This article addresses the precarious place of transgender and gender non-cis persons in relation to their discrimination-protections in recent legal, medical, and ethical policies in the United States. At present, there exists a contradiction such that trans persons are considered "pathological" enough that they are included in the latest iteration of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) as "gender dysphoric," but they are not included in the category of "disabled" under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As (...) such, trans persons in America are subject to the stigma of pathology (albeit with medical treatment) without the full protections of the ADA. By contrast, transgender and non-cis-gender Americans find their queer cohorts who are HIV-positive to be fully protected by the ADA. We ask whether transgender and non-cis-gender persons should embrace their (already pathologized) personhood as a disability. Sometimes "choosing disability" affords more rights than it deploys stigma. (shrink)

As the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And in the recent burst of clinical attention being paid to the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients, good intentions abound. But while this long‐overdue interest in LGBT health care aims to highlight important gaps and bring into relief serious issues in health care delivery for LGBT persons, such work can inadvertently reinforce both the marginalization of sexual minorities and the cultural norms related to sexuality, (...) gender identity, and the conventional family. To ensure that positive outcomes for LGBT patients are inextricably paired with those noble intentions, we advocate for a new, queer bioethics—a methodology of scholastic, bioethical, and critical scrutiny that not only addresses the needs of LGBT persons in health care settings but also considers the perspectives, histories, and feelings of such parties. (shrink)

This article considers the late 19th-century medical invention of the category of the homosexual in relation to homosexuality’s moment of deliverance from medicine in the 1970s, when it was removed as a category of mental aberration in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). With the rise of the AIDS pandemic in gay communities in the early 1980s, I argue that homosexuals were forcibly returned to the medical sphere, a process I call “the painful reunion.” Reading a collection of queer narratives (...) across the 20th century, I show that historical and contemporaneous medical events prompted the mobilization of seropositive and queer artists at century’s end to rehabilitate, revise, and offend the historiography of queer illness. Collectively, my conclusions redefine our understandings of queer theory and queer politics as distinctively 1990s projects invested in the present to ones that purposefully aim to challenge the past. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 19-21, July 2012.

The clinic is a loaded space for LGBTQI persons. Historically a site of pathology and culturally a site of stigma, the contemporary clinic for queer patient populations and their loved ones is an ethically fraught space. This paper, which introduces the featured articles of this special issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry on “Bioethics, Sexuality, and Gender Identity,” begins by offering an analysis of scrutiny itself. How do we scrutinize? When is it apt for us to scrutinize? And what (...) are the benefits and perils of clinical and bioethical scrutiny? Bearing in mind these questions, the second half of this paper introduces the feature articles in this special issue in response to such forms of scrutiny. How, why, when, and in what ways to sensitively scrutinize LGBTQI persons in the clinic are the aims of this piece. (shrink)

In this commentary on a clinical ethics case pertaining to a same-sex couple that does not have explicit surrogate decision-making or hospital-visitation rights (in the face of objections from the family-of-origin of one of the queer partners), the authors invoke contemporary legal and policy standards on LGBTQ health care in the United States and abroad. Given this historical moment in which some clinical rights are guaranteed for LGBTQ families whilst others are in transition, the authors advocate for the implementation of (...) clinical ethics mediation as the soundest and most humane form of resolution in matters where there is a dispute between family members about an incapacitated loved one. They argue that clinical ethics mediation is an ideal alternative solution because it works toward consensus about outcome, even where consensus about values is not achievable. (shrink)

Beginning with a rumination on the AIDS-inspired poetry of Thom Gunn, this article by the guest editors introduces the special issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities titled “Queer in the Clinic.” After providing an overview of the historical legacy and contemporary dilemmas of LGBTQ persons in biomedical practice, the authors describe the rationale of the issue and the contributions included.

"I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."Reduced to its most basic task, bioethics is about choices. What is the ethical or unethical decision at a particular biomedical moment? What is most just or unjust for a disabled or infirmed loved one? What feels like the morally right or wrong decision in a healthcare moment? "Should we or shouldn't we" at a medical impasse?Understandably, the question of choice has found an especially prominent and ethically contentious place (...) in disability discourses. Are disabled lives, disabled identities, and disabled bodies themselves best understood as "chosen"? As terminological variations on this theme, disability scholar Simi Linton has asked in the past... (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 1-2, September 2011.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 34-36, October 2012.

