Following promulgation of the Nuremberg code in 1947, the ethics of research on human subjects has been a challenging and often contentious topic of debate. Escalation in the use of research participants in low-income countries over recent decades , has intensified the debate on the ethics of international research and led to increasing attention both to exploitation of vulnerable subjects and to considerations of how the 10:90 gap in health and medical research could be narrowed. In 2000, prompted by the (...) discussions over several years that led to the US NIH launching a capacity building programme on research ethics for members of research ethics committees in developing countries, we advanced a ‘new look’ for the ethics of international research.1 Since then progress has been made on several fronts.First, our ideas—considered somewhat radical and impractical at the time—have been provocatively addressed by scholars who have either contested them or advanced similar conceptions of what obligations international researchers have to research participants and communities in low income countries before, during and after clinical trials. Second, those researchers who have been sympathetic to our ideas have either endeavoured to put these into practice or have investigated the feasibility of doing so. Third, the intractability of the 10/90 gap and the escalation of interest in global health have sensitised many to the need to amplify the uptake of these ideas in practice.Here, we briefly review the conceptual and practical developments in international research ethics. While much conceptual progress has been made (and the concepts are now appearing …. (shrink)

The blinkered debate on organ donation neglects the widening gap between the developed and developing worldsThe current debate about organ donation and the associated advocacy for selling kidneys, while laudable for its concern about increasing the ability to save the lives of some people with chronic renal failure, is characterised by four features that locate the reasoning process within a narrow and inadequate framework. Firstly, the focus on saving lives is myopic, with the lives of the most privileged in the (...) world receiving most attention. Secondly, the debate is firmly set within a value system in which market values dominate. Thirdly, health is considered from a highly individualistic perspective with little understanding of the importance of social solidarity in health. Finally, a constricted moral vocabulary is used to discuss the ethics of organ sales.MYOPIC CONCERN FOR SAVING LIVESMany articles making pleas for more organs begin by describing the number of people waiting for donated organs, the number of donors who could give organs but are not doing so, and how many lives could be saved if more organs could be made available. Great concern is expressed about a few thousand …. (shrink)

I am very pleased to see the response by J S Taylor to my critique of the “organs debate”. He makes some notable and important points, but also some errors to which attention should be drawn.Taylor erroneously attributes to me concern that the organ debate excessively focuses on saving the lives of a few people. My concern was about the narrow framework within which the debate is embedded and that it focuses on the lives of a few privileged people—those who (...) can pay—while largely neglecting the lives of those who cannot. The fact that some attention has been paid to such issues in some journals does not negate the importance of my claim. Moreover, it is not that the question of millions of premature deaths has …. (shrink)

The military might of the modern era poses devastating threats to humankind. Wars result from struggles for material or ideological power. In this context the probability of flouting agreements made during peaceful times is great. The rights of victims and the rights of medical personnel are vulnerable to State and military momentum in the quest for sovereignty. Scholars, scientists and physicians enjoy little enough influence during times of peace and we should be sanguine about their influence during war. But we (...) also must avoid becoming co-opted by partisan political forces. The universal ideals for which we strive, need to be cherished and kept central in our field of vision if we are to rise above man's basest instincts and if we are to preserve professional integrity, individuality and humanitarian concern for the sanctity of life — even the lives of our foes who are engaged in battle against us. Such compassion also recognizes the coercion implicit in recruiting persons into wars they detest and which pits them against their own image. Man's inhumanity to man, most evident during war, must not be allowed to pervade the sanctuary of medical care. Health professionals must constantly be encouraged to serve humankind with empathy and compassion and great social effort needs to be expended to facilitate this role globally and under all conditions. (shrink)

Conventional and well-established guidelines for the ethical conduct of clinical research are necessary but not sufficient for addressing research dilemmas related to public health research. There is a particular need for a public health ethics framework when, in the face of an epidemic, research is urgently needed to promote the common good. While there is limited experience in the use of a public health ethics framework, the value and potential of such an approach is increasingly being appreciated. Here we use (...) two examples of adolescent women as potential candidates for participation in microbicide trials to illustrate how ethical decisions for public health research can be enhanced by drawing on both traditional research ethics guidance, and the emerging framework for public health ethics. (shrink)

Clinical research has become a burgeoning activity in recent years, largely stimulated by the pharmaceutical industry's interest in new drugs with high marketing profiles. Several other forces fuel this thrust: the increasing dependence of academic medical institutions on research funding from industry; the need for large, efficient multicenter trials to obtain reliable and statistically significant results in the shortest possible time for drug registration purposes; and access to research subjects in countries. The intense interest in HIV/AIDS research and recent controversies (...) about revisions to the Helsinki Declaration, which have been seen by some to be motivated by the desire to facilitate exploitative research in countries, have stimulated renewed interest in the ethics of clinical research. (shrink)

This series of responses was commissioned to accompany the article by Singer et al, which can be found at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/2/1. If you would like to comment on the article by Singer et al or any of the responses, please email us on [email protected].

