No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental fnd-ings in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are fndings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers (...) have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed. (shrink)

Mental health professionals rightfully experience significant anxiety regarding their duty to protect when working with potentially dangerous individuals. This work dispels myths and provides readers with a resource addressing the situations where a duty to protect may apply.

Comics have great potential to depict an almost infinite range of themes, questions and lives. But what about their ability to express and interpret philosophical concepts? How can we differentiate between the representation of theoretical concepts in and of themselves, and the impact of comics techniques on the legacy of philosophers, their lives and their thought? This book explores the historical and artistic value of representing lives through the medium of bande dessinée (BD), French-language comics. The text analyses three biographical (...) BDs dedicated to the lives of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus as well as a selection of print and online comics that extend the legacy of these philosophers and their historical movement. The work is the first to analyse biographical BD through the lens of Existentialism, offering a new theory of reading biographical comics. The research not only contributes a novel approach to comics but also an enhanced understanding of Existentialism and the Existentialists, including their enduring contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Genetic testing for cancer susceptibility is an application of biotechnology that has the potential both to improve the psychosocial and physical wellbeing of the population and to cause significant psychosocia1 and physical harms. In spite of the uncertain value of genetic testing, it has captured the interest of biotechnology companies, researchers, health care providers, and the public. As more tests become feasible, pressure may increase to make the tests available and reimbursable. Both the benefits and harms of these tests lie (...) not as much in the tests themselves, as in their power to predict or alter the future. The value of the tests does not derive from the information per se, but from the ability to communicate effectively the information to patients and providers, and the behavioral responses of patients, providers, and others to this information. (shrink)

The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's (...) panegyric to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period. (shrink)

Genetic testing for cancer susceptibility is an application of biotechnology that has the potential both to improve the psychosocial and physical wellbeing of the population and to cause significant psychosocia1 and physical harms. In spite of the uncertain value of genetic testing, it has captured the interest of biotechnology companies, researchers, health care providers, and the public. As more tests become feasible, pressure may increase to make the tests available and reimbursable. Both the benefits and harms of these tests lie (...) not as much in the tests themselves, as in their power to predict or alter the future. The value of the tests does not derive from the information per se, but from the ability to communicate effectively the information to patients and providers, and the behavioral responses of patients, providers, and others to this information. (shrink)

Worldwide, the literature reports that many residents in long‐term care (LTC) homes are sedentary. In Canada, personal support workers (PSWs) provide most of the direct care in LTC homes and could play a key role in promoting activity for residents. The purpose of this institutional ethnographic study was to uncover the social organization of LTC work and to discover how this organization influenced the physical activity of residents. Data were collected in two LTC homes in Ontario, Canada through participant observations (...) with PSWs and interviews with people within and external to the homes. Findings explicate the links between meals, lifts and transfers, and the LTC standards to reveal that physical activity is considered an add‐on program in the purview of physiotherapists. Some of the LTC standards which are intended to product good outcomes for residents actually disrupt the work of PSWs making it difficult for them to respond to the physical activity needs of residents. This descriptive ethnographic account is an important first step in trying to find a solution to optimize real activities of daily living into life in LTC. (shrink)

Indigenous nurse scholars across nations colonised by Europeans articulate the need for accomplices (as opposed to mere performative allies) to work alongside them and support their ongoing struggle for health equity and respect and to prioritise and promote culturally safe healthcare. Although cultural safety is now being mandated in nursing codes of practice as a strategy to address racism in healthcare, it is important that white nurse educators have a comprehensive understanding about cultural safety and the pedagogical skills needed to (...) teach it to undergraduate nurses. We open this article with stories of our journeys as two white nurses in becoming accomplices and working alongside Indigenous Peoples, as patients and colleagues. Our lived experience of the inertia of healthcare and education organisations to address systemic and institutional resistance to the practice of cultural safety underpins the intention of this article. We understand that delivering this challenging and complex topic effectively and respectfully is best achieved when Indigenous and white educators work together at the cultural interface. Doing so requires commitment from white nurses and power holders within universities and healthcare institutions. A decolonising approach to nurse education at individual and institutional levels is fundamental to support and grow the work that needs to be done to reduce health inequity and increase cultural safety. White nurse accomplices can play an important role in teaching future nurses the importance of critical reflection and aiming to reduce power imbalances and racism within healthcare environments. Reducing power imbalances in healthcare environments and decolonising nursing practice is the strength of a cultural safety framework. (shrink)

