Adversarial cooperation: some reflections prompted by commentaries

It is a privilege to have received such thought-provoking and perceptive commentaries. My interest in moral disagreements—how they arise, are understood and may be resolved—goes back a long way. It began with my work on ethics and homelessness in the 1990s1 and was more deeply developed through my encounters with the difficult practical ethical questions arising in clinical genetics. In 2001, Anneke Lucassen, Angus Clarke and Tara Clancy established the Genethics Club as a practical, case-based forum for health professionals and laboratory staff to engage collaboratively with moral disagreements and problems arising in their day-to-day work with patients and families. My book Ethical Issues in Genetics Practice provides an account of this from the perspective of methodology in bioethics and engages with some related metaethical questions.2 3 As such, it was particularly interesting to read Donaldson’s commentary and the connection it makes between adversarial…

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