To better understand the available publications addressing ethical issues in rural health care we sought to identify the ethics literature that specifically focuses on rural America. We wanted to determine the extent to which the rural ethics literature was distributed between general commentaries, descriptive summaries of research, and original research publications. We identified 55 publications that specifically and substantively addressed rural health care ethics, published between 1966 and 2004. Only 7 (13%) of these publications were original research articles while (12) (...) 22% were descriptive summaries of research and 36 (65%) were general commentaries. The majority of publications examined (55%) were clinically focused while 27% addressed organizational ethics and 18% addressed ethical ramifications of rural health care policy at a national or community level. Our findings indicate that there are a limited number of publications focusing on rural health care ethics, suggesting a need for scholars and researchers to more rigorously address rural ethics issues. (shrink)

The unique context of the rural setting provides special challenges to furnishing ethical healthcare to its approximately 62 million inhabitants. Although rural communities are widely diverse, most have the following common features: limited economic resources, shared values, reduced health status, limited availability of and accessibility to healthcare services, overlapping professional–patient relationships and care giver stress. These rural features shape common healthcare ethical issues, including threats to confidentiality, boundary issues, professional–patient relationship and allocation of resources. To date, there exists a limited (...) focus on rural healthcare ethics shown by the scarcity of rural healthcare ethics literature, rural ethics committees, rural focused ethics training and research on rural ethics issues. An interdisciplinary group of rural healthcare ethicists with backgrounds in medicine, nursing and philosophy was convened to explore the need for a rural healthcare ethics agenda. At the meeting, the Coalition for Rural Health Care Ethics agreed to a definition of rural healthcare ethics and a broad-ranging rural ethics agenda with the ultimate goal of enhancing the quality of patient care in rural America. The proposed agenda calls for increasing awareness and understanding of rural healthcare ethics through the development of evidence—informed, rural-attuned research, scholarship and education in collaboration with rural healthcare professionals, healthcare institutions and the diverse rural population. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the normative content of Kant's formula of humanity (FH). More specifically, does FH, as some seem to think, imply the specific and rigid prescriptions in 'standard' deontological theories? To this latter question, I argue, the answer is 'no'. I propose reading FH largely through the formula of autonomy and the formula of the kingdom of ends, where I understand FA to describe the nature of the capacity of humanity-a capacity for self-governance. The latter, I suggest, (...) is akin to the capacity for planning and intentional action described in Michael Bratman's work. A significant part of what FH requires, I then propose, is that we exercise these capacities for planning in such a way that we accommodate and coordinate with the (permissible) plans and intentions of others. Kant himself, as do many commentators, emphasizes the idea that our human capacities give us a distinctive kind of value. On my interpretation, by contrast, what is fundamentally important is not the value of the capacities but rather what they make possible: distinctive ways of mistreating (using) persons, but also a distinctive kind of morally desirable relationship. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this manuscript, the author demonstrates how a new idea of the future came into being in eighteenth-century France with the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering. With the emergence of these practices, the future transformed from something that was largely believed to be predetermined and beyond significant human intervention into something that could be significantly affected through actions in the present. Focusing on the second-half of the century, The author argues that specific mechanisms for constructing the future (...) first arose through the development of practices and instruments aimed at countering degeneration. In their attempts to regenerate a healthy natural state, Enlightenment philosophes created the means to exceed previously recognized limits and create a future that was not merely a recuperation of the past, but was fundamentally different from it. The new active orientation to the future that emerged from these practices was not something that was explicitly articulated during the Enlightenment. Instead this practical orientation must be seen as an implicit understanding of historical temporality. Historical actors often had a tacit knowledge of time--one that they worked with--without necessarily being fully aware of it or articulating it explicitly in their writing. The full articulation of the new idea of the future did not occur until the French Revolution, but the practical understanding of it that developed during the Enlightenment played an important role in making possible the French revolutionaries' unprecedented attempts to remake the world completely anew. (shrink)

We hypothesize that aspects of animal multicellularity originated before the divergence of metazoans from fungi and social amoebae. Polarized epithelial tissues are a defining feature of metazoans and contribute to the diversity of animal body plans. The recent finding of a polarized epithelium in the non‐metazoan social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum demonstrates that epithelial tissue is not a unique feature of metazoans, and challenges the traditional paradigm that multicellularity evolved independently in social amoebae and metazoans. An alternative view, presented here, is (...) that the common ancestor of social amoebae, fungi, and animals spent a portion of its life cycle in a multicellular state and possessed molecular machinery necessary for forming an epithelial tissue. Some descendants of this ancestor retained multicellularity, while others reverted to unicellularity. This hypothesis makes testable predictions regarding tissue organization in close relatives of metazoans and provides a novel conceptual framework for studies of early animal evolution.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Searching for Eve: Basal metazoans and the evolution of multicellular complexity Abstract. (shrink)

