Jessica Benham awarded the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 2017 Student Paper Award

Jessica Benham won the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 2017 Student Paper Award for her paper titled, “Neurodevelopmental Disability & Patient Autonomy.” In this paper, she argued that the discipline of Bioethics should consider differences in neurology and cognition when developing theories of ethics, specifically with regard to autonomy. She claims that a universal theory of autonomy could certainly never exist without the input of neurodivergent communities, though she also casts doubt on the idea that such a universal theory is even possible. She calls instead for a notion of ethics communities/ethics cultures with their own unique and particular understandings of autonomy.