Large-scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) studies promise to revolutionize cancer research by identifying targets for therapy and by discovering molecular biomarkers to aid early diagnosis, to better determine prognosis and to improve treatment response prediction. Such projects raise a number of ethical, legal, and social (ELS) issues that should be considered. In this study, we set out to discover how these issues are being handled across different jurisdictions.

While the realm of bioethics has traditionally focused on the rights of the individual and held autonomy as a defining principle, public health ethics has at its core a commitment to the promotion of the common good. While these two domains may at times conflict, concepts arising in one may also be informative for concepts arising in the other. One example of this is the concept of a “right not to know.” Recent debate suggests that just as there is a (...) “right to know” information about one's genetic status, there is a parallel “right not to know” when it comes to genetic information that if communicated, could be detrimental to an individual's social or psychological well-being. As new genetic technologies continue to change the nature of genetic testing and screening, it is crucial that normative frameworks to guide and assess genetic public health initiatives be developed. In this context, the question of whether a “right not to know” may also be said to exist for populations on a public health level merits attention. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the concept of a “right not to know” on a population rather than individual level. We argue that a population level “right not to know” is a useful concept for helping to define the appropriate boundaries of public engagement initiatives in the emerging public health genomics context.

In this book, Newell makes the case for unified theories by setting forth a candidate.

The Resilience Scale for Adolescents is a highly rated scale for measuring protective factors of resilience. Even though the READ has been validated in several different cultural samples, no studies have validated the READ across samples in German from Switzerland and Germany. The purpose of this study was to explore the construct validity of the German READ version in two samples from two different countries and to test the measurement invariance between those two samples. A German sample and a German-speaking (...) Swiss sample of seventh graders completed the READ, Hopkins Symptom Checklist, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale. The expected negative correlations between READ and HSCL-25 and the positive correlations between RSE, self-efficacy, and SWL were supported. Furthermore, the results of the measurement invariance demonstrated that the originally proposed five-dimensional structure is equal in the German and Swiss samples, and it can be assumed that the same construct was assessed by excluding one item. The five-factor, 27-item solution is a valid and reliable self-report measure of protective factors between two German-speaking samples. (shrink)

This masterful work on Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason explores Kant's treatment of the Idea of God, his views concerning evil, and the moral grounds for faith in God. Kant and Religion works to deepen our understanding of religion's place and meaning within the history of human culture, touching on Kant's philosophical stance regarding theoretical, moral, political, and religious matters. Wood's breadth of knowledge of Kant's corpus, philosophical sharpness, and depth of reflection sheds light not only on (...) Kant, but also on the fate of religion and its relation to philosophy in the modern world. (shrink)

Recent democratic theorists have drawn on the work of the late Pierre Bourdieu to make the case that patterned inequalities in the social capacity to engage in deliberation can undermine deliberative theory’s democratic promise. They have proposed a range of deliberative democratic responses to the problem of cultural inequality, from enabling the marginalised to adopt the communicative dispositions of the dominant, to broadening the standards that define legitimate deliberation, to strengthening deliberative counter‐publics. The author interprets Bourdieu’s theory of the linguistic (...) habitus to prompt an even more radical critique of deliberative democracy than these theorists acknowledge, one to which the proposed solutions fail adequately to respond. Her argument suggests that empirical work on deliberative democracy should expand to address specifically the problems of cultural inequality that Bourdieu’s work highlights. (shrink)

Delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, both by psychiatrists and by lay people. In “Double Bookkeeping and Doxasticism about Delusion,” Porcher formulates and assesses two kinds of arguments against doxasticism about delusions, the theoretical stance according to which delusions are a kind of belief. Those arguments, which Porcher calls “the argument from action guidance and the argument from phenomenology” are motivated by a phenomenon sometimes associated with delusions: double bookkeeping, a kind of ambivalence of patients, who (...) “often appear to be living in two parallel but separate worlds: consensual reality and the realm of their hallucinations and delusions” (Sass, 1994, p.... (shrink)

O PAPEL DA CRÍTICA HERMENÊUTICA DO DIREITO: SOBRE AS RELAÇÕES ENTRE FILOSOFIA, TEORIA DO DIREITO E A ATUAÇÃO DO JUDICIÁRIO.