The rural health context in the United States presents unique ethical challenges to its approximately 60 million residents, who represent about one quarter of the overall population and are distributed over three-quarters of the country’s land mass. The rural context is not only identified by the small population density and distance to an urban setting but also by a combination of social, religious, geographical, and cultural factors. Living in a rural setting fosters a sense of shared values and beliefs, a (...) strong work ethic, self-reliance, and a tendency for close-knit extended social structures where overlapping relationships are commonplace. (shrink)

Objective: To determine whether bioethicists are distributed along a rural-to-urban continuum in a way that reflects potential need of those resources as determined by the general population, hospital facilities and hospital beds.Methods: US members of a large, multidisciplinary professional society, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities , the US population, hospital facilities and hospital beds were classified across a four-tier rural-to-urban continuum. The proportion of each group in rural settings was compared with that in urban settings, and odds ratios (...) were calculated with 95% confidence intervals.Results: Although 91% of ASBH members live or work in urban settings, only 66% of the US population did so. In contrast, 2% of ASBH members live or work in rural settings compared with 13% of the population. ASBH members were 10.7 times as likely to be represented in urban than in rural settings when compared with the general population, 25.6 times and 6.9 times as likely with regard to hospital facilities and hospital beds, respectively.Conclusions: Using various comparisons it was found that ASBH members are under-represented in rural as compared with urban settings. Although not all bioethicists are ASBH members, these findings suggest that the availability of professional bioethical resources may be inadequate in rural America. The disparities that were found may have considerable effect on ethics scholarship, research, ethical committees and education, and adds to the argument that rural American communities are under-served. (shrink)

Utilitarianism is subject to objections of at least three kinds: It is wrong about the nature of the fundamental property in virtue of which wrong acts are wrong. It is self-defeating in the sense that acting as it requires will actually undermine the goal of maximization. The acts it requires are, intuitively, wrong. In the book under review, Bailey replies to objections of all three kinds, but especially to the third.

The purpose of this study was to assess the presence of ethics committees in rural critical access hospitals across the United States. Several studies have investigated the presence of ethics committees in rural health care facilities. The limitation of these studies is in the definition of ‘rural hospital’ and a regional or state focus. These limitations have created large variations in the study findings. In this nation-wide study we used the criteria of a critical access hospital (CAH), as defined by (...) the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program (Flex Program, 2007), to bring consistency and clarity to the assessment of the presence of ethics committees in rural hospitals. The Flex Monitoring Team conducted a national telephone survey of 381 CAH administrators throughout the United States. The survey covered a wide variety of questions concerning hospitals’ community benefit, impact activities, and whether the hospital had a formally established an ethics committee. About 230 (60%) of the respondents indicated they had a formally established ethics committee or ethics consultation program at their CAH. The prevalence of ethics committees declined as the CAH location became increasingly rural along a rural–urban continuum. Unlike CAHs, all rural Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have ethics committees. The results of this study provide an understanding of the limited presence of ethics committee in rural America and the need to consider new approaches for providing ethics assistance. A virtual ethics committee network may be the most efficient and effective way of providing rural hospitals access to a knowledgeable ethics committee or consultant. (shrink)

Organizational ethics—defined as the alignment of an institution’s practices with its mission, vision, and values—is a growing field in health care not well characterized in empirical literature. To capture the scope and context of organizational ethics work in United States healthcare institutions, we conducted a nationwide convenience survey of ethicists regarding the scope of organizational ethics work, common challenges faced, and the organizational context in which this work is done. In this article, we report substantial variability in the structure of (...) organizational ethics programs and the settings in which it is conducted. Notable findings included disagreement about the activities that comprise organizational ethics and a lack of common metrics used to assess organizational ethics activities. A frequently cited barrier to full engagement in these activities was poor institution-wide understanding about the role and function of organizational ethics resources. These data suggest a tension in the trajectory of organizational ethics’ professionalization: while some variability is appropriate to the field’s relative youth, inadequate attention to definitions of organizational ethics practice and metrics for success can impede discussions about appropriate institutional support, leadership context, and training for practitioners. (shrink)

This paper addresses two questions. First, how different is the ideal underlying deliberative democracy from the ideal expressed in contemporary liberal theory, especially contractualist theory and "political liberalism"? Second, what specific institutional prescriptions, if any, follow from deliberative democracy? It is argued that the deliberative ideal has become quite abstract and, in fact, does not differ significantly from many forms of contemporary liberalism. Moreover, it is something of an open question just what institutions best realize this ideal. Specifically, the ideal (...) does not necessarily require conventional, majoritarian institutions. (shrink)

