Daniel Rodger
Biographic Data
| ID | 8307198 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Rodger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Rodger |
| SIGNATURE | RODGER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | London South Bank University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2121-7167 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Registers and quotas
Bodyoids and Moral Status
Bodyoids are human organisms engineered to lack consciousness and have been proposed as a potential solution to the shortage of bodies available for use as organ donors, cadavers in medical education, and as human research participants.In our bodyoids article (Rodger et al., 2025), we argued that creating bodyoids is ethically dubious.First, we explain that some accounts of moral status entail that bodyoids will possess full moral status, which i…
Bodyoids and Speculative Bioethics
Alexandre Erler’s commentary challenges our argument against creating human ‘bodyoids’. While he considers our concerns speculative, we briefly defend speculative bioethics as vital for anticipating ethical risks before technologies emerge. We maintain that historical practices such as organ procurement and embryo experimentation illustrate how instrumental uses of human bodies can erode moral boundaries. Erler’s confidence in safeguards like the…
No, pregnancy is not a disease
Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen argue that we have good reason to classify pregnancy as a disease. They discuss five accounts of disease and argue that each account either implies that pregnancy is a disease or if it does not, it faces problems. This strategy allows Smajdor and Räsänen to avoid articulating their own account of disease. Consequently, they cannot establish that pregnancy is a disease, only that plausible accounts of disease suggest…
Disclosing the undisclosed
Patients need to be given the relevant information to be able to give informed consent, which might require the disclosure of a provisional diagnosis. Yet, there is no duty to give information to a patient if that patient is aware that this information exists but chooses not to request it. Diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists are often responsible for ensuring that patients have given informed consent for the investigations they und…
Xenotransplantation as a business solution to the organ shortage
Xenotransplantation has the potential to alter the U.S. transplant system in profound ways. However, this emerging “spare parts” solution spearheaded by biotechnology companies raises concerns about its impact on the organ shortage, healthcare systems, population health, and health inequalities. We contend that xenotransplantation may have limited benefits in improving health, could prove prohibitively expensive for many, and may divert resources…
No Brain, No Pain, No Problem? The Case Against Creating Human ‘Bodyoids’
Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials and Equitable Patient Selection
Xenotransplant patient selection recommendations restrict clinical trial participation to seriously ill patients for whom alternative therapies are unavailable or who will likely die while waiting for an allotransplant. Despite a scholarly consensus that this is advisable, we propose to examine this restriction. We offer three lines of criticism: (1) The risk–benefit calculation may well be unfavorable for seriously ill patients and society; (2) …
Genetic disenhancement and xenotransplantation
One objection to xenotransplantation is that it will require the large-scale breeding, raising and killing of genetically modified pigs. The pigs will need to be raised in designated pathogen-free facilities and undergo a range of medical tests before having their organs removed and being euthanised. As a result, they will have significantly shortened life expectancies, will experience pain and suffering and be subject to a degree of social and e…
Defending genetic disenhancement in xenotransplantation
Xenograft recipients and the right to withdraw from a clinical trial
Preclinical xenotransplantation research using genetically engineered pigs has begun to show some promising results and could one day offer a scalable means of addressing organ shortage. While it is a fundamental tenet of ethical human subject research that participants have a right to withdraw from research once enrolled, several scholars have argued that the right to withdraw from xenotransplant research should be suspended because of the publi…
A fair exchange
Every year, hundreds of patients in England die whilst waiting for a kidney transplant, and this is evidence that the current system of altruistic-based donation is not sufficient to address the shortage of kidneys available for transplant. To address this problem, we propose a monopsony system whereby kidney donors can opt-in to receive financial compensation, whilst still preserving the right of individuals to donate without receiving any compe…
Why we should stop using animal-derived products on patients without their consent
Medicines and medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients are frequently used on patients without their informed consent, despite a significant proportion of patients wanting to know if an animal-derived product is going to be used in their care. Here, I outline three arguments for why this practice is wrong. First, I argue that using animal-derived medical products on patients without their informed consent undermines respect for their…
