Wir haben uns bei unseren Handlungen und Entscheidungen nie vollständig an Fakten orientiert und die westliche Kultur existierte bereits vor der Erfindung des Faktenbegriffs. Aufzeichnungen zeigen, dass der Begriff der Tatsache von der Rechtswissenschaft erfunden wurde, um Zufälligkeiten von abstrakten Regeln zu unterscheiden. Von der Rechtswissenschaft wanderte der Begriff der Tatsache in die Naturwissenschaften, wo sich die Bedeutung von Taten auf die Existenz materieller Dinge verlagerte. Der naturwissenschaftliche Begriff des Faktischen durchdringt seit der Aufklärung die gesamte Kultur, wurde aber in (...) der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wegen seiner sozialen Konstruktion kritisiert. Diese nützliche Kritik zog Populisten mit destruktiven Motiven an und infolgedessen hat sich ein Element der Missachtung von Fakten in den zivilgesellschaftlichen Diskurs eingeschlichen, einschließlich bei Umweltfragen. Ohne die Möglichkeit, Argumente auf wissenschaftliche Fakten zu stützen, muss das Recht anerkennen, dass große Teile der Öffentlichkeit ihre Entscheidungen auf der Grundlage von Werten und nicht von wissenschaftlichen Fakten treffen. Die öffentlichen Reaktionen auf den Klimawandel und COVID-19 sind Beispiele für dieses Phänomen. Die Staaten haben es in den letzten dreißig Jahren versäumt, sinnvolle rechtliche Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung des Klimawandels zu ergreifen, obwohl die wissenschaftlichen Fakten immer zahlreicher wurden. In der Pandemie weigern sich Bürger, Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um die Verbreitung von COVID-19 unter ihren Mitbürgern zu verhindern, und berufen sich dabei auf ein gewisses Maß an persönlichen Freiheiten. Wie kann man Werte schaffen, ohne sie durch Fakten zu stützen? Welche Rolle kann das Umweltrecht bei der Festlegung dieser Werte jenseits faktenbasierter Systeme von Rechten und Pflichten spielen? In der vorfaktischen Kultur Griechenlands wurden in den Gerichten Ethos und Pathos gleichberechtigt neben dem Logos empfohlen. Es gibt jedoch keine Aufzeichnungen über eine vorfaktische Berufung auf das Pathos im Namen von nicht-menschlichen oder abstrakten Gebilden wie,,der Umwelt“. Die postfaktische Welt der empathischen Überzeugung ist also zum großen Teil Neuland. (shrink)

The inner ear of mammals uses neurosensory cells derived from the embryonic ear for mechanoelectric transduction of vestibular and auditory stimuli (the hair cells) and conducts this information to the brain via sensory neurons. As with most other neurons of mammals, lost hair cells and sensory neurons are not spontaneously replaced and result instead in age‐dependent progressive hearing loss. We review the molecular basis of neurosensory development in the mouse ear to provide a blueprint for possible enhancement of therapeutically useful (...) transformation of stem cells into lost neurosensory cells. We identify several readily available adult sources of stem cells that express, like the ectoderm‐derived ear, genes known to be essential for ear development. Use of these stem cells combined with molecular insights into neurosensory cell specification and proliferation regulation of the ear, might allow for neurosensory regeneration of mammalian ears in the near future. BioEssays 28: 1181–1193, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

BackgroundIn December 2014, China announced that only voluntarily donated organs from citizens would be used for transplantation after January 1, 2015. Many medical professionals worldwide believe that China has stopped using organs from death-row prisoners.DiscussionIn the present article, we briefly review the historical development of organ procurement from death-row prisoners in China and comprehensively analyze the social-political background and the legal basis of the announcement. The announcement was not accompanied by any change in organ sourcing legislations or regulations. As a (...) fact, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China. Even after January 2015, key Chinese transplant officials have repeatedly stated that death-row prisoners have the same right as regular citizens to “voluntarily donate” organs. This perpetuates an unethical organ procurement system in ongoing violation of international standards.ConclusionsOrgan sourcing from death-row prisoners has not stopped in China. The 2014 announcement refers to the intention to stop the use of organs illegally harvested without the consent of the prisoners. Prisoner organs procured with “consent” are now simply labelled as “voluntarily donations from citizens”. The semantic switch may whitewash sourcing from both death-row prisoners and prisoners of conscience. China can gain credibility only by enacting new legislation prohibiting use of prisoner organs and by making its organ sourcing system open to international inspections. Until international ethical standards are transparently met, sanctions should remain. (shrink)