:Many teaching hospitals in the United States were founded on philanthropic principles and aimed to aid the urban poor and underserved. However, as times have changed, there has been a divide created between the urban poor and teaching hospitals. There is a plethora of reasons why this is the case. This paper will specifically focus on the histories of ten hospitals and medical schools and the effect that white flight, segregation, elitism, and marginalization had on healthcare institutions all over the (...) United States. It will call for a reexamination of the values of Ivy League and Ivy Plus teaching hospitals and medical schools and for them to take an intentional look into their communities. (shrink)

Thirty-four states criminalize HIV in some way, whether by mandating disclosure of one’s HIV status to all sexual partners or by deeming the saliva of HIV-positive persons a “deadly weapon.” In this paper, we argue that HIV-specific criminal laws are rooted in historical prejudice against HIV-positive persons as a class. While purporting to promote public health goals, these laws instead legally sanction discrimination against a class of persons.

Given the resurgence of scientific studies on the etiology of homosexuality in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, this article considers the effects these studies had on contemporaneous queer filmmakers. By using the subject of criminality as a way to talk about homosexual causality, queer films of the 1990s illustrate that contemporary scientific studies on homosexuality were historically and politically situated in relation to cultural anxieties about other forms of deviance. This article focuses on films that dissect the hetero-normative tendency (...) to amalgamate forms of deviance in order to distinguish between the diseased and the healthy. Such products of New Queer Cinema highlight this amalgamation of criminality and homosexuality in order to challenge demands by the LGBT community of the 1980s and 1990s for “more positive images” in film. This article argues that queer filmmakers have manipulated the image of the queer criminal to usurp the medical tendency to biologize and pathologize the notion of queer transgression. In such a way, queer films that enthusiastically dramatize the queer outlaw perpetuate myths about homosexuality in order to dissect and discredit them. (shrink)

Pragmatism has enjoyed a major resurgence in Anglo-American philosophy over the course of the last decade or two, and Robert Brandom’s work – particularly his 1994 tome Making it Explicit (MIE) – has been at the vanguard of this resurgence (Brandom 1994).2 But pragmatism comes in several surprisingly distinct flavours. Authors such as Hubert Dreyfus find their roots in certain parts of Heidegger and in phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, and they privilege embodied, preconceptual skills as opposed to discursive practices as (...) the basic sites of meaning and agency (Dreyfus 1991; Dreyfus 1992; Todes 2001). With strong inheritances from Dewey and Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty has championed a pragmatism whose core emphasis is on the rejection of transcendental truth and high metaphysical theorizing (Rorty 1982), and this anti-theoretical banner has been taken up by several prominent ethicists, among others. For his part, Brandom, who purports to offer a systematic theory of language and meaning grounded on a foundation of pragmatic normative relationships between speakers, looks back instead to Sellars and Quine for his stripe of pragmatism. Near the start of MIE, he writes: The explanatory strategy pursued here is to begin with an account of social practices, identify the particular structure they must exhibit in order to qualify as specifically linguistic practices, and then consider what different sorts of semantic contents those practices can confer on states, performances, and expressions caught up in them in suitable ways. (Brandom 1994, xiii) Despite his professed pragmatism, Brandom is no foe of high theory or metanarratives, and he is vastly more interested in language and theoretical reason than in the rest of human bodily activity. For Brandom, inferentially articulated discourse forms an autonomous domain of normativity, while our bodily encounters with the world in perception and in action serve as language entry and exit points respectively.. (shrink)

