The development of clinical ethic support in the UK arguably brings with it a series of legal questions, which need to be addressed. Most particularly, these concern questions of due process and formal justice, which I argue are central to the provision of appropriate ethical advice. In this article, I will compare the UK position with the more developed system in the USA, which often provides a template for development in the UK. While it is not argued that the provision (...) of clinical ethics support in the UK will necessarily follow the path mapped in the USA, there are lessons that can be learned from the US experience – particularly in terms of attention to process – from which UK clinical ethics support service might well benefit. (shrink)

The so-called genetics revolution rests on a history which at its least can be described as controversial. Modern genetics needs to bear this history in mind. In particular, as with the past, the area of reproductive choice seems particularly vulnerable to potential abuse. Courts in the UK and elsewhere have already shown themselves willing to interfere with the choices of women in the management of their pregnancies. Medical advance, perhaps particularly the capacity to visualise the developing foetus, has added complexity (...) to the question of whether the health care provider has one patient or two patients . Additionally, pregnancy is thoroughly monitored in modern medical practice and genetics may provide a further impetus or incentive to mandate increased policing of pregnancy. Gene therapy, once offered, will add further to the desire to ensure that women make the ‘right’ choice, especially when the invasion required is relatively minimal. Further, genetic information is at best predictive, but may, because of its scientific nature, appear to those receiving it to be certain. Thus, the provision of genetic information may reduce rather than enhance choice, unless carefully and sensitively provided. A mature and sophisticated debate about the role of genetics in reproduction is required—engaging rather than bypassing the public—if the real potential of genetics is to be vindicated. (shrink)

From Hippocrates to paternalism to autonomy : the new hegemony -- From autonomy to consent -- Consent, autonomy, and the law -- Autonomy at the end of life -- Autonomy and pregnancy -- Autonomy and genetic information -- Autonomy and organ transplantation -- Autonomy, consent, and the law.

Topics discussed in this work are abortion, euthanasia, medical negligence and human experimentation.

The system of clinical ethics committees (CECs) in the United Kingdom is based on goodwill. No formal requirements exist as to constitution, membership, range of expertise or the status of their recommendations. Healthcare professionals are not obliged to use CECs where they exist, nor to follow any advice received. In addition, the make-up of CECs suggests that ethics itself may be under-represented. In most cases, there is one member with a training in ethics – the rest are healthcare professionals or (...) administrators, although a lawyer is generally also included in the membership. This begs the question as whether CECs can ‘do ethics’, as well whether or not they can take seriously the requirements of due process, formal justice and human rights. Moreover, the role of the patient in this system is opaque. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation - the transfer of living tissue between species - has long been heralded as a potential solution to the severe organ shortage crisis experienced by the United Kingdom and other 'developed' nations. However, the significant risks which accompany this biotechnology led the United Kingdom to adopt a cautious approach to its regulation, with the establishment of a non-departmental public body - UKXIRA - to oversee the development of this technology on a national basis. In December 2006 UKXIRA was quietly (...) disbanded and replaced with revised guidance, which entrusts the regulation of xenotransplantation largely to research ethics committees. In this article we seek to problematize this new regulatory framework, arguing that specialist expertise and national oversight are necessary components of an adequate regulatory framework for a biotechnology which poses new orders of risk, challenges the adequacy of traditional understandings of autonomy and consent, and raises significant animal welfare concerns. We argue for a more considered and holistic approach, based on adequate consultation, to regulating biotechnological developments in the United Kingdom. (shrink)

The rapidly changing face of modern medicine and the increasing involvement of public debate in its practice, are reflected in the wide range of contributions to this book, which takes a searching look at the issues which are currently at the forefront of modern debate in medical ethics and the law.