The 3Rs, or the replacement, reduction, and refinement of animal research, are widely accepted as the best approach to maximizing high-quality science while ensuring the highest standard of ethical consideration is applied in regulating the use of animals in scientific procedures. This contrasts with the muted scientific interest in the 3Rs when they were first proposed in The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. Indeed, the relative success of the 3Rs has done little to encourage engagement with their original text, which (...) remains little read and out of print. By adopting a historical perspective, this article argues that one explanation for this disjunction may be found in another, more celebrated, event of 1959: C. P. Snow’s Rede lecture on The Two Cultures. The moral outlook of The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique derived from an earlier ethos wherein humanistic and scientific values occupied a shared culture. While the synthetic style of The Principles has hindered its readership, this article concludes that there is value to recovering the notion that the humanities and social sciences can contribute to the improvement of animal research. (shrink)

The principles of the 3Rs—replacement, refinement, and reduction—strongly shape discussion of methods for performing more humane animal research and the regulation of this contested area of technoscience. This special issue looks back to the origins of the 3Rs principles through five papers that explore how it is enacted and challenged in practice and that develop critical considerations about its future. Three themes connect the papers in this special issue. These are the multiplicity of roles enacted by those who use and (...) care for animals in research, the distribution of “feelings that matter” across species and spaces of laboratory animal practice, and the growing importance of “cultures of care” in animal research. (shrink)

Seeking a scientific basis for understanding and treating mental illness, and inspired by the work of Ivan Pavlov, American physiologists, psychiatrists and psychologists in the 1920s turned to nonhuman animals. This paper examines how new constructs such as “experimental neurosis” emerged as tools to enable psychiatric comparison across species. From 1923 to 1962, the Cornell “Behavior Farm” was a leading interdisciplinary research center pioneering novel techniques to experimentally study nonhuman psychopathology. Led by the psychobiologist Howard Liddell, work at the Behavior (...) Farm formed part of an ambitious program to develop new preventative and therapeutic techniques and bring psychiatry into closer relations with physiology and medicine. At the heart of Liddell’s activities were a range of nonhuman animals, including pigs, sheep, goats and dogs, each serving as a proxy for human patients. We examine how Pavlov’s conceptualization of ‘experimental neurosis’ was used by Liddell to facilitate comparison across species and communication between researchers and clinicians. Our close reading of his experimental system demonstrates how unexpected animal behaviors and emotions were transformed into experimental virtues. However, to successfully translate such behaviors from the animal laboratory into the field of human psychopathology, Liddell increasingly reached beyond, and, in effect, redefined, the Pavlovian method to make it compatible and compliant with an ethological approach to the animal laboratory. We show how the resultant Behavior Farm served as a productive “hybrid” place, containing elements of experiment and observation, laboratory and field. It was through the building of close and more naturalistic relationships with animals over extended periods of time, both normal and pathological, and within and outside of the experimental space, that Liddell could understand, manage, and make useful the myriad behavioral complexities that emerged from the life histories of experimental animals, the researchers who worked with them, and their shared relationships to the wider physical and social environments. (shrink)