After a decades-long economic slump, the city of Flint, Michigan, struggled to address chronic issues of toxic water supply, malnutrition, and food security gaps among its residents. A community-engaged research project proposed a resilience assessment that would use panarchy theory to move the city toward a more sustainable food system. Flint is one of many examples that demonstrates how panarchy theory is being applied to understand and influence change in complex human-natural systems. Applied Panarchy, the much-anticipated successor to Lance (...) Gunderson and C.S. Holling's seminal 2002 volume Panarchy, documents the extraordinary advances in interdisciplinary panarchy scholarship and applications over the past two decades. Panarchy theory has been applied to a broad range of fields, from economics to law to urban planning, changing the practice of environmental stewardship for the better in measurable, tangible ways.Panarchy describes the way systems--whether forests, electrical grids, agriculture, coastal surges, public health, or human economies and governance--are part of even larger systems that interact in unpredictable ways. Although humans desire resiliency and stability in our lives to help us understand the world and survive, nothing in nature is permanently stable. How can society anticipate and adjust to the changes we see around us? Where Panarchy proposed a framework to understand how these transformational cycles work and how we might influence them, Applied Panarchy takes the scholarship to the next level, demonstrating how these concepts have been modified and refined. The book shows how panarchy theory intersects with other disciplines, and how it directly influences natural resources management and environmental stewardship.Intended as a text for graduate courses in environmental sciences and related fields, Applied Panarchy picks up where Panarchy left off, inspiring new generations of scholars, researchers, and professionals to put its ideas to work in practical ways. (shrink)

Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers intend. As a result, existing methods are (...) not reliable measures of metaethical belief. We end by discussing the implications of our account for the philosophical and practical implications of research on the psychology of metaethics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the existence of corporate philanthropy. It proposes a framework for analysing corporate philanthropy along the dimensions of business/society interest and primary/secondary stakeholder focus. The framework is then applied in order to understand business involvement with the arts in the U.K. A unique dataset of 60 texts which describe different firms' involvement with the Arts is analysed using formal content analysis to uncover the motivations for business involvement. Cluster analysis is then used in order to (...) identify motivational groupings. Two broad types of involvement are identified – advertisers and legitimators. Only in one case of the 60 is there the potential to observe pure altruism. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it provides a clear framework to understand the motivations for corporate giving and applies this using empirical data. Secondly, this research finds little evidence, if at all, of corporate philanthropy in the context of firms giving to the Arts in the U.K. (shrink)

This chapter of Ender's Game addresses two questions. First, are Ender's killings of Stilson and Bonzo morally permissible? He destroys them both and robs their families of them. Could this ever be morally permissible? Second, is Ender morally responsible for the consequences of his actions? Ender blames himself for the destruction of the buggers, but would he have done the same thing if he had known it was all for real? Perhaps by allowing the I.F. to train him for this (...) purpose, he had always intended to do it. Of course, Ender is not the only one involved here: maybe the International Fleet Command is responsible for the consequences of Ender's actions. After all, they unquestionably manipulate and structure Ender's surroundings, and clearly, it is the I.F. that intends for the buggers to die‐even if Ender does not. (shrink)

This chapter looks at how Göransson's motifs emotionally move us, but also how the music “reads the mind” of Din. In conveying meaning musically, Göransson's compositions enhance our aesthetic appreciation of The Mandalorian and further our emotional investment in Din's story. The ancient Greeks included music in education because they believed it perfects our soul or nature. Aristotle mentions that another purpose of music is to provide us with pleasure from the relaxation it provides. As Din and Kuiil set out (...) on their mission riding the blurrgs, The Mandalorian theme plays in full glory – a symphonic march with trumpets carrying most of the melody and harmony along with electric and bass guitars which help drive the orchestra. In addition to the pleasure we feel from enjoying well‐ordered emotional movements of music, Aristotle mentions another kind of pleasure we can feel from music: intellectual enjoyment. (shrink)

This chapter lays out the paradox of fiction as it relates to the Star Wars films in three claims: we have genuine and rational emotional responses to the fictional characters and events in Star Wars; we must believe these characters and events really exist; and nobody believes these fictional characters and events in Star Wars exist. While many fans like to talk as if the characters and events in Star Wars are real, none of us actually believe that Luke's heroic (...) journey is real. The illusion theory claims that the fictional work creates in us the illusion that the characters and situations depicted actually exist. One observation that the thought theory makes is that we often have emotional reactions to imaginary situations. The pretend theory says that the emotions we experience while watching Star Wars are not genuine emotions. Rather, they're quasi‐emotions. (shrink)

Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life.