Issues surrounding the end of life, and in particular questions of patient choice, have seldom been so high on the legal, ethical and political agenda. This book examines these issues from a comparative perspective, drawing conclusions about the role of the doctor, the individual and the law-makers in this moral minefield.

pt. 1. Background you need. -- What is brain-compatible teaching -- The old and new of it -- When brain research is applied to the classroom everything will change -- Change can be easy -- We're not in Kansas anymore -- Where's the proof -- Tools for exploring the brain -- Ten reasons to care about brain research -- The evolution of brain models -- Be a brain-smart consumer: recognizing good research -- Action or theory: who wants to read all (...) that research -- Excellent sources of research -- Fun factoids on the brain -- What's in the human brain -- Brain teaser -- The brain divided -- The brain connected -- Brain geography -- Brain "cell" ebration: far-out facts about brain cells -- Learning happens but how -- Are today's kids different -- Boy's and girl's brain differences -- Learning disabilities; different brains -- The cranial soup bowl: understanding the chemicals in our brains -- pt. 2. The foundation for teaching is principles, not strategies. What are the principles -- Principle 1: the principle of change: brain is dynamic, not fixed -- Principle 2: the principle of variety: all brains are unique -- Principle 3: the principle of developmental sensitivity -- Principle 4: the principle of interaction: we have a social brain -- Principle 5: the principle of connectivity: the brain is an integrated system of systems -- Principle 6: the principle of memory malleability -- Principle 7: the principle of resource consumption -- necessity for processing -- pt. 3. So what; now what. Asking big questions: what's in a brain-compatible curriculum -- Brain-compatible test-taking success strategies -- Systemic change: the next level -- Big picture analysis: transformation happens -- Action research makes a difference -- The learning community -- What's next. (shrink)

A medical profession which did not seek improved means to conquer disease would be condemned for dereliction of its duty, Members of the public will not accept the current state of the medical arts as finite but feel justified in expecting the development of more effective therapies for illness, and the promotion of improved means of preventive care.With this assertion, the distinguished academic, Bernard Dickens, places research firmly in the domain of the public interest. Foster agrees, saying that, “[t]o improve (...) medical care as much as we can, if not to perfect it, means that we have to accept the need for research.” Giesen adds a further emphasis to the search for medical advancements, saying that “freedom of research and scientific inquiry is, in itself, an important aspect of open societies.“. (shrink)

A medical profession which did not seek improved means to conquer disease would be condemned for dereliction of its duty, Members of the public will not accept the current state of the medical arts as finite but feel justified in expecting the development of more effective therapies for illness, and the promotion of improved means of preventive care.With this assertion, the distinguished academic, Bernard Dickens, places research firmly in the domain of the public interest. Foster agrees, saying that, “[t]o improve (...) medical care as much as we can, if not to perfect it, means that we have to accept the need for research.” Giesen adds a further emphasis to the search for medical advancements, saying that “freedom of research and scientific inquiry is, in itself, an important aspect of open societies.“. (shrink)

The so-called genetics revolution rests on a history which at its least can be described as controversial. Modern genetics needs to bear this history in mind. In particular, as with the past, the area of reproductive choice seems particularly vulnerable to potential abuse. Courts in the UK and elsewhere have already shown themselves willing to interfere with the choices of women in the management of their pregnancies. Medical advance, perhaps particularly the capacity to visualise the developing foetus, has added complexity (...) to the question of whether the health care provider has one patient or two patients. Additionally, pregnancy is thoroughly monitored in modern medical practice and genetics may provide a further impetus or incentive to mandate increased policing of pregnancy. Gene therapy, once offered, will add further to the desire to ensure that women make the ‘right’ choice, especially when the invasion required is relatively minimal. Further, genetic information is at best predictive, but may, because of its scientific nature, appear to those receiving it to be certain. Thus, the provision of genetic information may reduce rather than enhance choice, unless carefully and sensitively provided. A mature and sophisticated debate about the role of genetics in reproduction is required—engaging rather than bypassing the public—if the real potential of genetics is to be vindicated. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis report on end‐of‐life decision‐making in Canada was produced by an international expert panel and commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada. It consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 reviews what is known about end‐of‐life care and opinions about assisted dying in Canada.Chapter 2 reviews the legal status quo in Canada with regard to various forms of assisted death.Chapter 3 reviews ethical issues pertaining to assisted death. The analysis is grounded in core values central to Canada's constitutional order.Chapter 4 reviews the (...) experiences had in a number of jurisdictions that have decriminalized or recently reviewed assisted dying in some shape or form.Chapter 5 provides recommendations with regard to the provision of palliative care in Canada, as well as recommendations for reform with respect to the various forms of assisted death covered in this document. (shrink)