In 1942 a coalition of twenty scientific societies formed the Conference on the Supply of Experimental Animals in an attempt to pressure the Medical Research Council to accept responsibility for the provision of standardised experimental animals in Britain. The practice of animal experimentation was subject to State regulation under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, but no provision existed for the provision of animals for experimental use. Consequently, day-to-day laboratory work was reliant on a commercial small animal market which (...) had emerged to sustain the hobby of animal fancying. This paper explores how difficulties encountered in experimental practice within the laboratory led to the problematisation of biomedical science’s reliance upon a commercial market for animals during the inter-war period. This is shown to have produced a crisis within animal reliant experimental science in the early 1940s which enabled the left-wing Association of Scientific Workers to cast science’s reliance on a free market as economically inefficient and a threat to the reliability of British research. It is argued that the development of standard experimental animals in Britain was, therefore, embedded within the wider cultural, societal, political and economic national context of the time. (shrink)

Over 90% of the organs transplanted in China before 2010 were procured from prisoners. Although Chinese officials announced in December 2014 that the country would completely cease using organs harvested from prisoners, no regulatory adjustments or changes in China’s organ donation laws followed. As a result, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China if consent is obtained. We have collected and analysed available evidence on human rights violations in the organ procurement practice in China. We demonstrate that the (...) practice not only violates international ethics standards, it is also associated with a large scale neglect of fundamental human rights. This includes organ procurement without consent from prisoners or their families as well as procurement of organs from incompletely executed, still-living prisoners. The human rights critique of these practices will also address the specific situatedness of prisoners, often conditioned and traumatized by a cascade of human rights abuses in judicial structures. To end the unethical practice and the abuse associated with it, we suggest to inextricably bind the use of human organs procured in the Chinese transplant system to enacting Chinese legislation prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners and making explicit rules for law enforcement. Other than that, the international community must cease to abet the continuation of the present system by demanding an authoritative ban on the use of organs from executed Chinese prisoners. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article adopts a historical perspective to examine the development of Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine, an auxiliary field which formed to facilitate the work of the biomedical sciences by systematically improving laboratory animal production, provision, and maintenance in the post Second World War period. We investigate how Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine co-developed at the local level (responding to national needs and concerns) yet was simultaneously transnational in orientation (responding to the scientific need that knowledge, practices, objects and animals (...) circulate freely). Adapting the work of Tsing (2004), we argue that national differences provided the creative “friction” that helped drive the formation of Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine as a transnational endeavor. Our analysis engages with the themes of this special issue by focusing on the development of Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine in Norway, which both informed wider transnational developments and was formed by them. We show that Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine can only be properly understood from a spatial perspective; whilst it developed and was structured through national “centers,” its orientation was transnational necessitating international networks through which knowledge, practice, technologies, and animals circulated. (shrink)

In the current career landscape and labor market, career transitions have become a critical aspect of career development and are significant for Human Resource Development research and practice. Our research examines the type of support used during different career transitions and who can provide that support to women in career transition. We investigated four types of social support—emotional, appraisal, informational, and instrumental—and their roles in five types of career transitions: school-to-work transition, upward mobility transition, transition to a new profession, transition (...) to entrepreneurship, career re-entry transition, and transition to retirement. We analyzed 80 journal articles using directed content analysis, cross-tabulation, and nonparametric statistical tests. Instrumental support appears to be the most commonly documented type of social support in this career transition literature. Appraisal support was consistently documented least for each type of career transition. Our results may highlight the importance of personal connections and internal resources in successful career transitions for women. Based on our findings, we offer a model of women's social support network for career transitions and advocate for expanded networks of social support for women anticipating and during career transitions. The results of our study contain insights for how women can be supported in transitioning to the next career experience. We conclude with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This book identifies and explores ethical themes in the structure and delivery of hospice care in the United States. As the fastest growing sector in the US healthcare system, in which over forty percent of patients who die each year receive care in their final weeks of life, hospice care presents complex ethical opportunities and challenges for patients, families, clinicians, and administrators. Thirteen original chapters, written by seventeen hospice experts, offer guidance and analysis that promotes best ethical practice for hospice (...) organizations and professionals. The book addresses common questions and issues faced by those who work in hospice care, a dynamic movement that, in only 30 years, has shifted from an all-volunteer care alternative at the end of life to a highly regulated industry in which over half of providers are for-profit enterprises in a very competitive health care marketplace. The chapters show how the history and philosophy of hospice care can inform the values and composition of care teams, the operations of inpatient units, and access to care for pediatric and long-term care populations. Various chapters propose frameworks for deliberating organizational approaches to ethical questions in changing regulatory and legal environments, including a model for hospice ethics committees. The final chapter outlines an expanded model of hospice as a community based, interdisciplinary, and holistic form of palliative care emphasizing advance planning, case management, and a flexible spectrum of services. This model can serve as a centrepiece for a new quality of life and social support approach, not only to terminal care, but also long-term care during the later stages of chronic illness and fraility. (shrink)