This paper is interested in the individual memory of wars in Maïssa Bey. The writer devoted her two books to the wars in Algeria - they were written to be adapted to the theatre: Entendez-vous dans les montagnes… and Pierre Sang Papier ou Cendre. In Entendez-vous dans les montagnes..., the memory in question is that of the War of Independence against the colonization during the years 1956-1962, while Pierre Sang Papier ou Cendre addresses the French colonization that lasted 132 years, (...) from 1830 to 1962. In other words, the first relies on individual and collective memories, while the second concerns especially the collective memory. (shrink)

One of the most challenging and rewarding roles for in-house hospital attorneys is serving as a member of their hospital’s Bioethics Committee. As a member of the Committee, an attorney assists in developing institutional ethics policies and guidelines, and also participates in ethics consultations involving disputes about patient care. Institutions such as the Author’s employer, Texas Children’s Hospital, promote open and honest communications between members of a patient’s health care team and the patient’s parents and family; however, when communications break (...) down, the Committee’s goal is to provide an objective forum where disputes can be discussed and hopefully resolved in a professional, ethical manner. (shrink)

One of the most challenging and rewarding roles for in-house hospital attorneys is serving as a member of their hospital’s Bioethics Committee. As a member of the Committee, an attorney assists in developing institutional ethics policies and guidelines, and also participates in ethics consultations involving disputes about patient care. Institutions such as the Author’s employer, Texas Children’s Hospital, promote open and honest communications between members of a patient’s health care team and the patient’s parents and family; however, when communications break (...) down, the Committee’s goal is to provide an objective forum where disputes can be discussed and hopefully resolved in a professional, ethical manner. (shrink)

One of the most challenging and rewarding roles for in-house hospital attorneys is serving as a member of their hospital’s Bioethics Committee. As a member of the Committee, an attorney assists in developing institutional ethics policies and guidelines, and also participates in ethics consultations involving disputes about patient care. Institutions such as the Author’s employer, Texas Children’s Hospital, promote open and honest communications between members of a patient’s health care team and the patient’s parents and family; however, when communications break (...) down, the Committee’s goal is to provide an objective forum where disputes can be discussed and hopefully resolved in a professional, ethical manner. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I question the orthodox position that true belief is a fundamental epistemic value. I begin by raising a particularly epistemic version of the so-called “value problem of knowledge” in order to set up the basic explanandum and to motivate some of the claims to follow. In the second section, I take aim at what I call “bottom-up approaches” to this value problem, views that attempt to explain the added epistemic value of knowledge in terms of its relation (...) to a more fundamental value of true belief. The final section is a presentation of a value-theoretic alternative, one that explains the value problem presented in the first section while also doing justice to intuitions that may cause us to worry about bottom-up approaches. In short, knowledge and not mere true belief is a fundamental epistemic value as it is the constitutive goal of propositional inquiry. (shrink)

Ethical sourcing and socially responsible purchasing is increasingly on the business agenda, but developing and implementing policy and practice across a global network of suppliers is challenging. The purpose of this paper is to expand theory on the nature of linkages between firms in a social network, specifically postulating how ties between organizations can be configured to facilitate development, diffusion, and adoption of sustainability initiatives. The theory development provides a lens with which to view the influence of a firm’s structural (...) embeddedness in its organizational social network on developing, diffusing and adopting sustainability initiatives. The focus is on brokers who in various structural alignments help bridge the focal firm’s sustainability initiatives with distant or disconnected stakeholders the focal firm is trying to reach. The brokers help the focal firm engage these stakeholders by sharing knowledge and information regarding sustainability initiatives and by incorporating localized needs into the development of the initiatives to facilitate better diffusion and adoption. The theoretical contribution of this manuscript is a novel perspective on sustainability in organizational networks. This perspective allows for greater explanatory power regarding how organizations can achieve sustainable outcomes that meet a broad base of stakeholder needs and better facilitate sustainability initiatives across a diverse and expansive network. (shrink)

Human rights play an integral role in the global governance of health. Recently, both structural and normative aspects of human rights have proliferated across multiple levels and within multiple contexts around the world. Human rights proliferation is likely to have a positive impact on the governance of health because it can expand the avenues through which a human rights framework or human rights norms may be used to address and improve health.