Édition synoptique et traduction des chapitres supplémentaires du Livre des Morts 162 à 167. By Annik Wüthrich. 2 vols. Studien zu Ältägyptischen Totentexten, vol. 19. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. Pp. xxi + 333, viii + 179, illus. €168.

BackgroundFrench military doctors are currently deployed in the Sahel to support the armed forces of Operation Barkhane, in medical or surgical units. As well as supporting French soldiers, their other missions are diverse and complex: medical assistance to civilians and persons under control (PUC), advice to commanding officers. These tasks can create ethical dilemmas when decisions are forced upon doctors that may be in conflict with medical values or fundamental principles. Little is known about the specific dilemmas experienced by French (...) military doctors in overseas operations. We therefore conducted a qualitative study among doctors and surgeons recently deployed to the Sahel to explore and better understand this question.MethodSemi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 French military doctors or surgeons deployed since January 2016 in medical or surgical facilities in Mali and Chad.ResultsAll interviewed doctors reported having faced several ethical dilemmas during missions. All reported dilemmas involved the treatment of civilians (while delivering community medical assistance) or of PUC. The dilemmas involved choices as to which patients to treat, the use of care as a means to an end by military authorities, and the level of care attainable in the absence of any possible hospital follow-up. Questions of delivering care at the risk of their own safety or the mission’s and of treating openly hostile patients were also brought up. Several dilemmas stemmed from the dual loyalty problem, namely the conflict between military doctors’ duty of care to patients and to the military institution, but this was not the only factor involved. Contextual factors (restricted resources and security constraints) and psychological factors (especially hostility towards the enemy) were also associated with many of the reported dilemmas.ConclusionThis is the first reported study focusing on the ethical dilemmas encountered by French military doctors in overseas operations. It provides unique insights into their ethical experiences and should prove useful in improving operational training for healthcare personnel deployed on overseas missions. (shrink)

The outcome of very preterm infants is marked by the development of complications that can have an impact on the quality of life of the children and their families. The concept of quality of life and its evaluation in the long term raise semantic and ethical problems for French physicians in perinatal care. Our reflection aims to gain a better understanding of the representations surrounding quality of life in neonatal medicine.

The early writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were dismissed by his contemporaries as the paradoxes of a madman. Later critics, weighing the early works against such classics as the Confessions and Emile, were convinced that the views of the young Rousseau could not be reconciled with those of his more famous period. In this stimulating book Professor Einaudi argues that the denigrators of Rousseau's early work were wrong: the early and later views can be reconciled. Indeed, full understanding of the mature (...) Rousseau can be gained only through appreciation of the writings completed between 1737 and 1756. In developing his argument, the author refers not only to such well-known early works as the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences and the Discourse on Inequality, but also to the less familiar writings of the same period—the essays on political economy and the state of war, the letter to Voltaire on the Lisbon earthquake, the fragments on history and education, the Discourse on Wealth, and Rousseau's replies to his critics. Rousseau's reputation has steadily grown until he is today regarded by many as the most important thinker of the eighteenth century. His views on a variety of topics—man and society, private and public life, economics and government, war and peace—seem astonishingly relevant to the problems of the twentieth century, and for this reason he is now read with a thoroughness and sympathy that were seldom accorded him in his lifetime. This major contribution to the current Rousseau revival is the first full-length study in English to take into account the insights of recent European scholars, such as Starobinski, Derathé, and Vossler. (shrink)