While a growing number of researchers are embracing Internet-based data collection methods, the adoption of Internet-based recruitment methods has been relatively slow. This may be because little is known regarding the relative strengths and weaknesses of different methods of Internet-based participant recruitment, nor how these different recruitment strategies impact on the data collected. These issues are addressed in this article with reference to a study comparing the effectiveness of three Internet-based strategies in recruiting cannabis users for an online study. Consideration (...) of the recruitment data leads us to recommend that researchers use multipronged Internet-based recruitment campaigns with appropriately detailed recruitment messages tailored to the population of interest and located carefully to ensure they reach the intended audience. Further, we suggest that building rapport directly with potential participants, or utilising derived rapport and implicit endorsements, is an important aspect of successful Internet-based participant recruitment strategies. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractGene editing with engineered nucleases introduce double-strand breaks that are repaired by error-prone nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ). In article number 1900126, Sara G. Trimidal et al. propose that the length and type or resulting indels can now be controlled by editing with different engineered nucleases or by manipulating the expression of NHEJ genes.

Genome editing with engineered nucleases (GEENs) introduce site‐specific DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) and repairs DSBs via nonhomologous end‐joining (NHEJ) pathways that eventually create indels (insertions/deletions) in a genome. Whether the features of indels resulting from gene editing could be customized is asked. A review of the literature reveals how gene editing technologies via NHEJ pathways impact gene editing. The survey consolidates a body of literature that suggests that the type (insertion, deletion, and complex) and the approximate length of indel edits (...) can be somewhat customized with different GEENs and by manipulating the expression of key NHEJ genes. Structural data suggest that binding of GEENs to DNA may interfere with binding of key components of DNA repair complexes, favoring either classical‐ or alternative‐NHEJ. The hypotheses have some limitations, but if validated, will enable scientists to better control indel makeup, holding promise for basic science and clinical applications of gene editing. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/vTkJtUsLi3w. (shrink)

Background: Clinical genomic implementation studies pose challenges for informed consent. Consent forms often include complex language and concepts, which can be a barrier to diverse enrollment, and these studies often blur traditional research-clinical boundaries. There is a move toward self-directed, web-based research enrollment, but more evidence is needed about how these enrollment approaches work in practice. In this study, we developed and evaluated a literacy-focused, web-based consent approach to support enrollment of diverse participants in an ongoing clinical genomic implementation study. (...) Methods: As part of the Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many (CHARM) study, we developed a web-based consent approach that featured plain language, multimedia, and separate descriptions of clinical care and research activities. CHARM offered clinical exome sequencing to individuals at high risk of hereditary cancer. We interviewed CHARM participants about their reactions to the consent approach. We audio recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using a deductively and inductively derived codebook. We reviewed coded excerpts as a team to identify overarching themes. Results: We conducted 32 interviews, including 12 (38%) in Spanish. Most (69%) enrolled without assistance from study staff, usually on a mobile phone. Those who completed enrollment in one day spent an average of 12 minutes on the consent portion. Interviewees found the information simple to read but comprehensive, were neutral to positive about the multimedia support, and identified increased access to testing in the study as the key difference from clinical care. Conclusions: This study showed that interviewees found our literacy-focused, web-based consent approach acceptable; did not distinguish the consent materials from other online study processes; and valued getting access to testing in the study. Overall, conducting empirical bioethics research in an ongoing clinical trial was useful to demonstrate the acceptability of our novel consent approach but posed practical challenges. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our (...) Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God’s purpose. At the beginning of this masterwork, Hegel writes: “What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the (...) highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, Frederick C. Beiser notes the complex and controversial history of Hegel’s text. He makes a case that this English-language translation by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson is still the most reliable one. (shrink)

