The recent review of the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority provides administrative and statistical information regarding living donor kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom.1 However, it leaves much unsaid. For example, although the report does mention the number of live kidney donations from unrelated donors that ULTRA has approved, it fails to mention that the United Kingdom has a low live kidney donation rate compared with other European countries .2 More importantly, the report does not address the fundamental question of (...) whether the legal framework underlying ULTRA is morally justified. The legal regime in the United Kingdom proceeds on the tacit assumption that genetically unrelated donors are much more vulnerable to coercion than are related donors, and hence are more in need of protective regulation. In this article, we argue that the distinction drawn in the United Kingdom between genetically related and unrelated donors is difficult to justify, that it unnecessarily discourages live organ donation, and that the law should be changed.BACKGROUNDThe Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority is a creature of the Human Organ Transplant Act , which was enacted by parliament in 1989, and which came into force, with regulations, on 1 April 1990.3–5 The Human Organ Transplant Act was enacted hastily after the General Medical Council’s inquiry into the notorious case of a British physician’s involvement in transplants involving Turkish peasants.6 Young men were inveigled by an agent to travel to London, ostensibly to take up new jobs. In fact, they were being recruited as living donors of kidneys transplanted into fee paying foreign patients. The consequent debate in the media attracted an emotional …. (shrink)

Madhav Khosla’s brilliant book, India’s Founding Moment, is self-consciously a work on the history of ideas. Nonetheless, the subtitle of India’s Founding Moment—The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy—implies that Khosla draws a connection between the ideas that shaped the creation of constitutional democracy in India and its endurance. In this review, I pose the question of whether the design of the Constitution can be a source of constitutional resilience against the rising threat of authoritarianism and Hindu majoritarianism.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference has produced a torrent of public commentary. Given the fundamental issues about the relationship between law and politics raised by the judgment, what is remarkable is that that commentary has remained almost entirely in a pragmatic perspective, which asks how positive politics entered into the motivations and justifications of the Court, and looks at the results in terms of their political consequences, without deep or sustained reflection on (...) the ultimate grounds for the role the Court took upon itself, or on the normative sources of its reasoning. In this article, we explore the Quebec Secession Reference through the lens of constitutional theory. In particular, we highlight three unconventional aspects of the Court’s reasoning: (a) the supplementation of the written constitution through an explicit process of amendment-like interpretation to craft a new legal framework governing the secession of a province from Canada, (b) the vesting by the Court of substantial, if not exclusive responsibility for interpreting the constitutional rules on secession in particular situations or contexts with political organs, not the courts, and (c) the ascent by the court to abstract normativity, in articulating a normative vision of the Canadian constitutional order, whence it derived the legal framework governing secession. In addition to drawing attention to these unusual aspects of the judgment, we articulate the theoretical justifications that both explain and justify those features of the judgment, and identify issues for future discussion. (shrink)

This article comments briefly on three specific issues in Shazia Choudhry’s paper “‘Best Interests’ What can healthcare law learn from family law?” The three issues are: (1) the implications of ‘best interests’ and ‘welfare science’ for women within the family law and the health care law context, (2) the risk of capture by the ‘welfare science’ industry, and (3) the proposal that a committee of medical experts and medical ethicists should be set up to provide reports to the Court (...) of Protection on cases brought under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). I argue that the risk of capture by ‘welfare science’ is equally large in health care law and that a committee of the kind envisaged by Choudhry is unlikely to contribute significantly to conflict resolution under the MCA. (shrink)

The migration of constitutional ideas across jurisdictions is one of the central features of contemporary constitutional practice. The increasing use of comparative jurisprudence in interpreting constitutions is one example of this. In this 2007 book, leading figures in the study of comparative constitutionalism and comparative constitutional politics from North America, Europe and Australia discuss the dynamic processes whereby constitutional systems influence each other. They explore basic methodological questions which have thus far received little attention, and examine the complex relationship between (...) national and supranational constitutionalism - an issue of considerable contemporary interest in Europe. The migration of constitutional ideas is discussed from a variety of methodological perspectives - comparative law, comparative politics, and cultural studies of law - and contributors draw on case-studies from a wide variety of jurisdictions: Australia, Hungary, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. (shrink)

