Our People

Dr Michael Wee

BA PhD (Dunelm) MSt (Oxon)

Associate Research Fellow

Dr Michael Wee is an Associate Research Fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, and is assisting the Centre’s project on ‘Advance Decisions and Ethical Choices’. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford’s Neuroscience, Ethics and Society (NEUROSEC) group, based in the Department of Psychiatry. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Durham University, with a thesis entitled Action and Necessity: Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and the Foundations of Ethics. He was previously Education and Research Officer of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre from 2016 to 2021. He has been a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life since 2020.

Contact: associate@bioethics.org.uk

Select Publications

Journal Articles

‘Solidarity and Subsidiarity as Principles for Public Health’, National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 22/2 (2022), 221–9.

‘Anscombe’s Moral Epistemology and the Relevance of Wittgenstein’s Anti-Scepticism’, Enrahonar 64 (2020), 81–100.

‘Euthanasia, Withdrawing Treatment and the Concept of Intention’, Law & Justice 182 (2019), 7–24.

Book Chapters

‘Therapy, Enhancement and the Social Model of Disability’ in Danielle Sands (ed.), Bioethics and the Posthumanities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), 15–24.

‘The Rational Body: A Thomistic perspective on parenthood and posthumanism’ in Calum MacKellar and Trevor Stammers (eds), The Ethics of Generating Posthumans (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 145–58.

Other Publications (Selected)

Commentary on the Vatican document ‘Samaritanus Bonus: On the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life’, Law & Justice 187 (2021), 141–5.

‘Can you be denied a kidney because you’re not vaccinated against COVID-19?’, Channel News Asia, 18 Nov 2021.

‘Public Mental Health and the Ethics of COVID-19 Lockdowns’, Anscombe Bioethics Centre COVID-19 Briefing Papers, 2020.

‘Coronavirus and the misuse of “do not resuscitate” orders’, The Spectator, 6 May 2020.

‘Reshaping Mental Health Through the Virtues: Promises and Challenges’ (co-authored with Saïk de La Motte), Insight Series, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (Jan 2020).

‘The Tafida Raqeeb case and the trouble with “best interests”', Catholic Medical Quarterly, 69/4 (Nov 2019).

‘Elizabeth Anscombe's Philosophy of the Human Person’, Public Discourse, 17 Mar 2019.

‘Natural Family Planning and the Myth of Catholic Contraception’, Church Life Journal, 12 Mar 2018.

‘Genetics, identity and three-parent babies’, The Straits Times, 7 July 2017, A24.

Sincerest Thanks for Your Support

Staff are grateful to all those who sustained the Centre in the past by their prayers and the generous financial support from trusts, organisations, communities and especially from individual donors, including the core funding that came through the Day for Life fund and so from the generosity of many thousands of parishioners. We would finally like to acknowledge the support the Centre has received from the Catholic community in Ireland, especially during the pandemic when second collections were not possible.

We would like to emphasise that, though the Centre is now closed, these donations have not been wasted but have helped educate and support generations of conscientious healthcare professionals, clerics, and lay people over almost 50 years. This support has also helped prevent repeated attempts to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Britain and Ireland from 1993 till the end of the Centre’s work on 31 July 2025.