Routine management of geriatric problems often raises ethical problems, particularly regarding autonomy of the old person. The carers or children may be unaware of the sensitivity of role reversal in dealing with the financial affairs; the need for a residential carer may compromise the old person’s privacy. Attending a day centre confers much benefit, but one must understand the old person’s resistance to change in the proposal of a new daily regimen. Similarly his or her autonomy must be the priority (...) in planning for admittance to an old age home, and not the assumption that the family knows best. A common dilemma is the assessment of an old person’s competency in decision making, either about management of his affairs, or regarding consent to treatment, or participation in research. Because cognitive capacity is not always identical with competency, meaningful tools have recently been developed in which the emphasis is on the specific situation to be investigated. (shrink)

Respecting and encouraging autonomy in the elderly is basic to the practice of geriatrics. In this paper, we examine the practice of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and "artificial" feeding in a geriatric unit in a general hospital subscribing to jewish orthodox religious principles, in which the sanctity of life is a fundamental ethical guideline. The literature on the administration of food and water in terminal stages of illness, including dementia, still shows division of opinion on the morality of withdrawing nutrition. We (...) uphold the principle that as long as feeding by naso-gastric (N-G) or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) does not constitute undue danger or arouse serious opposition it should be given, without causing suffering to the patient. This is part of basic care, and the doctor has no mandate to withdraw this. The question of CPR still shows much discrepancy regarding elderly patients' wishes, and doctors' opinions about its worthwhileness, although up to 10 percent survive. Our geriatric patients rarely discuss the subject, but it is openly ventilated with families who ask about it, who are then involved in the decision-making, and the decision about CPR or "do-not-resuscitate" (DNR) is based on clinical and prognostic considerations. (shrink)

Annihilationism provides a fruitful point of contact between philosophers and theologians for further reflection on nonexistence. In this paper I articulate a key commitment of annihilationism; namely, that some persons cease to exist. Such a commitment, I argue, amounts to the claim that some persons exist at time t and then do not exist at t+1, become ‘annihilated objects.’ Claims about annihilated objects induct the annihilationist into a wider realism/anti-realism debate about nonexistent objects. I survey some major viewpoints in this (...) debate. I then draw out some implications for each view for the annihilationist’s commitment to annihilated objects. I show that annihilationism is consistent with some forms of realism and anti-realism and inconsistent with others. (shrink)

This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the ‘Philosophy of education in a new key’ initiative by Educational Philosophy and Theory brings together some of the leading contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship on radicalization and violent extremism. Its overall aim is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ associated with this area of scholarly research best represented by its many slogans, metaphors and other thought-terminating clichés. By providing (...) conceptual lenses on issues previously compartmentalized primarily [or even exclusively] in security and intelligence studies or at the fringes of scholarly interest, radicalization and violent extremism turn out to be much more complex than ‘radicalization studies’ has been eager to acknowledge. (shrink)

The primary aim of this essay is to present a case for a heavily revised notion of heterophenomenology. l will refer to the revised notion as ‘enkinaesthesia’ because of its dependence on the experiential entanglement of our own and the other’s felt action as the sensory background within which all other experience is possible. Enkinaesthesia2 emphasizes two things: (i) the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, including the givenness and ownership of its experience, and (ii) the entwined, blended and situated co-affective (...) feeling of the presence of the other(s), agential (for example, human, horse, cat, beetle) and non-agential (for example, cup, bed, apple, paper) and, where appropriate, the anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. When the ‘other’ is also a sensing and experiencing agent it is their - in this case, the pair’s - affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding, and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of the deep integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies which bind us together, even when they pull us apart. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dialogical nature of the backgrounded feeling of being. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

DNA replication is both highly conserved and controlled. Problematic DNA replication can lead to genomic instability and therefore carcinogenesis. Numerous mechanisms work together to achieve this tight control and increasing evidence suggests that post‐translational modifications (phosphorylation, ubiquitination, SUMOylation) of DNA replication proteins play a pivotal role in this process. Here we discuss such modifications in the light of a recent article that describes a novel role for the deubiquitinase (DUB) USP7/HAUSP in the control of DNA replication. USP7 achieves this function (...) by an unusual and novel mechanism, namely deubiquitination of SUMOylated proteins at the replication fork, making USP7 also a SUMO DUB (SDUB). This work extends previous observations of increased levels of SUMO and low levels of ubiquitin at the on‐going replication fork. Here, we discuss this novel study, its contribution to the DNA replication and genomic stability field and what questions arise from this work. (shrink)