This article argues that the movement of dogs from pounds to medical laboratories played a critically important role in debates over the use of animals in science and medicine in the United States in the twentieth century, not least by drawing the scientific community into every greater engagement with bureaucratic political governance. If we are to understand the unique characteristics of the American federal legislation that emerges in the 1960s, we need to understand the long and protracted debate over the (...) use of pound animals at the local municipal and state level between antivivisectionists, humane activists, and scientific and medical researchers. We argue that the Laboratory Animal Care Act of 1966 reflects the slow evolution of a strategy that proved most successful in local conflicts, and which would characterize a “new humanitarianism”: not the regulation of experimental practices but of the care and transportation of the animals being provided to the laboratory. Our analysis is consistent with, and draws upon, scholarship which has established the productive power of public agencies and civil society on the periphery of the American state. (shrink)

This chapter introduces readers to the aims and scope of the book. Readers are given the social and scholarly context in which the book emerges. The introduction suggests that the history and philosophy of hospice care contain moral values that can be resonant or dissonant with larger social values, giving those who work in hospice organizations an important place in the national discussion about terminal care. Finally, it offers a brief explanation of the goals of each chapter in the book.

This paper reviews how and why ILF Neurofeedback has proven to be a parsimonious and efficient way to remediate the neuro-physiological effects of trauma. Reference is made to several large- and small-scale institutional proof of concept experimental studies each addressing a specific kind of trauma. It ends with a case report by the author working with an American combat veteran. It makes the argument that given its success that ILF Neurofeedback and Alpha-Theta training become accepted as part of an integrative (...) and holistic approach for treating survivors of trauma. (shrink)

There is a growing movement to increase access to palliative care by declaring it a human right. Calls for such a right—in the form of articles in the healthcare literature and pleas to the United Nations and World Health Organization—rarely define crucial concepts involved in such a declaration, in particular ‘palliative care’ and ‘human right’. This paper explores how such concepts might be more fully developed, the difficulties in using a human rights approach to promote palliative care, and the relevance (...) of such an enterprise to public health ethics. (shrink)

Mrs. F, seventy‐five, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She and her spouse often discussed how to handle the progression of the disease. She was adamant about not coming to the point where she would be unable to recognize herself, her husband, or their son and daughter. The manner she chose was voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and she chose a specific date on which to carry out her plan. She asked her husband to promise, should she ever waver and request (...) nutrition or hydration, to remind her of the reasons she had chosen for pursuing this path.Mrs. F's ability to function was beginning to wax and wane. Sometimes she was her old self, and sometimes she had no recollection of her past identity. After she voluntarily stopped eating and drinking, the couple's promise created a dilemma for her professional caregivers. She asked for food and drink. Her husband and family reminded her of the reasons she had chosen VSED: “Remember, you didn't want to live in a nursing home, and you didn't want us to be responsible for caring for you at home. You believe that stopping eating and drinking will allow you to die with dignity.” Although they also asked Mrs. F, “What do you want to do?” the family asked the professional caregivers to respect her original choice to stop eating and drinking. Mrs. F still evidenced decision‐making capacity but often did not recall having chosen VSED. She again requested food and drink, from family and the professional caregivers.Can VSED be carried out for a patient whose advanced dementia makes disciplined voluntary action difficult? (shrink)