The ethical standard for informed consent is fostered within a shared decision-making process. SDM has become a recognized and needed approach in health care decision-making. Based on an ethical foundation, the approach fosters the active engagement of patients, where the clinician presents evidence-based treatment information and options and openly elicits the patient’s values and preferences. The SDM process is affected by the context in which the information exchange occurs. Rural settings are one context that impacts the delivery of health care (...) and SDM. Rural health care is significantly influenced by economic, geographical and social characteristics. Several specific distinctive features influence rural health care decision-making—poverty, access to health care, isolation, over-lapping relationships, and a shared culture. The rural context creates challenges as well as fosters opportunities for the application of SDM as a natural dynamic within the rural provider–patient relationship. To fulfill the ethical requirements of informed consent through SDM, it is necessary to understand its inherent challenges and opportunities. Therefore, rural clinicians and ethicists need to be cognizant of the impact of the rural setting on SDM and use the insights as an opportunity to achieve SDM. (shrink)

Whether one should accept a principle like DDE cannot be settled independent of one's more general moral theory. In this, I take it, I agree with Professor Boyle, though I do not think he has shown that DDE has a role only in his particular form of absolutism. Still, since his theory does require DDE, an important question is what the alternatives are – whether we must choose between this absolutism and either utilitarianism or intuitionism. A form of contractualism, the (...) requirements of which derive to a large extent from institutionally or conventionally established rights, is sketched here as an attractive alternative. It does not lead, so far as I can see, to DDE. Keywords: authority, contractualism, rights CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Theories of Justice Political Liberalism and its Critics Notes Bibliography.

The role of power in healthcare can raise many ethical challenges. Power is ownership, whether given, ceded, or taken of another person’s autonomy. When a person has power over someone else, they can control or strongly influence the decision-making freedom of that person. From the principalist perspective1,2 of healthcare ethics, denying a person their freedom to choose, should only occur when justifying conditions related to beneficence and nonmaleficence are sufficiently satisfied. In healthcare, it is rare to be able to identify (...) situations where paternalism is justified. However, experience suggests that abusive power in healthcare is used too frequently without justifying criteria. (shrink)

Somatic or inherited mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene are a frequent cause of colorectal cancer in humans. APC protein has an important tumor suppression function to reduce cellular levels of the signaling protein β‐catenin and, thereby, inhibit β‐catenin and T‐cell‐factor‐mediated gene expression. In addition, APC protein binds to microtubules in vertebrate cells and localizes to actin‐rich adherens junctions in epithelial cells of the fruit fly Drosophila (Fig. 1). Very little is known, however, about the function of these (...) cytoskeletal associations. Recently, Hamada and Bienz have described a potential role for Drosophila E‐APC in cellular adhesion,1 which offers new clues to APC function in embryonic development, and potentially colorectal adenoma formation and tumor progression in humans. BioEssays 24:771–774, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Abstract:The mission and value statements of healthcare organizations serve as the foundational philosophy that informs all aspects of the organization. The ultimate goal is seamless alignment of values to mission in a way that colors the overall life and culture of the organization. However, full alignment between healthcare organizational values and mission in a fashion that influences the daily life and culture of healthcare organizations does not always occur. Grounded in the belief that a lack of organizational alignment to explicit (...) organizational mission and value statements often stems from the failure to develop processes that enable realization of the leadership’s good intentions, the authors propose an organizational ethics dashboard to empower leaders of healthcare organizations to assess the adequacy of systems in place to support alignment with the stated ethical mission. (shrink)

Universal Human Rights brings new clarity to the important and highly contested concept of universal human rights. This collection of essays explores the foundations of universal human rights in four sections devoted to their nature, application, enforcement, and limits, concluding that shared rights help to constitute a universal human community, which supports local customs and separate state sovereignty. The eleven contributors to this volume demonstrate from their very different perspectives how human rights can help to bring moral order to an (...) otherwise divided world. (shrink)

Beta‐catenin is a multifunctional protein with critical roles in cell‐cell adhesion, Wnt‐signaling and the centrosome cycle. Whereas the roles of β‐catenin in cell‐cell adhesion and Wnt‐signaling have been studied extensively, the mechanism(s) involving β‐catenin in centrosome functions are poorly understood. β‐Catenin localizes to centrosomes and promotes mitotic progression. NIMA‐related protein kinase 2 (Nek2), which stimulates centrosome separation, binds to and phosphorylates β‐catenin. β‐Catenin interacting proteins involved in Wnt signaling such as adenomatous polyposis coli, Axin, and GSK3β, are also localized at (...) centrosomes and play roles in promoting mitotic progression. Additionally, proteins associated with cell‐cell adhesion sites, such as dynein, regulate mitotic spindle positioning. These roles of proteins at the cell cortex and Wnt signaling that involve β‐catenin indicate a cross‐talk between different sub‐cellular sites in the cell at mitosis, and that different pools of β‐catenin may co‐ordinate centrosome functions and cell cycle progression. (shrink)

