Though antiretroviral therapy is the standard of care for people living with HIV, its treatment limitations, burdens, stigma and costs lead to continued interest in HIV cure research. Early-phase cure trials, particularly those that include analytic treatment interruption, involve uncertain and potentially high risk, with minimal chance of clinical benefit. Some question whether such trials should be offered, given the risk/benefit imbalance, and whether those who choose to participate are acting rationally. We address these questions through a longitudinal decision-making study (...) nested in a Thai acute HIV research cohort. In-depth interviews revealed central themes about decisions to join. Participants felt they possessed an important identity as members of the acute cohort, viewing their bodies as uniquely suited to both testing and potentially benefiting from HIV cure approaches. While acknowledging risks of ATI, most perceived they were given an opportunity to interrupt treatment, to test their own bodies and increase normalcy in a safe, highly monitored circumstance. They were motivated by potential benefits to themselves, the investigators and larger acute cohort, and others with HIV. They believed their own trial experiences and being able to give back to the community were sufficient to offset participation risks. These decisions were driven by the specific circumstances experienced by our participants. Judging risk/benefit ratios without appreciating these lived experiences can lead to false determinations of irrational decision- making. While this does not minimise vital oversight considerations about risk reduction and protection from harm, it argues for inclusion of a more participant-centered approach. (shrink)

Many readers of this review will be aware that Karl Barth, like Rudolf Bultmann, was a student of Wilhelm Herrmann and that Barth was both indebted to and critical of aspects of Herrmann's thought. Fewer, however, will have much familiarity with the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism and its influence on the thought of Herrmann and Barth. This study is intended to fill that gap. During the time that Herrmann taught at Marburg, the theological school changed from a rather provincial academic (...) setting to an international center with such distinguished teachers as Weiss, Jülicher, and Otto. At the same time the Marburg philosophical faculty became one of the leading centers for the study of Neo-Kantianism and counted among its leading scholars Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. Although Fisher believes that a case could be made for showing an enduring influence of the Marburg Neo-Kantian philosophy on Barth's theology, it is his intent in this book to trace the influence of this school on Barth's earliest theology, that written during the brief period that he was a pastor in Geneva immediately following his theological studies at Marburg, and before his break with theological liberalism. The first two chapters of the book are devoted to a study of Marburg Neo-Kantianism with particular reference to Cohen and Natorp, who tried to make a place for religion within the confines of a way of thinking that tended to limit knowledge claims to three spheres, logico-scientific, ethical, and aesthetic. Initially Cohen reduced religion to ethics but later sought to make a special place for religion. Natorp proposed a religion without God in which religious feeling was identified with the hidden psychic motivation of all human and cognitive striving. Herrmann, who is discussed in the third chapter, regarded his own work as complementary to Cohen and Natorp and sought to mediate between knowledge of the world represented by the Marburg philosophers and the Protestant tradition of Christian faith. Following the discussion of Neo-Kantianism and Herrmann, Fischer provides an extended analysis of Barth's early work, including two unpublished manuscripts, showing the influence of the Marburg philosophers on Barth through Herrmann and at times directly through Barth's study of the works of Cohen and Natorp. (shrink)

In discussions of ‘religion-and-science’, faith is usually emphasized more than works, scientists’ beliefs more than their deeds. By reversing the priority, a lingering puzzle in the life of Ronald Aylmer Fisher , statistician, eugenicist and founder of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, can be solved. Scholars have struggled to find coherence in Fisher’s simultaneous commitment to Darwinism, Anglican Christianity and eugenics. The problem is addressed by asking what practical mode of faith or faithful mode of practice lent unity to his (...) life? Families, it is argued, with their myriad practical, emotional and intellectual challenges, rendered a mathematically-based eugenic Darwinian Christianity not just possible for Fisher, but vital. (shrink)