Dr Drew Carter

Biography/ Background

I am a Team Investigator on the five-year NHMRC Capacity Building Grant in Population Health and Health Services Research (ID 565501) Health care in the round: building capacity for integrated decision-making for improving health services.  For information on our collective research activities, please see here.  I have also contributed to research activities of The ASTUTE Health Study (NHMRC ID 565327).

In 2012 I will begin work as a Chief Investigator on the research project, Steward or nanny state: Consulting the public about the use of regulations and laws to address childhood obesity. This project is led by Annette Braunack-Mayer and Jackie Street and funded by a Category 1 grant awarded by the Australian National Preventive Health Agency.

In September and October 2012, The Brocher Foundation will fund historian Paul Sendziuk and I to reside as Visiting Researchers in Geneva, where I will lead our research project, 'The morality of using acute pain as a diagnostic tool in emergency medicine, together with a critical history of acute pain measurement'.

Born in Ipswich, Queensland, I studied mainly sciences at Ipswich Grammar School.  Afterwards I moved to Melbourne seeking cultural and academic enrichment, enrolling in a BA/BSc at The University of Melbourne and taking up what would be a three-year residence at the Jesuit-run Newman College.  Quickly I developed passions for philosophy (aesthetics and ethics especially) and history (modern Europe especially).  Just as quickly I dropped the BSc component of my degree in order to focus exclusively on these disciplines and soon completed a combined, first-class Honours year in them.  Supervised by philosopher Christopher Cordner, my Honours thesis explored Iris Murdoch's thought concerning the significance of tragic drama and of Shakespeare's King Lear in particular (its proposed epitome).  I then took a year off, beginning the work in educational publishing that I would continue sporadically throughout my postgraduate years and supplement with tutoring in undergraduate philosophy (covering material on religion, free-will, epistemology, the philosophy of science, existentialism, and phenomenology). 

Soon I undertook an APA-funded PhD in philosophy under Professor Raimond Gaita and Peter Coghlan at Australian Catholic University.  This began as an attempt to understand and critically engage the moral philosophies of Iris Murdoch, Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner, which invite love back to the centre of moral philosophy in place of reductive alternatives like rational agency.  My thesis expanded on this invitation, exploring connected themes of wonder, remorse and tragedy.  It concluded with an original and expansive reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov.  Great suffering in this world can prompt despair, but paradoxically deliverance can follow from a sense of personal responsibility and a gratitude for the beauty of all creation.  In such paradoxes the novel’s Christianity offers opportunities to transcend reason in view of a higher truth.  The thesis included much reflection foundational to health ethics, broadly defending a strain of deontology against consequentialism and virtue ethics.

Qualifications

2003-2009	PhD in Philosophy 'Elaboration on a Permissible Theme'
	Principal Supervisor – Professor Raimond Gaita
	Associate Supervisor – Mr Peter Coghlan
	Australian Catholic University
1998-2001	The University of Melbourne
	Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
	Honours in History and Philosophy
	Philosophy Honours thesis ‘Iris Murdoch on Tragedy and King Lear’

Teaching Interests

Moral philosophy and applied ethics, particularly public health ethics, medical ethics and bioethics