In March 2021, the Spanish Congress approved the law regulating euthanasia, that regulates both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In this article, we analyse the Spanish law regulating euthanasia and PAS, comparing it with the rest of the European laws on euthanasia and PAS (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). Identified strengths of the Spanish law, with respect to other norms, are that it is a law with many safeguards, which broadly recognises professionals’ right to conscientious objection and the specification that it (...) makes on the prior comprehensive care of the patient, including the approach to care dependency. Regarding its shortcomings, the law does not differentiate well between euthanasia and PAS; it barely assigns a role to the healthcare team as a whole (similar to other regulations); it does not clarify the functions of the different professionals involved; it does not detail the specific composition and duration of theevaluation commission; it has not been accompanied by a prior or simultaneous regulation of palliative care; and, lastly, the period of time to implement the law is too short. (shrink)

This new abridgment of a well-known edition makes the main insights of Hegel's famous Lectures on the History of Philosophy widely available in an inexpensive edition.

Résumé éditeur : This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man's world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends' shared philosophical project and (...) their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive.". (shrink)

This book explores the tradition of the 'science of man' in French medicine of the era 1750-1850, focusing on controversies about the nature of the 'physical-moral' relation and their effects on the role of medicine in French society. Its chief purpose is to recover the history of a holistic tradition in French medicine that has been neglected because it lay outside the mainstream themes of modern medicine, which include experimental, reductionist, and localistic conceptions of health and disease. Professor Williams also (...) challenges existing historiography, which argues that the 'anthropological' approach to medicine was a short-term by-product of the leftist politics of the French Revolution. This work argues instead that the medical science of man long outlived the Revolution, that it spanned traditional ideological divisions, and that it reflected the shared aim of French physicians, whatever their politics, to claim broad cultural authority in French society. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Le Manifeste du rio Negro (in Journal du rio Negro, 1978-2014) est l’un des premiers textes majeurs publiés en France au sujet de l’art écologique. Quoique d’un impact limité lors de sa diffusion, il est désormais repris et commenté par les acteurs de l’art contemporain. Dans ce texte, Pierre Restany s’inquiète de la relation art-nature, une fois n’est pas coutume. À partir de notre lecture de son journal, nous interrogeons les gestes des successeurs de Restany. Depuis l’émergence de l’art écologique, (...) plusieurs éléments constitutifs participent à définir la critique de cet art. Quels sont les modes d’appréciation privilégiés par les critiques? Sur quels critères fondent-ils leurs évaluations des œuvres? (shrink)

Astonishment that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. It is not the beginning of any insight, unless it is that the idea of history from which it comes is untenable.And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?In 1940 the exiled German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin warned that fidelity to a vision of history (...) as progress risked normalizing the remy-thologization of politics.1 Recent events have underlined the urgency, both for thought and for action, of rejecting the same unphilosophical astonishment in our own time. In the face of political... (shrink)

In spite of the fact that the term ‘sexology’ was popularized in the United States by Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich Willard and that the term ‘sexual science’—which is usually attributed to Iwan Bloch as ‘Sexualwissenschaft’—was actually coined by the American phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler in 1852, the archives of American sexology have received scant attention in the period prior to Alfred Kinsey. In my article, I explore the role of Transcendentalism and phrenology in the production and development of American sexology (...) and sexual science. In particular, I argue that shifting the origins of sexology and sexual science away from Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Karl-Maria Kertbeny and the more familiar narratives of the German invention of sexuality furnishes a radically different account of early sexology and sexual science. Rather than the unevenly homophilic sympathies of early German activists, their American counterparts promote marital, reproductive, loving sex and vilify prostitution, polygamy, masturbation, contraception, sex for pleasure, and, if they think to mention it, sodomy. In addition to this less progressive story, however, I argue that early American sexologists provide the first theories of gender and help to provide a fuller description of the politics of sexology and sexual science. (shrink)