What happens when humans and birds engage each other through a collaboration-as-fantasy mediated by computers? Could such an exercise be modelled in a way that helps us to transcend the techno-ocularcentric fetishes for precision and certainty which demarcate our time? From Edgar Wind’s notion of 'incarnation' – as the place where empirical experience and metaphysical foundation meet in the single cognitive and experiential act – this article bridges the analogue with the digital, navigating nature’s strategies to embody inherited and learned (...) complex behaviours in the design of nests, in what I call data-nests. (shrink)

L’article analyse la grève des camionneurs au Brésil, à partir de la centralité de la logistique en tant que terrain de lutte et d’accumulation dans le capitalisme contemporain. Dans le cas du Brésil, l’interruption complète de la provision d’intrants de base et l’occupation de routes dans tout le pays signifiaient la fin d’un cycle politico-économique basé sur la fausse alternative entre le néolibéralisme et le développementisme progressiste. La lutte des camionneurs, bien que ambiguë et contradictoire, révèle l’urgence pour nouvelles formes (...) de protection sociale et concrète, de valorisation des revenus et de la vie dans le cadre des luttes de la logistique. (shrink)

Epistemic akrasia arises when one holds a belief even though one judges it to be irrational or unjustified. While there is some debate about whether epistemic akrasia is possible, this paper will assume for the sake of argument that it is in order to consider whether it can be rational. The paper will show that it can. More precisely, cases can arise in which both the belief one judges to be irrational and one’s judgment of it are epistemically rational in (...) the sense that both are supported by sufficient evidence. (shrink)

This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophersabout the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding oflife.

This book articulates a systematic vision of an international legal system grounded in the commitment to justice for all persons. It provides a probing exploration of the moral issues involved in disputes about secession, ethno-national conflict, "the right of self-determination of peoples," human rights, and the legitimacy of the international legal system itself. Buchanan advances vigorous criticisms of the central dogmas of international relations and international law, arguing that the international legal system should make justice, not simply peace among states, (...) a primary goal, and rejecting the view that it is permissible for a state to conduct its foreign policies exclusively according to what is in the "national interest." He also shows that the only alternatives are not rigid adherence to existing international law or lawless chaos in which the world's one superpower pursues its own interests without constraints. This book not only criticizes the existing international legal order, but also offers morally defensible and practicable principles for reforming it. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination will find a broad readership in political science, international law, and political philosophy. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines the value of advance (...) directives, and investigates the role that considerations of cost ought to play in decisions concerning incompetents. Part II applies this theoretical framework to the distinctive problems of three important classes of individuals, many of whom are incompetent: minors, the elderly and psychiatric patients. The authors' approach combines a probing analysis of fundamental issues in ethical theory with a sensitive awareness of the concrete realities of health care institutions and the highly personal and individual character of difficult practical problems. Its broad scope will appeal to health professionals, moral philosophers and lawyers alike. (shrink)

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

Since Norbert Wiener presented a new research field called the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine, the biological and the artificial universes are each time more integrated as pieces of a game that involves science, philosophy, technology, arts, architecture and several other fields. It is astonishing to take a look at an imaginary non-linear timeline where it is possible to see the ancient Ars Mnemonica inspiring the Leibniz combinatoria and how all these virtual knowledge structures (...) inspired the development of a communication and control machine called the computer. A machine that is quite an exploded black box artificial systems integrated into biological systems in a cybernetic structure through which most diverse kinds of information flows. We are living in times in which the logic of this machine becomes the core of our post-biological era in its essence, the era in which the biological and artificial realms are immersed in one another. An era in which we see [] humans in fact integrating with the fiction of their imagination as conjured up digitally by the computer, and in which the digital arts emanating from the cosmology of number are also a link between digital finality and infinity imagination, defending man in his impossibility to be simulated (Weibel 1999: 222). Considering this panorama in the contemporary artistic context, it could be stimulating to think about interactive digital art installations as systems in which the elements are both organic and artificial, both physical and virtual, interconnected like they were performing a cybernetic ballet. The aim of the present research is to study this choreography using the complex sciences framework. Following this objective, a series of parameters based on systemic measures of organization and complexity were structured. Our intention is, obviously, not to say that the work of art is more or less systemic, more or less complex or organized, but to help in understanding and to conceive the installation as a system: a complex adaptive system (CAS). (shrink)

Despite the entangled universe cannot be considered merely as an enormously complex system, as it is reactive to actions and observations, references on quantum entanglement in living systems may help find ways in which quantum effects can move from the microscopic to the macroscopic, in realms where the mind/brain behave as a quantum object and is sensitive to the dynamic state of the entire universe. Taking up vision from a synaesthetic perspective as a perfusion of senses, and putting together a (...) myriad of references around this perception phenomenon, the idea is to work in the building of artistic experiences where vision takes up a tactile function, emerging from a tension between the movements governed by the interaction of the attractors. (shrink)