Year	Institution	Course code	Course name	Course level	My role	Topics
2003	The University of Melbourne	161-108	Reason, Religion and Responsibility	1st year	Tutor	"The existence of God"; "The meaning of life"; "The freedom of the will"
2003	The University of Melbourne	161-106	Freedom and Constraint	1st year	Tutor	"The freedom implied by consciousness and the constraints imposed by nature, culture and society"; Sartre, de Beauvoir, Althusser, Foucault, Freud, and Saussure
2004	The University of Melbourne	161-009	Knowledge, Truth and Relativism	2nd and 3rd years	Tutor	"Major authors who have influenced relativist thinking, such as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty"
2007	Ormond College, The University of Melbourne	161-029;161-021; 161-310	Philosophy and Literature; From Hermeneutics to Derrida; What is Philosophy?	2nd and 3rd years; 2nd and 3rd years; 3rd year	College tutor	"Some of the philosophical problems concerning the self raised by autobiographical writing"; "Theories of meaning and interpretation developed in contemporary European thought"; "The nature of philosophy itself"
2010	The University of Adelaide	PUB HLTH 7147HO	HealthTechnology Assessment	Postgraduate	Lecturing assistant	Deliberative inclusive methods in Health Technology Assessment
2010 and 2011	The University of Adelaide	PUB HLTH 7108HO	Public Health Ethics	Postgraduate	Guest lecturer	Equity and fairness in public health
2011	The University of Adelaide	MEDIC ST 1103A	Medical Professional and Personal Development I Pt I	1st year	Tutor	What makes a good doctor; Ethical analysis and decision-making; Confidentiality; Informed consent
2011	The University of Adelaide	PUB HLTH 3503	Public Health Theory and Practice III	3rd year	Guest lecturer	Ethics and access to health care resources
2011 and 2012	The University of Adelaide	MEDIC ST 2103A	Medical Professional and Personal Development II Pt I	2nd year	Assessor	"Is it morally acceptable for undergraduate medical students from Western countries ... to undertake ‘international electives’ in developing nations?"; "Is it morally acceptable for a physician to deliberately prescribe placebos to patients?"; "Should a patient be given lower priority for organ transplantation if their need for a transplant organ is due to lifestyle factors?"
2011 and 2012	The University of Adelaide	POLI 2097	Bioethics Policy: Governance of Contentious Issues	2nd year	Guest lecturer	Deliberative democracy and distributive justice

 

Research Interests

My research interests span meta-ethics (what makes something good or important?) and applied ethics (how should we act or orient ourselves in particular cases?).  Active interests include:

More meta-ethics

• The philosophy and aesthetics of tragic drama
• Ludwig Wittgenstein's thought in relation to moral philosophy
• The moral philosophies of Iris Murdoch, Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner
• The importance of love to moral philosophy
  
• Christian theology and spirituality
• The limitations of autonomy and justice as moral concepts
• Informal logic, rhetoric and the proper role of the argument forms reductio ad absurdem (reductions to absurdity) and ad hominen (attacks on the speaker)
  

More applied ethics

• The moral foundations of medicine.  What is the proper goal and animating spirit of medicine?
• Accordingly, when is someone in medical need?  How should we guage the magnitude and importance of their need?  How should we factor it in to health-related resource allocation?
• The pros and cons of using discrete-choice experiments as a tool to measure public preferences in the prioritisation of public, health-related resources
• The morality of using pain as a diagnostic tool (especially acute pain in emergency medicine).  What is involved in trade-offs between pain alleviation and diagnostic accuracy (or other clinical benefits)?
  
• The potential for both progress and nonsense in attempting to develop a metric for the quality of an ethical encounter
• Conceptualising the link between moral life and mental health.  How do morally significant moments and developments impact on our mental health?

Currently I am also the co-supervisor for an MPhil student who proposes to research the barriers and facilitators connected to public consultation processes used by Australian health policy agencies.

Research Funding

Year	Funder	Funding type	Amount	Recipients	Project
2012-2014	Australian National Preventive Health Agency	Category 1. Preventive Health Research Grant Program 2011-12	$288,381	Annette Braunack-Mayer, Jackie Street, Chris Reynolds, Vivienne Moore, Megan Warin, Drew Carter, John Moss, Tracy Merlin	Steward or nanny state: Consulting the public about the use of regulations and laws to address childhood obesity
Sep-Oct 2012	The Brocher Foundation (Switzerland)	Visiting Scholars	approx. $20,000	Drew Carter and Paul Sendziuk	The morality of using acute pain as a diagnostic tool in emergency medicine, together with a critical history of acute pain measurement

Publications

Journal Articles

Drew Carter, Amber M. Watt, Annette Braunack-Mayer, Adam G. Elshaug, John R. Moss, Janet E. Hiller, The ASTUTE Health study group. Should there be a female age-limit on public funding for assisted reproductive technology? Differing conceptions of justice in resource allocation. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. Accepted 8 April 2012.

