Response to Commentaries on ‘Responsibility in Healthcare Across Time and Agents’

Abstract

Let us first thank the four commentators who have taken the time to read and thoughtfully reflect upon our paper. In that paper, we discuss how responsibility concepts must be sensitive to the temporal (diachronic) and social (dyadic) aspects of health-related behaviour, if responsibility is to play a role in health policy.

Responsibility for health

“…In their response, Brown and Savulescu resist the implication that paying attention to the diachronic and dyadic nature of responsibility in health might in effect be a reductio of responsibility in health. 9 In any case, what they have done is demonstrate how those debating the role of responsibility for health should adopt an enriched version of the concept that can accommodate the complex relationship between behaviour and health.…”