La relacion entre la etica y la medicina tiene una larga historia y tradicion que se puede remontar hasta la Grecia, China e India clasicas. La relacion entre ambas disciplinas es muy intensa porque la pregunta etica sobre el que debo hacer se aplica sobre la pregunta medica sobre que es mejor para la salud y el bienestar de una persona. Los textos que componen este libro tienen como hilo conductor el principio de autonomia. Este principio implica que las elecciones (...) individuales de planes de vida son valiosas y, por lo tanto, el Estado no debe interferir en ellas (dimension negativa) y debe disenar instituciones que faciliten la persecucion individual de estos planes de vida (dimension positiva). En los textos se observa que este enfoque eminentemente subjetivo se enfrenta a un enfoque colectivo (dimension relacional) que recuerda que las decisiones individuales se adoptan y repercuten positiva y negativamente en un entorno social. Este enfrentamiento permitiria observar que las elecciones individuales solo tienen un valor prima facie, pudiendose en algunos justificar limites mas amplios. (shrink)

Title: Medicine, Morals, and the LawPublisher: Gower Pub CoISBN: 0566005336Author: Sheila McLean and Gerry MaherTitle: Reproductive EthicsPublisher: Prentice HallISBN: 0137739044Author: Michael BaylesTitle: Ethics of Withdrawal of Life-Support SystemsPublisher: Praeger PaperbackISBN: 0275927105Author: Douglas N. Walton.

The power of technology? -- Risk and responsibility? -- The ethical anatomy of disasters? -- Remaking nature? -- Tinkering with humans? -- Information's wild frontiers? -- Whose knowledge, whose property? -- Reclaiming the future? -- The ethics of invention?

What might become of anthropology if it were to suspend its sometime claims to be a social science? What if it were to turn instead to exploring its affinities with art and literature as a mode of engaged creative practice carried forward in a world heterogeneously composed of humans and other than humans? Stuart McLean claims that anthropology stands to learn most from art and literature not as "evidence" to support explanations based on an appeal to social context or (...) history but as modes of engagement with the materiality of expressive media--including language--that always retain the capacity to disrupt or exceed the human projects enacted through them. At once comparative in scope and ethnographically informed, Fictionalizing Anthropology draws on an eclectic range of sources, including ancient Mesopotamian myth, Norse saga literature, Hesiod, Lucretius, Joyce, Artaud, and Lispector, as well as film, multimedia, and performance art, along with the concept of "fabulation" (the making of fictions capable of intervening in and transforming reality) developed in the writings of Bergson and Deleuze. Sharing with proponents of anthropology's recent "ontological turn," McLean insists that experiments with language and form are a performative means of exploring alternative possibilities of collective existence, new ways of being human and other than human, and that such experiments must therefore be indispensable to anthropology's engagement with the contemporary world. (shrink)

As support for clinical ethics committees in the UK grows, care must be taken to define their function, membership and method of working and the status of their decisions.The modern practice of medicine raises a plethora of complex issues—medical, ethical and legal. Doctors and other healthcare professionals increasingly must try to resolve these and may sometimes have to do so in the face of contrary opinion expressed by patients and/or their surrogates. While clearly qualified in the medical arena, and although (...) there is now more ethics teaching in the medical curriculum, healthcare professionals are seldom qualified to adjudicate on ethical or legal matters, or even, perhaps, to recognise them when they arise. Yet, as Doyal says, “clinical life must go on and moral and legal indeterminacy within medicine cries out for practical resolution.”1 Meanwhile, the expectations of patients and their families—and, indeed, of wider society—are that decisions about patient care, resources and therapeutic regimes should be soundly based on appropriate ethicolegal, as well as scientific, principle.Recognition of these additional burdens on healthcare professionals has generated some interest in the provision of ethics consultation. In the USA this has been undertaken by a variety of tribunals and individuals. Hospital ethics committees and ethics consultants feature in many US hospitals and perform a variety of roles. In Europe, a number of countries have also established clinical ethics committees and they are becoming more common in the UK—primarily in England and Wales for the moment. Whereas, however, “[i]n North America, CECs have … become an integral part of the organisational infrastructure of hospitals ...”,1 in the United Kingdom they remain essentially ad hoc bodies, generated for a variety of reasons and with different goals, structures, membership, methods of working and functions. The initial impetus for the …. (shrink)