Organ donation after brain death has been practiced in China since 2003 in the absence of brain death legislation. Similar to international standards, China’s brain death diagnostic criteria include coma, absence of brainstem reflexes, and the lack of spontaneous respiration. The Chinese criteria require that the lack of spontaneous respiration must be verified with an apnea test by disconnecting the ventilator for 8 min to provoke spontaneous respiration. However, we have found publications in Chinese medical journals, in which the donors (...) were declared to be brain dead, yet without an apnea test. The organ procurement procedures started with initiating “intratracheal intubation for mechanical ventilation after brain death,” indicating that a brain death diagnosis was not performed. The purpose of the intubation was not to resuscitate the patient but rather was directly related to facilitating the explantation of organs. Moreover, it was unmistakably stated in two of these publications that the cardiac arrest was induced in these patients without brain death determination by cold St. Thomas cardioplegic solution or other cold myocardial protection solutions. This means that the condition of these donors neither met the criteria of brain death nor that of cardiac death. In other words, the “donor organs” may well have been procured in these cases from living human beings. Thus, brain death definition is abused in China by some individuals for organ harvesting, and a systematic investigation is needed to clarify the situation of organ donation after brain death in China. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is an integral component of good medical practice. Many researchers have investigated measures to improve the quality of informed consent, but it is not clear which techniques work best and why. To address this problem, we propose developing a core outcome set to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery in adult patients with capacity. Part of this process involves reviewing existing research that has reported what is important to patients and doctors in the (...) informed consent process. Methods This qualitative synthesis comprises four phases: identification of published papers and determining their relevance; appraisal of the quality of the papers; identification and summary of the key findings from each paper while determining the definitiveness of each finding against the primary data; comparison of key themes between papers such that findings are linked across studies. Results Searches of bibliographic databases returned 11,073 titles. Of these, 16 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1996 and 2016 and included a total of 367 patients and 74 health care providers. Thirteen studies collected data using in-depth interviews and constant comparison was the most common means of qualitative analysis. A total of 94 findings were extracted from the primary papers and divided into 17 categories and ultimately 6 synthesised findings related to: patient characteristics, knowledge, communication, the model patient, trust and decision making. Conclusions This qualitative meta-aggregation is the first to examine the issue of informed consent for surgery. It has revealed several outcomes deemed important to capture by patients and clinicians when evaluating the quality of a consent process. Some of these outcomes have not been examined previously in research comparing methods for informed consent. This review is an important step in the development of a COS to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery. Registration The study protocol was registered on the international prospective register for systematic reviews. (shrink)

