La discusión sobre el �orgullo gordo� y la supuesta pandemia de la obesidad han encontrado un espacio político y comercial receptivo en nuestras sociedades occidentales, y poco a poco amenaza con extenderse por todo el mundo. Siguiendo con anteriores trabajos, interpretamos y comentamos aquí los envíos remitidos por un grupo de lectores en respuesta a un artículo polémico publicado en las páginas de un periódico digital de difusión nacional. Más que intentar descifrar las supuestas motivaciones o intenciones de los lectores, (...) nuestro objetivo es desarrollar algunas ideas sobre el modo en que las personas obesas resultan posicionadas o caracterizadas a través de los mensajes al foro del periódico: como personas enfermas, anormales, asociados con otros grupos socialmente mal considerados, discriminados, perjudiciales para la sociedad y condenados a resignarse con su estado obeso. Nuestro trabajo persigue poner de manifiesto el trato desconsiderado y estigmatizador que nuestra sociedad depara a las personas gordas, así como explorar algunas claves de actuación que sirvan para reducir el estigma. (shrink)

Since 2010, the European Journal of Anaesthesiology has required the reporting of five items concerning ethical approval in articles describing human research: ethics committee’s name and address, chairperson’s name, study’s protocol number and approval date. We aimed to assess whether this requirement has helped to identify and to contact the referenced ethics committees. In this cross-sectional study, we analysed articles requiring ethical approval, according to the Swiss federal law for human research and published in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology in (...) 2011. Ethics committees were searched through our institutional Internet access based on information provided in the articles. The last search was performed in November 2015. Numbers of items reported, of ethics committees identified, and of those that confirmed having provided ethical approval are reported. Of 76 articles requiring ethical approval, 74 declared it. Ethics committees’ names and addresses were mentioned in 63/74, protocol numbers in 51/74, approval dates in 48/74, and chairpersons’ names in 45/74. We could identify 44/74 committees; 36/74 answered our inquiry and 24/74 confirmed their role. Thirty-four of 74 articles reported all five items; in 25/34, we were able to identify an ethics committee, 18/34 answered our inquiry, and 15/34 confirmed their role. Forty of 74 articles reported ≤4 items; in 19/40, we were able to identify an ethics committee, 18/40 answered our inquiry, and 9/40 confirmed their role. Reporting five items significantly increased identification of ethics committees and their confirmation of ethical approval. Twelve of 74 ethics committees were unable to confirm their role in approving the study. Even when details concerning ethical approval were reported in these studies of human research, we were unable to identify almost half of the ethics committees concerned. The reporting of five items, compared with reporting ≤4, was associated with facilitated identification of ethics committees, and increased the likelihood that they would be able to confirm the study’s approval. Future research should identify which information facilitates identification of, and contact with, ethics committees. (shrink)

Reponse to Peter Milne (2005)'s argument agaist maximalism about truthmaking.

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

Two main types of philosophical arguments have been given in support of the claim that the citizens of affluent societies have stringent moral duties to aid the global poor: “positive duty” arguments based on the notion of beneficence and “negative duty” arguments based on noninterference. Peter Singer’s positive duty argument (Singer 1972) and Thomas Pogge’s negative duty argument (Pogge 2002) are among the most prominent examples. Philosophers have made speculative claims about the relative effectiveness of these arguments in promoting attitudes (...) and behaviors that could lead to the alleviation of poverty. In this article we present the results of two empirical studies that evaluate these claims, and suggest that both arguments have a modest effect on people’s attitudes and behaviors regarding global poverty. In a replication of the second study, the negative duty argument, in particular, had a statistically significant effect on donations. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these results and suggest directions for further research on the role that philosophical arguments can play in engendering concern and action on pressing moral problems. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals have developed brain–computer interface (BCI) technologies, connecting the user’s brain activity to communication or motor devices. This new technology has also captured the imagination of publics, industry, and ethicists. Academic ethics has highlighted the ethical challenges of BCIs, although these conclusions often rely on speculative or conceptual methods rather than empirical evidence or public engagement. From a social science or empirical ethics perspective, this tendency could be considered problematic and even technocratic because (...) of its disconnect from publics. In response, our trinational survey (Germany, Canada, and Spain) reports public attitudes toward BCIs (N = 1,403) on ethical issues that were carefully derived from academic ethics literature. The results show moderately high levels of concern toward agent-related issues (e.g., changing the user’s self) and consequence-related issues (e.g., new forms of hacking). Both facets of concern were higher among respondents who reported as female or as religious, while education, age, own and peer disability, and country of residence were associated with either agent-related or consequence-related concerns. These findings provide a first look at BCI attitudes across three national contexts, suggesting that the language and content of academic BCI ethics may resonate with some publics and their values. (shrink)