Dreamscapes of Modernity offers the first book-length treatment of sociotechnical imaginaries, a concept originated by Sheila Jasanoff and developed in close collaboration with Sang-Hyun Kim to describe how visions of scientific and technological progress carry with them implicit ideas about public purposes, collective futures, and the common good. The book presents a mix of case studies—including nuclear power in Austria, Chinese rice biotechnology, Korean stem cell research, the Indonesian Internet, US bioethics, global health, and more—to illustrate how the concept (...) of sociotechnical imaginaries can lead to more sophisticated understandings of the national and transnational politics of science and technology. A theoretical introduction sets the stage for the contributors’ wide-ranging analyses, and a conclusion gathers and synthesizes their collective findings. The book marks a major theoretical advance for a concept that has been rapidly taken up across the social sciences and promises to become central to scholarship in science and technology studies. (shrink)

The rapid rise of varieties of historicism in Germany, during the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and subsequently in England and America, resulted in a radical transformation of the principles of coherence and methods of analysis within biblical studies.1This paper will argue that the foundational ‘subject/object’ metaphysics of historicism has been subverted over the past century. For this reason, historical positivism should no longer be accorded the status of ‘normative paradigm’ and ‘gatekeeper’ over and against other interpretive approaches. This paper next (...) lays out five principles for a renewed practice of historical inquiry. It argues, first, that historical inquiry continues to serve a vital function within biblical studies in its ability to call attention to historical difference, and, thereby, to contribute to a strategy of resistance to ideology and to totalizing theories; second, that the traditional appeal to historical ‘context’ and ‘author’ in the interpretation of texts continues to be a useful practice – despite the provisional and constructed nature of both – as a way of taking into account extra-lingual reference and of avoiding presentism; third, that the substitution of new ‘grand narratives’ of Christian origins in place of the (quasi-theological) ‘historical’ narrative of traditional Christianity – under the claim of historical objectivity – should be abandoned because the very concept of ‘origins’ is the result of a literalizing of a metaphor. Such totalizing narratives always reduce history's inherent polycentricism. Fourth, I will argue that the continued use of historicism in the antiquarian attempt to reconstruct the past, disconnected from both a quest for social justice and a desire for personal self-creation, represents a form of thought that alienates scholars from themselves and from their real material contexts. Finally, and following on the previous point, this paper submits that the practice of historical analysis has an ethical dimension by virtue of the fact that the personhood of the biblical historian is indissolubly linked to other dimensions of life including the social and ethical aspects of life. These added dimensions complicate the making of choices, which is implicit within all practices of interpretation. These five principles are here suggested as points of departure for the reconceptualization of the scope and function of historical inquiry within the discipline of New Testament studies. (shrink)

_Explores the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings._ Editing has been called the language of cinema, and thus a film’s ending can be considered the final punctuation mark of this language, framing everything that came before and offering the key to both our interpretation and our enjoyment of a film. In _Cinematic Cuts_, scholars explore the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings, analyzing how film endings engage our fantasies of cheating death, finding true love, or determining (...) the meaning of life. They examine how endings offer various forms of enjoyment for the spectator, from the momentary fulfillment of desire in the happy ending to the pleasurable torment of an indeterminate ending. The contributors also consider how film endings open onto larger questions relating to endings in our time. They suggest how a film ending’s hidden counternarrative can be read as a political act, how our interpretation of a film ending parallels the end of a psychoanalytical session, how film endings reveal our anxieties and fears, and how cinema itself might end with the increasing intervention of digital technologies that reorient the spectator’s sense of temporality and closure. Films by Akira Kurosawa, Lars von Trier, Joon-Hwan Jang, Claire Denis, Christopher Nolan, Jane Campion, John Huston, and Spike Jonze, among others, are discussed. (shrink)

An important function of the self is to identify external objects that are potentially personally relevant. We suggest that such objects may be identified through mere ownership. Extant research suggests that encoding information in a self-relevant context enhances memory , thus an experiment was designed to test the impact of ownership on memory performance. Participants either moved or observed the movement of picture cards into two baskets; one of which belonged to self and one which belonged to another participant. A (...) subsequent recognition test revealed that there was a significant memory advantage for objects that were owned by self. Acting on items had no impact on memory. Results are discussed with reference to the importance of self-object associations in cognition. (shrink)

Building on recent theories ofscience in society, such as that provided bythe `Mode 2' framework, this paper argues thatgovernments should reconsider existingrelations among decision-makers, experts, andcitizens in the management of technology.Policy-makers need a set of ` technologies ofhumility' for systematically assessing theunknown and the uncertain. Appropriate focalpoints for such modest assessments are framing,vulnerability, distribution, and learning.

