Marcel verweij philosophy, public health & more

Together with Marcel Canoy, I wrote an article for the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde in which we argue that obesity is a form of structural injustice. Large groups of vulnerable people are disadvantaged and discriminated against while their vulnerable position is facilitated by a sick market cycle that mainly benefits the food industry, retail and pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, prevention programs are failing. For many reasons, we continue to view overweight and obesity as a matter of individual responsibility. Scientific methodology also has a crucial role in this. Of course, obesity is often also something people can take responsibility for themselves, but that does not diminish the responsibility of society, government, industry and science.

Vaccinatiebeleid is misschien wel meer dan ooit een onderwerp dat sterke meningsverschillen oproept. Het boek Inducing Immunity? ontwikkelt in dat gepolariseerde debat een normatieve visie op hoe een democratische overheid kan komen tot een betrouwbaar beleid. Om te voorkomen dat sommige nuances in de discussie al bij voorbaat sneuvelen, schreef ik een korte Q&A. 

I'm really happy to see the book in print that Roland an I have been working on for years: Inducing Immunity? Justifying Immunization Policies in Times of Vaccine Hesitancy. The book has been published in the Basic Bioethics series of MITpress, edited by Art Caplan. Art and everyone at MITpress have been fantastic in their swift examination, review procedure and decisions. They also offered to make the book open access available!

On January 11, I had the honor to present my inaugural lecture as professor of Philosophical Ethics at Utrecht University. One of the reasons why this is such a honor is that it is the chair of my dissertation supervisor Robert Heeger, one of the founding editors of the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Robert Heeger has been key in the Netherlands to promote research on how practical ethics can reinforce ethical theory and vice versa. I can only hope to contribute a bit to that idea. In my talk I offer a critical assessment of the role of thought experiments in practical ethics (owing much to James Wilson's splendid work (see here), I offer examples of how practicing ethics might 'work' and end with dreaming about developing a radically pluralistic moral theory which could also bring different branches of 'applied' ethics together.On this page you'll find the official text and a quick-and-dirty autimated translation to English.

Very proud to be appointed, from April 1st, 2023, professor of philosophical ethics at Utrecht University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. More specifically I will be based at the Ethics Institute - an organization I have worked for (and its predecessor already twice before. Compared to 2013, when I left Utrecht to take up the position of professor of philosophy at Wageningen University, the ethics group has changed and expanded significantly. It is a great honor to work together with scholars like Ingrid Robeyns, Joel Anderson, Hanno Sauer, Rutger Claassen, Jos Philips, Frans Brom, Lucie White, and many, many more.

Our book Inducing Immunity: Justifying Immunization Policies in Times of Vaccine Hesitancy, co-authored with Roland Pierik, will be published early 2024 by MIT Press, in Arthur Caplan’s Basic Bioethics series.

Should the Dutch government keep Covid19-tests that are meant for getting access to mass-events etc free of charge, or not, when everyone has had the opportunity to be vaccinated? Or should unvaccinated people pay for tests to participate in public life, like in Germany and Italy?

Het komende nummer van Cahiers Biowetenschappen en Maatschappij is gewijd aan infectieziektebestrijding: "Help ik ben besmet!". Dat was in de eerste plaats ter gelegenheid van het 15-jarig bestaan van het RIVM Centrum voor Infectieziektebestrijding. Met de Covid19 pandemie is dit nummer actueler dan de redactie tot had kunnen denken. Ik schreef een stukje over emotie versus verstand, en het belang van solidaritei