Recent epidemiological reports of associations between socioeconomic status and epigenetic markers that predict vulnerability to diseases are bringing to light substantial biological effects of social inequalities. Here, we start the discussion of the moral consequences of these findings. We firstly highlight their explanatory importance in the context of the research program on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) and the social determinants of health. In the second section, we review some theories of the moral status of health inequalities. (...) Rather than a complete outline of the debate, we single out those theories that rest on the principle of equality of opportunity and analyze the consequences of DOHaD and epigenetics for these particular conceptions of justice. We argue that DOHaD and epigenetics reshape the conceptual distinction between natural and acquired traits on which these theories rely and might provide important policy tools to tackle unjust distributions of health. (shrink)

Background Contemporary societies are rife with moral disagreement, resulting in recalcitrant disputes on matters of public policy. In the context of ongoing bioethical controversies, are uncompromising attitudes rooted in beliefs about the nature of moral truth?Methods To answer this question, we conducted both exploratory and confirmatory studies, with both a convenience and a nationally representative sample (total N = 1501), investigating the link between people’s beliefs about moral truth (their metaethics) and their beliefs about moral value (their normative ethics).Results Across (...) various bioethical issues (e.g., medically-assisted death, vaccine hesitancy, surrogacy, mandatory organ conscription, or genetically modified crops), consequentialist attitudes were associated with weaker beliefs in an objective moral truth. This association was not explained by domain-general reflectivity, theism, personality, normative uncertainty, or subjective knowledge.Conclusions We find a robust link between the way people characterize prescriptive disagreements and their sensibility to consequences. In addition, both societal consensus and personal conviction contribute to objectivist beliefs, but these effects appear to be asymmetric, i.e., stronger for opposition than for approval. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

The origin of chordates and the consequent genesis of vertebrates were major events in natural history. The amphioxus (lancelet) is now recognised as the closest extant relative to the stem chordate and is the only living invertebrate that retains a vertebrate‐like development and body plan through its lifespan, despite more than 500 million years of independent evolution from the stem vertebrate. The inspiring data coming from its recently sequenced genome confirms that amphioxus has a prototypical chordate genome with respect to (...) gene content and structure, and even chromosomal organisation. Pushed by joint efforts of amphioxus researchers, amphioxus is now entering a new era, namely its maturation as a laboratory model, through the availability of a large amount of molecular data and the advent of experimental manipulation of the embryo. These two facts may well serve to illuminate the hidden secrets of the genetic changes that generated, among other vertebrates, ourselves. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 106-109.

A collection of essays in French or English on the reception of Cartesian philosphy.

Recent evidence of intergenerational epigenetic programming of disease risk broadens the scope of public health preventive interventions to future generations, i.e. non existing people. Due to the transmission of epigenetic predispositions, lifestyles such as smoking or unhealthy diet might affect the health of populations across several generations. While public policy for the health of future generations can be justified through impersonal considerations, such as maximizing aggregate well-being, in this article we explore whether there are rights-based obligations supervening on intergenerational epigenetic (...) programming despite the non-identity argument, which challenges this rationale in case of policies that affect the number and identity of future people. We propose that rights based obligations grounded in the interests of non-existing people might fall upon existing people when generations overlap. In particular, if environmental exposure in F0 will affect the health of F2 through epigenetic programming, then F1 might face increased costs to address F2's condition in the future: this might generate obligations upon F0 from various distributive principles, such as the principle of equal opportunity for well being. (shrink)

Existe una escisión del hombre con la naturaleza inscrita en los aspectos de la vida; la civilización moderna está en crisis ambiental, de la cultura, de sentido, de la técnica y de la manera en que habita y crea hábitat el hombre. La técnica moderna se ha instaurado de la mano de la ciencia y la economía llamándose tecnología: una manera de la techné distanciada de sus orígenes y que ha pasado de la creación e invención a una repetibilidad que (...) solo permite crear lo que cumple las condiciones e ideales establecidos por un modelo económico. Mientras la techné se comprende en un mundo de la vida, en un lugar con espacio y tiempo, la técnica moderna se cree separada de él. Se propone entonces un giro en el pensar/habitar hacia la techné, para un reencuentro con el mundo de la vida. (shrink)

