ArticleMedicine, health care, and philosophy2012
The principle of proportionality revisited: interpretations and applications.
Article in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Articulating the need to minimize moral incursions in research : The least infringement condition.EMBO reports · 2025Article
- Health Technologies and Impermissible Delays: The Case of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis.Science and engineering ethics · 2025Article
- Prudent Physician Anger in Patient-Physician Interactions.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2025Article
- COVID-19 ethics: unique aspects and a review as of early 2024.Monash bioethics review · 2024Review
- Health communication in and out of public health emergencies: to persuade or to inform?Health research policy and systems · 2022Article
- Wicked problems and proportionality: Is the lesser of two evils the best we can do?The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery · 2021Article
- A framework for the ethical assessment of chimeric animal research involving human neural tissue.BMC medical ethics · 2019Article
- Forensic genealogy, bioethics and the Golden State Killer case.Forensic science international. Synergy · 2019Article
- Should all medical research be published? The moral responsibility of medical journal editors.Journal of medical ethics · 2018Article
- Ethical Tensions in the Pain Management of an End-Stage Cancer Patient with Evidence of Opioid Medication Diversion.HEC forum : an interdisciplinary journal on hospitals' ethical and legal issues · 2016Review
- Do the Benefits of Male Circumcision Outweigh the Risks? A Critique of the Proposed CDC Guidelines.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2015Review
- Regions, concepts and integrations.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2012Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
The principle of proportionality is used in many different contexts. Some of these uses and contexts are first briefly indicated. This paper focusses on the use of this principle as a moral principle. I argue that under certain conditions the principle of proportionality is helpful as a guide in decision-making. But it needs to be clarified and to be used with some flexibility as a context-dependent principle. Several interpretations of the principle are distinguished, using three conditions as a starting point: importance of objective, relevance of means, and most favourable option. The principle is then tested against an example, which suggests that a fourth condition, focusing on non-excessiveness, needs to be added. I will distinguish between three main interpretations of the principle, some primarily with uses in research ethics, others with uses in other areas of bioethics, for instance in comparisons of therapeutic means and ends. The relations between the principle of proportionality and the precautionary principle are explored in the following section. It is concluded that the principles are different and may even clash. In the next section the principle of proportionality is applied to some medical examples drawn from research ethics and bioethics. In concluding, the status of the principle of proportionality as a moral principle is discussed. What has been achieved so far and what remains to be done is finally summarized.
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