The ‘best interests’ standard is a highly seductive standard in English law. Not only does it appear to be fairly uncontroversial but it also presents as the most sensible, objective and ‘fair’ method of dealing with decision making on behalf of those who are perceived to be the most vulnerable within society. This article aims to provide a critical appraisal of how the standard has been applied within family law, to outline how the standard is to be applied within healthcare (...) law and, finally, to assess the relevance of the family law experience of the best interests standard to the operation of the standards as envisaged by the MCA. (shrink)

Medical research with children has been the subject of ongoing debate. The reason for controversy is clear. As with research on adults, one must strike a balance between two goals – promoting the health of children through advances in scientific knowledge and protecting child research subjects from exploitation and harm. However, because of their age and relative immaturity, children cannot protect their own interests as well as adult subjects can. Yet as they progress toward adulthood, increasing care must be taken (...) to involve children in decisions that affect them, even to the extent of allowing them to make choices that may have serious and long-term consequences. (shrink)

Medical science brings innovations in patient care at an astounding pace today - new chemotherapeutic agents, coated stents, and minimally invasive surgery are just few recent examples. For physicians, though, the specter of malpractice liability can overshadow the marvel of practicing in this era. Many physicians are working in a volatile liability environment; they face spiraling costs for malpractice insurance, have difficulties purchasing liability coverage at any price, and see record payouts in a growing number of claims against their colleagues. (...) The American Medical Association has declared that at least 20 states are currently in a malpractice “crisis,” with another 24 states showing early signs of an impending crisis.There have been two comparable periods of instability in the last thirty years, but these predecessor crises differ from the current one in important ways. First, while physicians mainly experienced dwindling options for obtaining coverage in the mid-1970s and exorbitant prices in the mid-1980s, the current crisis appears to have elements of both availability and affordability. (shrink)

Medical science brings innovations in patient care at an astounding pace today - new chemotherapeutic agents, coated stents, and minimally invasive surgery are just few recent examples. For physicians, though, the specter of malpractice liability can overshadow the marvel of practicing in this era. Many physicians are working in a volatile liability environment; they face spiraling costs for malpractice insurance, have difficulties purchasing liability coverage at any price, and see record payouts in a growing number of claims against their colleagues. (...) The American Medical Association has declared that at least 20 states are currently in a malpractice “crisis,” with another 24 states showing early signs of an impending crisis.There have been two comparable periods of instability in the last thirty years, but these predecessor crises differ from the current one in important ways. First, while physicians mainly experienced dwindling options for obtaining coverage in the mid-1970s and exorbitant prices in the mid-1980s, the current crisis appears to have elements of both availability and affordability. (shrink)

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

Throughout the world, research ethics committees are relied on to prevent unethical research and protect research subjects. Given that reliance, the composition of committees and the manner in which decisions are arrived at by committee members is of critical importance. There have been Instances in which an inadequate review process has resulted in serious harm to research subjects. Deficient committee review was identified as one of the factors In a study in New Zealand which resulted in the suffering and death (...) of many women diagnosed with carcinoma in situ. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes (...) simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

This chapter develops a perceptual solution to the epistemological problem of other minds, relying on central ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The Merleau-Pontian account is contrasted with another attempted perceptual solution to the other minds problem, and it is argued that only the former meets the phenomenologists' desideratum of providing an alternative to inferential solutions. The chapter also provides responses to various objections to the perceptual solution, including a pair of objections recently put forward by Alec Hyslop.

Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's _Poetics_ is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the _Tractatus Coislinianus_, which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the Poetics, and fragments of Aristotle’s dialogue On Poets, including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time.

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

Study of Hans-Georg Gadamer's and Julius Stenzel's interpretations of Plato.

Treatise, with commentaries, on Navya-Nyāya philosophy.

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre Bayle. (...) Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this debate, and will therefore be essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy and its intelletual context. All the texts are newly translated and extensively annotated; many appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

This new study provides a thorough analysis of the ethical reasoning of doctors and nurses. Based on extensive interviews, Soren Holm's work demonstrates how qualitative research methods can be used to study ethical reasoning, and that the results of such studies are important for normative ethics, that is, the analysis of how health care professionals ought to act.