In the past twenty years, the field of science and technology studies (S&TS) has made considerable progress toward illuminating the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power. These insights have not yet been synthesized or presented in a form that systematically highlights the connections between S&TS and other social sciences. This timely collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field attempts to fill that gap. The book develops the theme of "co-production", showing how scientific knowledge both (...) embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. Accordingly, the authors argue, ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it. Through studies of emerging knowledges, research practices and political institutions, the authors demonstrate that the idiom of co-production importantly extends the vocabulary of the traditional social sciences, offering fresh analytic perspectiveson the nexus of science, power and culture. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: An Introduction to Motherhood – Philosophy for Everyone Notes.

Though feminists are correct to note that conventional standards of sexiness are oppressive, we argue that feminism should reclaim sexiness rather than reject it. We argue for an aesthetic and ethical practice of working to shift from conventional attributions of sexiness to respectful attributions, in which embodied sexual subjects are appreciated in their full individual magnificence. We argue that undertaking this practice is an ethical obligation, since it contributes to the full recognition of others’ humanity. We discuss the relationship of (...) ethical to aesthetic considerations and argue that the respectful notion of sexiness is a genuinely aesthetic one, even though it does not involve assessment in relation to standards. (shrink)

Individual, family, economic, and other forms of people suffering impact organizations. Suffering in the workplace is probably a more common occurrence than expected in everyday life, and opposite to health and employee wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization, 300 million people worldwide struggle with depression and close to 800.000 people die due to suicide every year. The European Survey on Working Conditions in the European Union gathers the most varied aspects of working conditions, such as the duration of the (...) working day, relationships between collaborators in organizations, or healthy work habits. Among the results of that survey it is noteworthy that almost half of the close to twenty-two thousand workers surveyed in the 27 member countries stated that they felt uneasiness due to the conditions of their work. (shrink)

No thinker in the modern world has laid the way for the development of philosophy so influentially as Immanuel Kant, and it is hard to think of the philosophy of education without some sense of Kant in the background. Yet simplified exegeses and synoptic accounts abound, making for a' picture that readily succumbs to caricature. Interpreting Kant for Education exposes the errors in this picture. Through a spiralling series of arguments, Sheila Webb dismantles the sclerotic dualisms of fact and (...) value, subject and object, and body and mind that have done so much to hamper appreciation of Kant and to harm education. This ground-breaking work in the philosophy of education allows a reappraisal of Kant; it plays its part in the reengagement with Kant in the wider analytic tradition and provides a secure footing for better research and practice in education. (shrink)

Are children the passive recipients of influence from their parents and from society? Is their development determined by their genes and their neurons, or do they have the capacity to think about and influence their own lives and the world around them? How does their interaction with their social and material worlds support or hinder agency? Arechildren agents, and what do we mean by agency? Children as Agents in Their Worlds aims to answer these questions through a critical psychological and (...) relational approach, while referencing and critiquing a wide range of perspectives from otherdisciplinesincludingsociology, anthropology and education. Greene and Nixon review the pioneering work of scholars of childhood studies and current post-human theories of agency and offer a developmental perspective on the emergence of the sense ofagency and the exercise of agencyin children. They discuss key themes includingagency in families, agency within the school context and with peers, and children as agents in the wider public sphere. They explore agency and diversity, examining sex, age, genetic inheritance and contextual sources of difference, such as social class and geographical location. Offering a stronger theoretical base for research and policy, through a synthesis of both psychological and relational theories,Children as Agents in Their Worlds will be essential reading for students and professionals in developmental psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as education, childhood studies, children⁰́₉s rights and related fields. (shrink)

A team of eminent practitioners and writers contribute to an assessment of the philosophy of landscape, and collectively form a new approach to creative design.

An essential and neglected distinction between contract and administrative law is in how each conceives of the Crown as a juristic person. This article explores the extent of this distinction, and its implications for the rule of law and the separation of powers. It offers explanations—historical, jurisprudential and pragmatic—for why contract law conceives of the Crown as a corporation aggregate with the powers and liberties of a natural person, and why administrative law disaggregates the State into named officials.