Since the early 20th century, bioethics in South Africa has moved through several stages, responding to the same forces and developments as elsewhere, for example in the United Kingdom and United States. In addition, some unique developments in South Africa, for example the death of Steve Biko, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a peaceful transition to democracy with increased focus on human rights have given bioethics in South Africa its own dimension. Bioethics in South Africa reflects the general concerns of the (...) field elsewhere, but it also stands at the intersection of the concerns of both developed and developing worlds. Thus, issues such as resource allocation, HIV/AIDS, and medical research take on an urgency and character that reflect South Africa's particular historical, geographical, and social conditions. (shrink)

The most common response to the challenge of protecting health through law is to focus on protecting the rights of vulnerable individuals and to enhance their access to health care. Each one of us is vulnerable or potentially vulnerable because of the fragile, existential nature of the human condition. Catastrophic and unexpected events could instantaneously transform us from a state of total independence and potential vulnerability to one of extreme vulnerability and complete dependence. Some legal provisions have the potential to (...) provide a modicum of protection when we find ourselves in those situations. There are also legal provisions that contribute to beneficial social circumstances; for example, legislation enabling universal access to medical care, and operationalizing respect for the individual’s right to health care, as advocated for by other authors in this issue. (shrink)

D Benatar argues that in the author’s recent article Moral theories in teaching applied ethics, the author overlooked important roles that could be played by moral theories in such teaching. In this reply, the cases that Benatar suggests are considered and for each an alternative approach is suggested that will avoid the costs discussed in the original paper and will also be a more effective response to that particular issue.

David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a harm, and that – for all of us unfortunate enough to have come into existence – it would be better had we never come to be. We contend that if one accepts Benatar’s arguments for the asymmetry between the presence and absence of pleasure and pain, and the poor quality of life, one must also accept that suicide is preferable to continued existence, and that his view therefore implies (...) both anti-natalism and pro-mortalism . This conclusion has been argued for before by Elizabeth Harman – she takes it that because Benatar claims that our lives are ‘awful’, it follows that ‘we would be better off to kill ourselves’ (Harman 2009: 784). Though we agree with Harman’s conclusion, we think that her argument is too quick, and that Benatar’s arguments for non-pro-mortalism deserve more serious consideration than she gives them. We make our case using a tripartite structure. We start by examining the prima facie case for the claim that pro-mortalism follows from Benatar’s position, presenting his response to the contrary, and furthering the dialectic by showing that Benatar’s position is not just that coming into existence is a harm, but that existence itself is a harm. We then look to Benatar’s treatment of the Epicurean line, which is important for him as it undermines his anti-death argument for non-pro-mortalism. We demonstrate that he fails to address the concern that the Epicurean line raises, and that he cannot therefore use the harm of death as an argument for non-pro-mortalism. Finally, we turn to Benatar’s pro-life argument for non-pro-mortalism, built upon his notion of interests, and argue that while the interest in continued existence may indeed have moral relevance, it is almost always irrational. Given that neither Benatar’s anti-death nor pro-life arguments for non-pro-mortalism work, we conclude that pro-mortalism follows from his anti-natalism, As such, if it is better never to have been, then it is better no longer to be. -/- . (shrink)

This volume provides a clear and exhaustive exposition of Buddhist epistemology and logic, based on the works of classical thinkers such as Vasubandhu, Dinnaga,..