Within the field of neuroscience, it is assumed that the central nervous system is divided into two functionally distinct components: the brain, which does the cognizing, and the spinal cord, which is a conduit of information enabling the brain to do its job. We dub this the “Cinderella view” of the spinal cord. Here, we suggest it should be abandoned. Marshalling recent empirical findings, we claim that the spinal cord is best conceived as an intrabodily cognitive extension: a piece of (...) biological circuitry that, together with the brain, constitutes our cognitive engine. To do so, after a brief introduction to the anatomy of the spinal cord, we briefly present a number of empirical studies highlighting the role played by the spinal cord in cognitive processing. Having so done, we claim that the spinal cord satisfies two popular and often endorsed criteria used to adjudicate cases of cognitive extension; namely the parity principle and the so-called “trust and glue” criteria. This, we argue, is sufficient to vindicate the role of the spinal cord as an intrabodily mental extension. We then steel our case considering a sizable number of prominent anti-extension arguments, showing that none of them poses a serious threat to our main claim. We then conclude the essay, spelling out a number of far-from trivial implications of our view. (shrink)

The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare raises both hope and ethical concerns. Some advanced machine learning methods provide accurate clinical predictions at the expense of a significant lack of explainability. Alex John London has defended that accuracy is a more important value than explainability in AI medicine. In this article, we locate the trade-off between accurate performance and explainable algorithms in the context of distributive justice. We acknowledge that accuracy is cardinal from outcome-oriented justice because it helps (...) to maximize patients’ benefits and optimizes limited resources. However, we claim that the opaqueness of the algorithmic black box and its absence of explainability threatens core commitments of procedural fairness such as accountability, avoidance of bias, and transparency. To illustrate this, we discuss liver transplantation as a case of critical medical resources in which the lack of explainability in AI-based allocation algorithms is procedurally unfair. Finally, we provide a number of ethical recommendations for when considering the use of unexplainable algorithms in the distribution of health-related resources. (shrink)

The organ donation and transplantation (ODT) system heavily relies on the willingness of individuals to donate their organs. While it is widely believed that public trust plays a crucial role in shaping donation rates, the empirical support for this assumption remains limited. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this article takes a foundational approach by elucidating the concept of trust within the context of ODT. By examining the stakeholders involved, identifying influential factors, and mapping the intricate trust relationships among (...) trustors, trustees, and objects of trust, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of trust dynamics in ODT. We employ maps and graphs to illustrate the functioning of these trust relationships, enabling a visual representation of the complex interactions within the ODT system. Through this conceptual groundwork, we pave the way for future empirical research to investigate the link between trust and organ donation rates, informed by a clarified understanding of trust in ODT. This study can also provide valuable insights to inform interventions and policies aimed at enhancing organ donation rates. (shrink)

Se presentan resultados parciales del "Proyecto Investigativo Institucional para el desarrollo sociohumanista de los profesionales de salud" que se despliega en la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Guantánamo desde el año 2016. Los procedimientos seguidos se corresponden con los de una investigación cualitativa en tanto permitieron caracterizar el estado de la educación sociohumanista en profesionales de la salud que se forman en la institución y el nivel de desarrollo de competencia sociohumanista en ese proceso. Mediante la investigación bibliográfica se precisan (...) sus definiciones, referentes teóricos y las tendencias que sigue la educación médica contemporánea mientras que la aplicación de otros métodos de investigación posibilitó establecer los elementos característicos, así como las dimensiones de su desarrollo en los profesionales de la salud. A partir de estas informaciones primarias, se cumplió el objetivo de diseñar la estrategia didáctica que favorezca, mediante un sistema de acciones, la aplicación del enfoque educativo sociohumanista en el contexto de la superación profesional orientada al logro de competencia sociohumanista en el modo de actuación de los profesionales de la salud que beneficie la calidad de su servicio. Partial results of the are presented "I Project Investigative Institutional for the sociohumanist development of the professionals of health" that spreads in the University of Medical Sciences of Guantánamo from the year 2016. The followed procedures belong together with those of a qualitative investigation as long as they allowed to characterize the state of the sociohumanist education in professionals of the health that are formed in the institution and the level of development of sociohumanist competence in that process. By means of the bibliographical investigation they are necessary their definitions, relating theoretical and the tendencies that it follows the contemporary medical education while the application of other investigation methods facilitated to establish the characteristic elements, as well as the dimensions of its development in the professionals of the health. Starting from these primary informations, the objective was completed of designing the didactic strategy that it favored, by means of a system of actions, the application of the focus sociohumanist educational in the context of the professional superation guided to the achievement of sociohumanist competence in the way of the professionals' of the health performance that benefits the quality of its service. (shrink)

In this commentary, we criticize the argument that allowing euthanasia for people with disabilities is ableist. We analyze the distinction between facts and values in medical assistance in dying, the expressivist objection, and the problem of crypwashing.