We are mastering engineering behaviour on a molecular level. A growing number of researches investigating the relationship between microbiota, human brain and behaviour examine the impacts of manipulating specific microbial colonies in human hosts. To enable discussing and understanding communicational phenomena that occur in scales not visible to the naked eye, we propose the term Molmedia – a metaphorical reference to the concept of mole, denoting here not exclusively the quantitative amount of substance but the information exchange processes (taking the (...) substances as messages) that are going on at elementary entities level such as atomic, subatomic and molecular, within a given system that can be a living organism. We take media (plural of medium) as an intervening agency, means or instrument. Interacting emitters and receivers in this system are the microbiota and the organism actual cells. Within this self-organizing structure, the ongoing informational processes produce, as an emergence, the self and behavioral patterns that can be appreciated, manipulated and cannibalized. The art and science installation Transplanting the Self: Microbiome Anthropophagy is presented as an explorative exercise of the concept and related possibilities in science concerning gut–brain communication and the use of neuroregenerative nutrition in treatments for neurologic conditions. (shrink)

In Beyond Humanity a leading philosopher offers a powerful and controversial exploration of urgent ethical issues concerning human enhancement.

Despite the significant contribution of cognitive-behavioral therapy to effective treatment options for specific syndromes, treatment progress has been stagnating, with response rates plateauing over the past several years. This stagnation has led clinical researchers to call for an approach that instead focuses on processes of change and the individual in their particular context. Process-based therapy is a general approach representing a model of models, grounded in evolution science, with an emphasis on idiographic methods, network models of case conceptualization, and enhancing (...) wellbeing. In this paper, we describe the theory underlying PBT and present a case study for how to apply PBT tools and principles to deliver process-informed and person-centered evidence-based treatment. In addition, we discuss lessons learned from our case and provide suggestions for future considerations when implementing PBT in clinical settings. (shrink)

Four instances of how science fiction contributes to the elucidation of novelty in the context of discovery are considered by extending existing discussions on temporal and use-novelty. In the first instance, science fiction takes an already well-known theory and produces its own re-interpretation; in the second instance, the scientific account is usually straightforward and whatever novelty that may occur would be more along the lines of how the science is deployed to extra-scientific matters; in the third instance, science fiction takes (...) an idea that appears impossible within the delimitations of reality and produces a universe where such a possibility becomes feasible; and in the fourth instance, science fiction extends from an idea already known at the time of the work’s production to simulate a possibility that could emerge should the extension be experimentally viable. However, the article will not end with a mere evaluation of these instances, but also proposes instances on how science fiction could contribute to new ways of experiencing, discerning, and working with scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Recently, Australia became the second jurisdiction worldwide to legalize the use of mitochondrial donation technology. The Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve’s Law) Bill 2021 allows individuals with a family history of mitochondrial disease to access assisted reproductive techniques that prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Using inductive content analysis, we assessed submissions sent to the Senate Committee as part of a programme of scientific inquiry and public consultation that informed drafting of the Bill. These submissions discussed a range of bioethical (...) and legal considerations of central importance to the political debate. Significantly, submissions from those with a first-hand experience of mitochondrial disease, including clinicians and those with a family history of mitochondrial disease, were in strong support of this legislation. Those in support of the Bill commended the two-staged approach and rigorous licencing requirements as part of the Bill’s implementation strategy. Submissions which outlined arguments against the legislation either opposed the use of these techniques in general or opposed aspects of the implementation strategy in Australia. These findings offer a window into the ethical arguments and perspectives that matter most to those Australians who took part in the Senate inquiry into mitochondrial donation. The insights garnered from these submissions may be used to help refine policy and guidelines as the field progresses. (shrink)

This article explores the category of biopolitics through the use Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben make of two Greek words, bios and ōē. In particular, I argue that the separation of bios and ōē as introduced in Homo Sacer has no "natural" nor "lingual" relevance. The exposition of such a fabulous antinomy simply ruins the historical matter of Agamben's discourse on biopolitics. Here, Esposito's research could be read as an attempt to found the category of biopolitics anew without repeating the (...) fiction of a bifurcation between ōē and bios. However, Esposito, in his own celebration of biopower, undermines the very power of language and, thus, ignores the variation of the invariant that is history. Esposito's and Agamben's difficulties lead us back to the possible ambition of all politics to absorb all life, as it was already expressed by Aristotle. In this sense, "modern biopolitics" becomes a case study for the totalitarian temptation of political order. (shrink)

" Barry Allen shows what truth has come to mean in the philosophical tradition, what is wrong with many of the ways of conceiving truth, and why philosophers ...

Steven Pinker has said that one of the most important questions humans can ask of themselves is whether moral progress has occurred or is likely to occur. Buchanan and Powell here address that question, in order to provide the first naturalistic, empirically-informed and analytically sophisticated theory of moral progress--explaining the capacities in the human brain that allow for it, the role of the environment, and how contingent and fragile moral progress can be.

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)