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

In 1931 the mathematical logician Kurt Godel published a revolutionary paper that challenged certain basic assumptions underpinning mathematics and logic. A colleague of Albert Einstein, his theorem proved that mathematics was partly based on propositions not provable within the mathematical system and had radical implications that have echoed throughout many fields. A gripping combination of science and accessibility, Godel’s Proof by Nagel and Newman is for both mathematicians and the idly curious, offering those with a taste for logic and philosophy (...) the chance to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. (shrink)

Human-eyelid conditioning was the principal source of information on Pavlovian conditioning, especially human, in the 1950s and 1960s, but it suffered a sharp decline in productivity, beginning in the late 1960s. The present article treats the decline as a case study with potential implications concerning the survival contingencies of research specialties. We make use of questionnaire data from eyelid-conditioning researchers and examine a variety of publication, topic-of-investigation, and institutional data to identify the major factors in the decline of human-eyelid conditioning.

Wisely, the authors begin this book by describing it as a polemic. They argue that most contemporary analytic metaphysics is a waste of time and resources since contemporary ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysical theorizing cannot hope to attain objective truth given its penchant for making a priori claims about the nature of the world which are backed up by appeal to intuition. In engaging in this activity, metaphysicians have, the authors claim, abandoned hope of locating any interesting connection between their metaphysical pronouncements and (...) how our best empirical theories describe the world. Moreover, the success attained by empirical science just cannot be matched by metaphysical theorizing and so, faced with this asymmetry, empirical science wins: a priori metaphysical theorizing must give way to a naturalistic form of metaphysics, a positive account of which the authors attempt to elucidate in the second and third, rather lengthy chapters of the book.The first chapter consists of a statement of the authors’ negative view, a vigorous, sustained and sometimes withering attack upon contemporary a priori metaphysics. Most ire is reserved for those who indulge in what the authors call ‘pseudo-scientific metaphysics’; that is, those who pay lip service to keeping their metaphysical speculation in tune with physics, only to constrain their ontology in such a way that the entities and processes within it do not even play a role in current physical theory, or are in straightforward contradiction with it. Much philosophy of science and scientific metaphysics is too superficial and simplistic to deserve the name and bears more relation to ‘the philosophy of “A” Level chemistry’. The guilty in this respect include David Lewis, Jaegwon Kim, Jonathan Lowe, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, Crawford Elder, Trenton Merricks among …. (shrink)

The discovery of selective associability of cues in classical conditioning has often been treated as an embarrassment to Pavlov, because he has been represented as a proponent of the "equivalence of associability of cues." According to that doctrine, except for the influence of differences in stimulus intensity, all environmental stimuli are equally susceptible to becoming conditioned stimuli if they are arranged in a suitable time-relation to any effective unconditioned stimulus . The current paper asks whether Pavlov explicitly made such a (...) claim and, if not, whether he could have endorsed equivalence of associability. Scientific controversy, the role that "the classics" play in scientific specialties, and the emblematic standing of the founding figures of a discipline or specialty constitute a framework for discussion of Pavlov's stand on the equivalence of associability. (shrink)

From its earliest beginnings, American conditioning research using human subjects had to deal with the possibility that subjects might voluntarily control the reaction that the experimenter attempts to condition, with the result that voluntary control contaminates the study of conditioning in humans. A preliminary solution to the problem was achieved around 1940, ending the time frame of this survey. This article provides an historical survey of the conceptual background of the opposition of volition and reflexes; describes manifestations of the problem (...) in conditioning research; and critically examines earlier efforts to solve the problem as well as the presumptive solution that disposed of the issue by 1940. Lessons from this story are adduced. (shrink)

The operation of voluntary processes can contaminate the study of Pavlovian conditioned responses in humans. The problem of voluntary control had apparently been solved by about 1940, particularly in human eyelid conditioning. Nonetheless, the problem returned in the early 1950s, calling forth a variety of methodological procedures for removing voluntary responses and/or voluntary-responding subjects from eyelid-conditioning data. During the 1960s, disagreement arose regarding the efficiency and comparability of alternative data-correction procedures; the rationale for data-correction; and whether, and under what experimental (...) conditions, eyelid-conditioning data ought to be corrected for voluntary responding. Circumstances that supported voluntary-response methodology are described, and points at which the methodology conflicted with the technical background of Pavlovian conditioning are noted. A diagnosis is offered for the failure, between 1950 and 1980, to solve again the problem of volition. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at the First International Conference on "Buddhism and National Cultures", held at Delhi in 1984.

Lectures delivered in Sheth Shri Popatlal Hemchand Adhyatma vyakhyanamala, organized by B.J. Institute of Learning and Research with special references to Jaina doctrines and philosophy.