Xiang Yu

Welcome! I am an assistant professor and clinical ethicist at the Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities at University of Texas Medical Branch.  Previously, I was a clinical ethics fellow at the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College. 

I completed my PhD in Philosophy at The Ohio State University in 2022, and my MA in Philosophy at Texas Tech University in 2016. 

My research focuses on well-being (especially issues relating to desires), medical decision making, and health policies for vulnerable populations. 

My CV is here. My email address is xiayu@utmb.edu.

Research

Publications

Kim, D. T, & Yu, X. (Forthcoming). A Life Worth Sustaining? Bestowed Worth and the Meaningfulness of Continuing Life-Sustaining Treatments in Pediatric Care. Hastings Center Report.

Yu, X., Nelson, R. H., & Schuman, O. (Forthcoming). Grief and Decision-Making Capacity. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 

Yu, X. (2025). Well-Being, Depression, and Desire. Journal of Value Inquiry.

Yu, X., & Kim, D. T. (2025). Impermissibility of Euthanasia and Self-Regarding Duties to Stay Alive. Journal of Medical Ethics, 51:243-244. 

Yu, X. (2022). Hidden Desires: A Unified Strategy for Defending the Desire-Satisfaction Theory. Utilitas, 1-16.

Under Review

A paper on surrogate decision making for incarcerated patients.

Works in Progress

"Rethinking the 39-Week Rule: Autonomy and Well-Being in Elective Labor Deliveries" (With Hannah Carpenter and Lisa Campo-Engelstein)

In 2009, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published the “39-week rule”, which recommends against elective deliveries before 39 weeks, either via an induction of labor or a cesarean section, unless there is a medical indication for it. In this paper, we highlight how the 39-week rule differs from other ACOG policies. Specifically, we argue that the 39-week rule appears to be in tension with ACOG’s broader ethical framework because it prioritizes fetal beneficence over pregnant patients’ autonomy and well-being. ACOG acknowledges that pregnant patients’ preferences should be taken into consideration regarding late-preterm and early-term labor, but it does not specify what clinicians should do when the request is made in the absence of a medical indication or before late preterm. Additionally, ACOG seems to limit medical indications to physiological conditions, thereby overlooking psychological conditions that may justify a birth before term. We provide two recommendations on how to align the 39-week rule with ACOG’s other policies. First, ACOG should emphasize the importance of pregnant patients’ preferences and explain how these should be balanced in relation to fetal interests, particularly in the absence of a medical indication or before late preterm. Second, the list of medical indications should be expanded to include medical conditions that are not typically life-threatening but can have a significant impact on pregnant patients’ overall health.

"Why Is Ageing Undesirable? Limits of the Biological vs. Chronological Framework" (With Ginika Oguagha)

In recent years, biomedical interventions have been explored to promote healthy ageing. These interventions are motivated by the idea that ageing is undesirable and therefore ought to be minimized. However, the reason why ageing is considered undesirable is not obvious. It has been suggested that the explanation lies in the biological, rather than the chronological, dimension of ageing (Garcia-Barranquero et al. 2024). Biological ageing refers to the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates in the body over time. Chronological ageing refers to the mere passage of time. The idea is that biological ageing is what makes ageing undesirable due to the negative effects of physical and cognitive deterioration, while chronological ageing brings valuable goods such as experience, knowledge, and wisdom. 

In this paper, we argue that this dichotomy does not help explain the undesirability of ageing, because biological ageing can be desirable if it happens at a developmental stage and chronological ageing can be undesirable if it brings psychological bads such as regrets, loneliness, and fear of death, and social bads such as ageism. This mistake may result from a failure to recognize that biological ageing starts at the time of birth and that chronological ageing ends at the time of death. Our argument points out limitations of biomedical interventions for healthy ageing: 1) they reduce the human journey into a technical problem, and 2) they fail to address psychological and social issues that a person faces by being at an old age.

"Autonomous Desires and Well-Being"

According to historical accounts of autonomous desires, a desire is autonomous only if it was formed in the right kind of way. These accounts point to the intuitive idea that whether a desire is autonomous has something to do with how it came about. For example, if you came to desire to smoke only because the wallpaper on your desktop depicts a handsome man holding a cigarette, then your desire does not seem fully autonomous. Historical accounts face the objection that they commit the genetic fallacy. In this paper, I argue that, the best version of the historical account will accept what I call the “transparency condition” as a necessary condition for a desire’s being autonomous because it allows it to answer the genetic fallacy objection. According to this condition, if the agent were aware of the explanatory reasons for her desire, then, upon reflection, she would not doubt what she takes to be normative reasons for the desire. I also argue that desire-satisfaction theorists should accept the transparency condition as a restriction on which desires are directly relevant to well-being, in the sense that their satisfaction is intrinsically good for the agents who have them. For if they accept this restriction, their theory has the virtue of being able to explain why adaptive preferences and pathological desires can be irrelevant to welfare, as value-fulfillment theories do, without sharing the problems of the latter theories. This new theory is also more plausible than other attempts to explain why adaptive preferences and pathological desires can be irrelevant to welfare.