Chapter 11:
The Challenge of Global Bioethics
Multiple Choice Questions
1) Climate change is having a significant effect on human health as a result of which of the
following factors?
a) heat
b) drought
c) extreme weather patterns
d) all of these choices
2) If something is “anthropogenic” it is generated by
a) bacteria.
b) viruses.
c) climate.
d) humans.
3) Many disagreements over global health issues involve questions of
a) what the scientific causes of climate change are.
b) fairness and disparity.
c) malaria and dysentery.
d) who is responsible for carbon emissions.
4) The term for a bioethical responsibility that stretches beyond the ties of kinship or shared
citizenship is
a) cosmopolitan.
b) diverse.
c) totalitarian.
d) contractarian.
5) Who developed the example of the drowning baby in the wading pool?
a) Singer
b) Mill
c) Rawls
d) Ross
6) The drowning child scenario questions
a) whether we can ever really make a difference.
b) whether making a difference can be justifiably limited to one’s own nation.
c) whether we have any obligation to make a difference in the lives of the poor.
d) whether we have an obligation outside our own nation.
7) Which of the following are First World Problems?
a) Cancer
b) Hypertension
c) Heart disease
d) All of these choices
8) What medical specialties are paid the least?
a) Dermatologists and infectious disease specialists.
b) Dermatologists and family medicine specialists.
c) Infectious disease and family medicine specialists.
d) Cardiologists and family medicine specialists.
9) What response is given to the claim that patients “vote with their dollars”?
a) Biomedical markets are a poor guide to social value.
b) Bioethics is not a political issue.
c) Voting and purchasing are from separate spheres of justice.
d) This claim only makes sense in a national context.
10) Defenders of globalized clinical trials argue which of the following?
a) They made some of their subjects better off.
b) They made none of their subjects worse off.
c) They will lead to medical advances that will benefit the broader population.
d) All of these choices
11) The term used to describe a culture that is shaped by different subcultural and foreign
influences is
a) diverse
b) cosmopolitan
c) relativistc
d) multicultural
12) What position holds that there is a set of universal values that have application everywhere?
a) Relativism
b) Principalism
c) Objectivism
d) Multiculturalism
13) In some African cultures competent patients can delegate their informed consent to which of
the following?
a) Community leaders
b) Parents
c) Siblings
d) All of these choices
14) Many newer approaches to bioethical issues are
a) principalistic.
b) objectivist.
c) pluralistic.
d) relativist.
15) Whose ethical system was grounded in the idea of autonomous control over one’s body?
a) Singer’s
b) Kant’s
c) Grodin’s
d) Mill’s.
True/False Questions
1) The standards for clinical trials in the developing world are the same as for those in the
developed world.
2) How the effectiveness of a drug in a clinical trial should be measured is always clear.
3) There are ethical questions associated with the use of placebos.
4) Climate change is having a significant impact on human health.
5) Some libertarians argue that moral responsibility does not extend beyond national borders,
and so there is no moral obligation to aid people in the developing world.
6) Peter Singer believed that the example of the drowning baby shows that people have a moral
obligation to persons outside their own countries.
7) Peter Singer is a libertarian.
8) Peter Singer believes that the only ethical responsibilities we have are those that we
voluntarily accept.
9) The majority of healthcare resources are devoted to solving the problems of the developing
word.
10) The medical importance of infectious diseases to global health is reflected in the pay scale of
physicians who specialize in this area.
11) The medical importance of an issue is reflected in its political importance.
12) Cultural relativists seem committed to rejecting multiculturalism.
13) A cosmopolitan view of distributive justice considers the distribution of resources to be a
global issue.
14) David Resnik holds that research funding as it is currently practiced is unjust.
15) Annas and Grodin argue that if research will benefit a population in a developing nation then
there is no need to secure the informed consent of the participants from that nation.