As frequently pointed out in this discussion, one of the most characteristic features of Mayr's approach to the history of biology stems from the fact that he is dealing to a considerable degree with his own professional history. Furthermore, his main criterion for the selection of historical episodes is their relevance for modern biological theory. As W. F. Bynum and others have noted, the general impression of his reviewers is that “one of the towering figures of evolutionary biology has now (...) written a towering history of his discipline.”138 Bynum is here referring to The Growth of Biological Thought, but this observation holds equally true for Mayr's other historical writings: One must surely read this book [One Long Argument] not only for its content in itself, but for what it tells of its author. And certainly as one does so, one comes away full-handed. Many, if not all, of the disputes and controversies that have driven Mayr through his long intellectual life reappear, stated as forcefully and elegantly as ever.139Up to this point, most reviewers agree; the bone of contention is, rather, how to evaluate Mayr's historical work, considering this observation. The two related characteristics of his work-I will call them subjectivity and presentism-stand in opposition to a widespread approach in the history of science exemplified by Kuhn's suggestion that “insofar as possible..., the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies.”140 There are, however, historians who consider the close connection between Mayr and the subject matter of his historical studies to be an advantage.141On the other hand, it is assumed that the connection between past and present must result in a distortion of the historical truth and lead to a historiographical fallacy, commonly referred to as “Whig history”. Herbert Butterfield, who in 1931 gave the term its now generally accepted meaning, believed that “real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own”142. Unfortunately, Butterfield's definition of what he considers Whig history remains somewhat vague, and modern authors have emphasized what they consider most important. Butterfield's “subordination of the past to the present” is referred to in respect to the selection of subjects (there are more biographies of Charles Darwin than of, let's say, Louis Agassiz),143 to the evaluation of historical authors,144 or, more generally, to all kinds of histories “with one eye, so to speak, upon the present.”145 The underlying tendency of Whig historians is to produce a “historical account told from the viewpoint of those in power,”146 leading to a “glorification of the present.”147 It is obvious that Mayr's strongly presentist approach to the history of biology can be called Whiggish, if we apply the criteria of “selection” or “reference.” However, it might be worth mentioning that the program of writing a strictly historicist account of the history of science is challenged by various authors.148 For Mayr, it is not only legitimate but necessary to compare the present situation with the past. “Whiggish” is only the evaluation of an author in terms of our time.149I cannot discuss the Whit/anti-Whig controversy in any detail here, apart from saying that Mayr has defended himself rather extensively against the charges of being Whiggish.150 Nevertheless, it may be useful to touch on some of the criticisms that are predominant in reviews of his writings. First, we encounter the notion that historians can write a true and convincing historical account only if they have no personal interest or interpretation of their own; Mayr, on the other hand, because he “has such strong interpretations of his own, ... cannot possibly convince everyone that he is right about everything.”151 It makes one wonder, what historian has ever been able to convince everyone that he or she is right about everything? But apart from this peculiar idea, it unquestionably poses certain dangers if the subject matter of historical scrutiny and the author are identical. At the same time, this identity brings certain advantages with it, especially firsthand experiences of the period in discussion. Whether these personal memories ultimately result in a distorted picture of the past has to be decided in every particular instance. The notion that a scientific study can be conducted by a completely detached observer from a neutral standpoint has been shown to be impossible in physics, and it is also an illusion in historiography. The question is not whether, but which kind of interest are the underlying motivation for a historian. At this point, Mayr is ahead of his critics when he suggests that our understanding of the past always has a subjective component: The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and ephemeral.152Second, the temporal proximity between the event and the historical analysis makes difficulties inevitable and will finally result in certain false assessments. But this applies to all historians when they discuss recent problems, regardless of whether they are personally involved or not: As long as the battle between Darwinism and Lamarckism was raging, it was quite impossible to undertake an unbiased evaluation of Lamarck. ...[The] definite refutation of Lamarck's theory of evolutionary causation clears the air. We can now study him without bias and emotion and give him the attention that this major figure in the history of biology clearly deserves.153Third, Mayr is primarily interested in biological problems and not, for instance, historiographical, sociological, or psychological questions. Several authors have remarked that since the beginning of the professionalization of the history of science in the 1960s, a rift between two groups has developed, resulting from the heterogeneous professional backgrounds and interests of the people involved: the authors who were originally biologists and became interested in the history of their discipline only later on, and the authors who were trained as historians.154 Whereas the first group, the “biologists,” tend to be laymen in history proper, the “historians” are in most cases laymen in biology. Different professional backgrounds obviously shape the historical perspective in both groups, but neither approach is necessarily superior. The great number of important books in the history of biology written by “biologist” documents how valuable this point of view can be. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the writings of biologists in the history of science tend to have a strong “internalist” tendency and often neglect the professional, cultural, and political context of science. Mayr's approach is that of a “biologist”; it is “internalist,” and typical for scientists who turn to the history of their discipline.I want to conclude my analysis with a quotation from a review by Douglas J. Futuyma, which gives a perceptive glimpse of Mayr's personality and style: One cannot help standing in awe of the germanic capacity for vast, allembracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner's integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bounds of essentialism.155 Within this style of thinking Mayr has “to offer...nothing less than a vision of biology that places neodarwinian evolutionary theory firmly at the centre.”156 There may be other visions of biology, but few of them have as indefatigable and able representatives as Darwinism has in Ernst Mayr. (shrink)