Drew Carter. 'Part of the Very Concept': Wittgensteinian Moral Philosophy. Philosophical Investigations. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9205.2011.01467.x. Early view available here.

Drew Carter and Annette Braunack-Mayer. The appeal to nature implicit in certain restrictions on public funding for assisted reproductive technology.  Bioethics.  Volume 25, Issue 8, pages 463–471, October 2011.  (An early version of the paper was a 2010 Finalist for the Mark S. Ehrenreich Prize.)  Available here.

Drew Carter and Annette Braunack-Mayer. Introduction: On the borders. Interface: A Forum for Theology in the World 2010; 13:1-10.  Available here.

 

Conference Abstracts

Drew Carter. A philosophical analysis of secondary pain affect. {Poster} 14th World Congress on Pain. Milan, Italy, August 27-31, 2012.

Drew Carter. What is medical need? Competing answers and their implications for patient prioritisation. {Oral} 7th Health Services and Policy Research Conference. Adelaide, Australia, December 5-7, 2011.  Abstract here.

Janet E. Hiller, Adam Elshaug, Amber M. Watt, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, John R. Moss, Drew Carter, Jackie M. Street, Katherine Hodgetts. Engaging Policy Makers with an Enhanced Evidence-Base for Disinvestment: Case Studies of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Patholoy Testing. {Oral} 7th Health Services and Policy Research Conference. Adelaide, Australia, December 5-7, 2011.  Abstract here.

Drew Carter, Amber Watt, Jason Gordon, The ASTUTE Health Study group. Different Hopes for Health Care Budgets: Distributing Assisted Reproductive Technology to Women of Different Ages. {Oral} Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law Conference. Gold Coast, Australia, July 7-10, 2011.  Abstract here.

Janet E. Hiller, Adam G. Elshaug, Amber M. Watt, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, John R. Moss, Drew A. Carter, Jackie M. Street and Katherine Hodgetts for the ASTUTE Health study group. Informing policy makers with an enhanced evidence-base for disinvestment: findings from a multi-stage stakeholder engagement. {Oral} HTAi Conference. Brazil, June 2011.  Abstract here.

Street, JM, Elshaug, AE, Braunack-Mayer, AJ, Wale, JL, Watt, AM, Carter, DA, Hiller, JE and the Astute Health Study group. Weaving partisan and non-partisan voices into health policy: to knit or knot? PHAA National Conference. Adelaide, Australia, September 27-29, 2010.  Conference programme here.

Drew Carter and the ASTUTE Health Study group. The deference to nature implicit in public funding arrangements for assisted reproductive technologies. {Oral} 10th World Congress of Bioethics. Singapore, July 28-31, 2010.  Congress programme here.

Drew Carter and the ASTUTE Health Study group. The ethics of publicly funding assisted reproductive technology for older women. {Oral} Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 2010 Congress. Singapore, July 26-28, 2010.

Drew Carter and the ASTUTE Health Study group. The ethics of publicly funding assisted reproductive technology. {Oral} Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law Conference. Adelaide, Australia, July 1-4, 2010.

Professional Associations

2012	Member of the International Association for the Study of Pain
2011-2012	Affiliate of Adelaide Health Technology Assessment
2010-2012	Adjunct Lecturer at St Barnabas' Theological College, Charles Sturt University
	Member of the Adelaide College of Divinity’s Human Research Ethics Committee
2010	Full member of the Ethics Centre of South Australia
	Member of the International Association of Bioethics
	Member of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics

Entry last updated: Monday, 14 May 2012