decades, potentially positioning the field as a model for ethical adherence in healthcare. We recommend future research be conducted to explore factors driving the high rate of ethical compliance in dietetics and its potential application across other healthcare professions.
[under review]
Machine Caring and the Standing to Give Advice
While AI is playing an increasingly central role in healthcare in the industrialized world, it is increasingly important to delineate where AI should and where AI should not be deployed. I contend that AI should be prevented from giving recommendations or other overtly normative outputs. AI should instead only provide descriptive outputs in clinical settings. Drawing on seminal works in the ethics of care, I argue that within the care ethics framework artificial intelligences do not qualify as moral agents, and subsequently do not engage in the practice of caring. This is a reversal of the usual causal order assumed by care ethicists, in which it is argued that AI are not moral agents in virtue of the fact that they don’t engage in caring. I further argue that due to this, AI lack the standing to give advice. Ergo, we should not enfranchise AI to give advice in the first place.
[under review]
Sadism in the Bedroom: Metaethical Reasons to Prefer Kantianism to Utilitarianism
In this paper I propose pragmatic metaethical argument to favor neo-Kantian moral reasoning over Utilitarianism. The argument is predicated on a development of “personal duty” in accordance with Kant’s condition of universalizability as it applies to the ethics of sex and a case study pertaining to sadism and consent. Read more.
Available in the 2022 issue of Sapere Aude.
MRI Phantom for Strain Verification
My engineering senior capstone dealt with the development of a device that can be used to evaluate the strain detection capabilities of DENSE-sequence MR imaging. The aim was to produce a proprietary imaging phantom capable of assessing the diagnostic capabilities of DENSE for brain maladies such as Chiari malformation. While the capstone project has been completed the research we were able to conduct with it is ongoing and preliminary results have been published.
Presented in 2022 at the SB3C Conference.
Talks
Maturing Beyond “If it Works, it Works” in Practice
Traditionally, the ultimate metric of efficacy for a medical treatment has been clinical significance. Through case studies—particularly those of thalidomide and MAOIs—I explore the deficiencies of relying on mere clinical study, highlighting instead the value of holding out for an identifiable mechanism-of-action. I provide an operational definition of mechanism of action (MOA). Using this, I argue that, if we take the principles of informed consent seriously, we ought to be extremely conservative in our approval and prescription of treatments for which we have yet to identify the MOA. This is not meant to motivate a reconsideration of existing drug approvals, but rather to raise the bar for future treatment options in the interest of balancing practical demands (vis-à-vis immediate patient needs) and long-term health and safety. I briefly consider two kinds of objections, which I divide into the clinical and the philosophical for which I offer rebuttals. Read more.
Presented in 2024 at the Boston University Graduate Conference on the Philosophy of Science
An increasing number of communities have found themselves dependent on Catholic providers of acute care. As such, if the Church accepts advice against a certain form of treatment, a de facto ban on that treatment is then in place. This has proven to be the case for puberty blockers as a treatment for gender non-conforming youth. I argue that the typical prohibition on this treatment—that puberty blockers are tantamount to gender transition, which is prohibited—fails because puberty blockers are neither necessary nor sufficient for transition. Moreover, if puberty blockers are not prohibited in Catholic care, it is plausible to think there are cases in which Catholic ethics have good reason to appraise the use of puberty blockers for gender non-conforming youths as obligatory. Read more.
Presented in 2023 at the second annual conference for the Society for Christian Bioethics