I will give a broad overview of what has become the standard paradigm in cosmology. I will describe the relational notion of time that is often used in cosmological calculations and discuss how the local nature of Einstein's equations allows us to translate this notion into statements about `initial' data. Classically this relates our local definition of time to a quasi-local region of a particular spatial slice, however incorporating quantum theory comes at the expense of losing this locality entirely. This (...) occurs due to the presence of two, apparently distinct, issues: Seemingly classical issues to do with the infinite spatial volume of the universe and Quantum field theory issues, which revolve around trying to apply renormalization in cosmology. Following the ‘cosmological principle’ - an extension of the ‘Copernicus principle’ - that physics at every point in our universe should look the same, we are lead to the modern view of cosmology. This procedure is reasonably well understood for an exactly homogeneous universe, however the inclusions of small perturbations over this homogeneity leads to many interpretational/ conceptual difficulties. For example, in an infinite universe perturbations can be arbitrarily close to homogeneous. To any observer, such a perturbation would appear to be a simple rescaling of the homogenous background and hence, physically, would not be considered an inhomogeneous perturbation at all. However, any attempt to choose the physically relevant scale at which perturbations should be considered homogeneous will break the cosmological principle i.e. it will make the resulting physics observer dependent. It amounts to `putting the perturbations in a box' and a delicate practical issue is that the universe is not static, hence the scale of the box will be time dependent. Thus what appears ‘physically homogeneous’ to an observer at one time will not appear so at another. This issue is brought to the forefront by considering the canonical version of the theory. The phase space formulation of General Relativity, just as for any other theory, contains the shadow of the underlying quantum theory. This means that, although the formulation is still classical, many of the subtleties that are present in the quantum theory are already apparent. In the cosmological context the infinite spatial volume renders almost all expressions formal or ill-defined. In order to proceed, we must restrict our attention to a cosmology that has some finite spatial extent, on which our relational notion of time is everywhere definable. In particular, this would constrain the permissible data outside our `observable universe'. This difficulty is an IR or large scale issues in cosmology, however in addition there are UV or short scale problems that need to be tackled. There are the usual problems of renormalization, which are further complicated by the fact that the universe is not static. In the cosmological setting this leads to new IR problems which again prevent one from taking the spatial extent of the universe to infinity. The physical relevance of this problem, the consequence for defining a time variable, and the distinction of homogeneous and inhomogeneous IR issues will be discussed. (shrink)

The generation of asymmetric cell shapes is a recurring theme in biology. In budding yeast, one form of cell asymmetry occurs for division and is generated by anisotropic growth of the mother cell to form a daughter cell bud. Previous genetic studies uncovered key roles for the small GTPase Cdc42 in organizing the actin cytoskeleton and vesicle delivery to the site of bud growth,1,2 but a recent paper has also raised questions about how control of Cdc42 activity is integrated into (...) a proposed hierarchical regulatory pathway that specifies a unique site of bud formation.3 BioEssays 25:833–836, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

How are the demands of morality related to the needs, interests, and projects of people? Are they a burden, or are they good for us? Are they nothing but arbitrary impositions, or should we expect them to be justified? And will the answers to these questions tell us why and whether we should be moral? In this short, accessible text, William Nelson poses these questions in a form appropriate for beginning students and treats them in a way that both they (...) and their teachers will appreciate. In the company of major figures from the history of ethics, Nelson explores the key issues surrounding topics like egoism, altruism, the good life, and the requirements of morality. A special strength of his presentation is the way he demonstrates how the views of these historical figures prefigure the theories espoused by different schools of contemporary thought. Students get not only the historical positions in terms of which contemporary debates are framed but also up-to-date discussions of utilitarianism, contractualism, problems of collective action, and the relations between virtue and duty-based theories. Nelson's own view that morality is not a single subject matter enables him to show how each of the historical traditions has a role to play in a coherent and defensible pluralistic account of morality. At the core of this pluralism is a commitment to the democratic view that morality must not merely serve practical human purposes, but it must also be justified to the people it governs. Imaginative and insightful, intelligent and informed, this is an excellent first text for students of ethics and the history of ethics. (shrink)