Inconsistency arguments still do not matter
William Simkulet has recently criticised Colgrove et al ’s defence against what they have called inconsistency arguments—arguments that claim opponents of abortion (OAs) act in ways inconsistent with their underlying beliefs about human fetuses (eg, that human fetuses are persons at conception). Colgrove et al presented three objections to inconsistency arguments, which Simkulet argues are unconvincing. Further, he maintains that OAs who hold tha…
Public health ethics and abortion
Agency, Pregnancy and Persons
Why we should not extend the 14-day rule
The 14-day rule restricts the culturing of human embryos in vitro for the purposes of scientific research for no longer than 14 days. Since researchers recently developed the capability to exceed the 14-day limit, pressure to modify the rule has started to build. Sophia McCully argues that the limit should be extended to 28 days, listing numerous potential benefits of doing so. We contend that McCully has not engaged with the main reasons why the…
Gestaticide
The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally imperm…
Parental responsibilities and moral status
Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the pare…
Prolife hypocrisy
Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts…
If fetuses are persons, abortion is a public health crisis
Pro‐life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro‐choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro‐life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral the…
Why Ectogestation Is Unlikely to Transform the Abortion Debate
In this commentary, I will consider the implications of the argument made by Christopher Stratman (2020) in ‘Ectogestation and the Problem of Abortion’. Clearly, the possibility of ectogestation will have some effect on the ethical debate on abortion. However, I have become increasingly sceptical that the possibility of ectogestation will transform the problem of abortion. Here, I outline some of my reasons to justify this scepticism. First, I ar…
Defining life from death
To determine when the life of a human organism begins, Mark T. Brown has developed the somatic integration definition of life. Derived from diagnostic criteria for human death, Brown’s account requires the presence of a life‐regulation internal control system for an entity to be considered a living organism. According to Brown, the earliest point at which a developing human could satisfy this requirement is at the beginning of the fetal stage, an…
No prominent works on this page.
Defining life from death
To determine when the life of a human organism begins, Mark T. Brown has developed the somatic integration definition of life. Derived from diagnostic criteria for human death, Brown’s account requires the presence of a life‐regulation internal control system for an entity to be considered a living organism. According to Brown, the earliest point at which a developing human could satisfy this requirement is at the beginning of the fetal stage, an…
Why we should not extend the 14-day rule
The 14-day rule restricts the culturing of human embryos in vitro for the purposes of scientific research for no longer than 14 days. Since researchers recently developed the capability to exceed the 14-day limit, pressure to modify the rule has started to build. Sophia McCully argues that the limit should be extended to 28 days, listing numerous potential benefits of doing so. We contend that McCully has not engaged with the main reasons why the…
Gestaticide
The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally imperm…
Parental responsibilities and moral status
Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the pare…
Prolife hypocrisy
Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts…
If fetuses are persons, abortion is a public health crisis
Pro‐life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro‐choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro‐life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral the…
Why Ectogestation Is Unlikely to Transform the Abortion Debate
In this commentary, I will consider the implications of the argument made by Christopher Stratman (2020) in ‘Ectogestation and the Problem of Abortion’. Clearly, the possibility of ectogestation will have some effect on the ethical debate on abortion. However, I have become increasingly sceptical that the possibility of ectogestation will transform the problem of abortion. Here, I outline some of my reasons to justify this scepticism. First, I ar…
Why we should stop using animal-derived products on patients without their consent
Medicines and medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients are frequently used on patients without their informed consent, despite a significant proportion of patients wanting to know if an animal-derived product is going to be used in their care. Here, I outline three arguments for why this practice is wrong. First, I argue that using animal-derived medical products on patients without their informed consent undermines respect for their…
Inconsistency arguments still do not matter
