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A Critical History Of Individual And Collective Ethics In The Lineage Of Lellouch And Schwartz, Charles Heilig, Charles Weijer
A Critical History Of Individual And Collective Ethics In The Lineage Of Lellouch And Schwartz, Charles Heilig, Charles Weijer
Charles Weijer
The notions of individual and collective ethics were first explicitly defined in the biostatistical literature in 1971 to motivate a mathematical solution to a posed ethical dilemma. This paper reviews key antecedents to these concepts and traces explicit references to them over time, primarily in the biostatistical literature. Following a historical exposition of these texts, a critical thematic analysis shows the following: the normative force of these concepts has not been adequately argued. Individual and collective ethics do not solve the problem of how to use accumulating data to inform ethical action. The notions of the "individual" and the "collective" …