This article examines the responses of Parisian noble women to campaigns for women's rights in France of the early Third Republic. The methodology of the article is based on the works of Pierre Bourdieu. His concept of the habitus is used to analyse the effects of class and gender in noble women's attitudes to French feminisms before the First World War. The conditioning of Parisian noble women explains their resistance, indeed often outspoken opposition, to feminists' demands. These female aristocrats supported (...) their own oppression within a social order governed by the state, the scientific and medical establishments, the expectations of family, and the Catholic Church of the time. (shrink)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena--including money, gender, urban life, and technology--that subsequently became established arenas of inquiry in cultural theory. It further ignores his philosophical impact on thinkers as diverse as Benjamin, Musil, and Heidegger. Integrating intellectual biography, philosophical interpretation, and a critical examination of the history of academic disciplines, this (...) book restores Simmel to his rightful place as a major figure and challenges the frameworks through which his contributions to modern thought have been at once remembered and forgotten. (shrink)

Familial disclosure of genetic information is an important, long-standing ethical issue that still gives rise to much debate. In France, recent legislation has created an innovative and unprecedented procedure that allows healthcare professionals, under certain conditions, to disclose relevant information to relatives of a person carrying a deleterious genetic mutation. This article will analyse how HCPs in two medical genetics clinics have reacted to these new legal provisions and show how their reticence to inform the patients’ relatives on their behalf (...) leads them to use this option sparingly. (shrink)

In this essay, I offer an interpretation of the ethical thought of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. The combined effect of their work was to revive a naturalistic account of ethical objectivity that had dominated the premodern world. I proceed narratively, explaining how each of the four came to make the contribution she did towards this implicit common project: in particular how these women came to see philosophical possibilities that their male contemporaries mostly did not.

Following Hannah Arendt’s insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call ‘vitalist Marxism’. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904–95) played in developing this position, in particular by depicting tools and machines as ‘organs of life’. Drawing on (...) Canguilhem’s early writings as well as unpublished manuscripts, we show that this ‘organological’ understanding of technology was rooted in the increasingly anti-fascist reception of Marx in France during the 1930s. Against the background of today’s protests against climate destruction, racism, and anti-feminist violence, all of which invoke the defense of basic living conditions, we argue that the critical position of vitalist Marxism acquires remarkable topicality. (shrink)

When I was asked to propose a topic for my presidential address, the subject I chose, moral imperatives and conundrums of conscience, seemed to me particularly appropriate and timely. This was in part because of the problems of conscience caused for many members of the Academy by the decision to hold the annual meeting in Arizona, whose restrictive laws on immigration seemed to many to violate basic principles of right and justice and hence to warrant a boycott. Long, thoughtful, and (...) impassioned discussion of the issues revealed their complexity. Although the final decision disappointed many members, all recognized its virtue in supporting the Arizonans who were struggling to accomplish revocation of legislation they believed wrong. There was more. The crises in the leadership of the Academy during two of my years as a presidential officer raised issues of conscience and morality for all who worked to achieve equitable, just, and rational solutions to our problems and conflicts. On both issues, the site of the meeting and the governance of the Academy, colleagues adopted and defended positions that demonstrated the variety and strength of their convictions and the diversity of their reasons for holding them. (shrink)

Volume X presents a critical edition with commentary of all the texts published by Constant between July 1815 and April 1818. We are dealing here with political journalism, an instrument of public opinion deployed with great virtuosity by Constant to realise his liberal programme, with texts on political theory and the fundamental debates on the state budget, with publications composed in connection with the 1817 parliamentary elections. This volume contains an engagement with one of Chateaubriand’s key works (La Monarchie selon (...) la Charte), articles on the politics of the day and publications on important contemporary personalities such as Madame de Staël or Joseph Fouché. The importance of the texts always reaches beyond their particular concern to encompass fundamental principles of liberalism in Restoration Europe. (shrink)