William Simkulet has recently criticised Colgrove et al ’s defence against what they have called inconsistency arguments—arguments that claim opponents of abortion (OAs) act in ways inconsistent with their underlying beliefs about human fetuses (eg, that human fetuses are persons at conception). Colgrove et al presented three objections to inconsistency arguments, which Simkulet argues are unconvincing. Further, he maintains that OAs who hold tha…
Public health ethics and abortion
Agency, Pregnancy and Persons
A fair exchange
Every year, hundreds of patients in England die whilst waiting for a kidney transplant, and this is evidence that the current system of altruistic-based donation is not sufficient to address the shortage of kidneys available for transplant. To address this problem, we propose a monopsony system whereby kidney donors can opt-in to receive financial compensation, whilst still preserving the right of individuals to donate without receiving any compe…
Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials and Equitable Patient Selection
Xenotransplant patient selection recommendations restrict clinical trial participation to seriously ill patients for whom alternative therapies are unavailable or who will likely die while waiting for an allotransplant. Despite a scholarly consensus that this is advisable, we propose to examine this restriction. We offer three lines of criticism: (1) The risk–benefit calculation may well be unfavorable for seriously ill patients and society; (2) …
Genetic disenhancement and xenotransplantation
One objection to xenotransplantation is that it will require the large-scale breeding, raising and killing of genetically modified pigs. The pigs will need to be raised in designated pathogen-free facilities and undergo a range of medical tests before having their organs removed and being euthanised. As a result, they will have significantly shortened life expectancies, will experience pain and suffering and be subject to a degree of social and e…
Defending genetic disenhancement in xenotransplantation
Xenograft recipients and the right to withdraw from a clinical trial
Preclinical xenotransplantation research using genetically engineered pigs has begun to show some promising results and could one day offer a scalable means of addressing organ shortage. While it is a fundamental tenet of ethical human subject research that participants have a right to withdraw from research once enrolled, several scholars have argued that the right to withdraw from xenotransplant research should be suspended because of the publi…
No, pregnancy is not a disease
Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen argue that we have good reason to classify pregnancy as a disease. They discuss five accounts of disease and argue that each account either implies that pregnancy is a disease or if it does not, it faces problems. This strategy allows Smajdor and Räsänen to avoid articulating their own account of disease. Consequently, they cannot establish that pregnancy is a disease, only that plausible accounts of disease suggest…
Disclosing the undisclosed
Patients need to be given the relevant information to be able to give informed consent, which might require the disclosure of a provisional diagnosis. Yet, there is no duty to give information to a patient if that patient is aware that this information exists but chooses not to request it. Diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists are often responsible for ensuring that patients have given informed consent for the investigations they und…
Xenotransplantation as a business solution to the organ shortage
Xenotransplantation has the potential to alter the U.S. transplant system in profound ways. However, this emerging “spare parts” solution spearheaded by biotechnology companies raises concerns about its impact on the organ shortage, healthcare systems, population health, and health inequalities. We contend that xenotransplantation may have limited benefits in improving health, could prove prohibitively expensive for many, and may divert resources…
No Brain, No Pain, No Problem? The Case Against Creating Human ‘Bodyoids’
Registers and quotas
Bodyoids and Moral Status
Bodyoids are human organisms engineered to lack consciousness and have been proposed as a potential solution to the shortage of bodies available for use as organ donors, cadavers in medical education, and as human research participants.In our bodyoids article (Rodger et al., 2025), we argued that creating bodyoids is ethically dubious.First, we explain that some accounts of moral status entail that bodyoids will possess full moral status, which i…
Bodyoids and Speculative Bioethics
Alexandre Erler’s commentary challenges our argument against creating human ‘bodyoids’. While he considers our concerns speculative, we briefly defend speculative bioethics as vital for anticipating ethical risks before technologies emerge. We maintain that historical practices such as organ procurement and embryo experimentation illustrate how instrumental uses of human bodies can erode moral boundaries. Erler’s confidence in safeguards like the…
Medicine (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (8 works) · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations (7 works) · Transplantation (7 works) · Abortion (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)