Relationships between degree/area of academic formation and religious and Darwinian views are controversial. This study aimed to compare the religious beliefs and acceptance of Darwinian evolution between two contrasting South American scientific communities (Chile and Colombia), accounting for different degrees and areas of academic formation. In 2018, 115 last year bachelor students (surveyed as freshmen in 2014 for a previous study) from Chile, and 283 first/last year bachelor students, graduate students, and professors from Colombia, all belonging to biology, chemistry, or (...) physics, were surveyed. Chilean students/faculty were significantly more agnostic/atheist, more accepting of Darwinian evolution, and less creationist than their Colombian counterparts. Academic degree and area differently affected these views in both countries, as only in Chile there was a clear tendency among biologists and physicists with higher degrees to hold less religious and creationist views. Marked differences between the history, socioeconomic contexts, and especially in high school and university curricula of both countries might explain these results. (shrink)

We examine the comportment of the global trajectory of a piecewisely conceived single species population growth model. Formulation relies on what we develop as the principle of limiting factors for population growth, adapted from the law of the minimum of Liebig and the law of the tolerance of Shelford. The ensuing paradigm sets natality and mortality rates to express through extreme values of population growth determining factor. Dynamics through time occur over different growth phases. Transition points are interpreted as thresholds (...) of viability, starvation, and intraspecific competition. In this delivery, we focus on the qualitative study of the global trajectory expressed on continuous time and on exploring the feasibility of analytical results against data on populations growing under experimental or natural conditions. All study cases sustained fittings of high reproducibility both at empirical and interpretative slants. Possible phase configurations include regimes with multiple stable equilibria, sigmoidal growth, extinction, or stationarity. Here, we also outline that the associating discrete-time piecewise model composes the logistic map applied over a particular region of the phase configuration. Preliminary exploratory analysis suggests that the logistic map’s chaos onset could surpass once the orbit enters a contiguous phase region. (shrink)

A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person has competing loyalties or interests that make it difficult to fulfil his or her duties impartially. Conflict of interest is not categorically improper in itself but requires proper management. A SCOPUS literature search was performed for publications on the efficacy/safety of Phospho-Di-Esterase Inhibitors for treating erectile dysfunction. A categorization tool was used to review and classify the publications as supportive/not-supportive for the discussed active ingredient and reporting or not reporting (...) a COI for that specific drug or for the remaining PDEIs. Multivariable binary logistic regression was performed. In the 419 selected records the prevalence of supportive opinions was higher when a COI for the index label was declared. The CoOpCaT showed good internal consistency, discriminative validity and intra/inter-rater agreement. The strongest predictor for a supportive opinion was the total number of financial COIs for the index label. A mild protective effect of the total number of financial COIs for any competitor label was noted. Financial COIs have frequently been associated with bias, and the measures currently adopted to restrain it lack effectiveness. Some evidence for monitoring and/or compensating this bias is reported here, but the ultimate solution remains distant. (shrink)

Understanding the mechanisms of early embryonic patterning and the timely allocation of specific cells to embryonic regions and fates as well as their development into tissues and organs, is a fundamental problem in Developmental Biology. The classical explanation for this process had been built around the notion of positional information. Accordingly the programmed appearance of sources of Morphogens at localized positions within a field of cells directs their differentiation. Recently, the development of organs and tissues from unpatterned and initially identical (...) stem cells (adult and embryonic) has challenged the need for positional information and even the integrity of the embryo, for pattern formation. Here we review the emerging area of organoid biology from the perspective of Developmental Biology. We argue that the events underlying the development of these systems are not purely linked to “self‐organization,” as often suggested, but rather to a process of genetically encoded self‐assembly where genetic programs encode and control the emergence of biological structures. (shrink)

The debate over the determination of death has been raging for more than fifty years. Since then, objections against the diagnosis of brain death from family members of those diagnosed as dead-have been increasing and are causing some countries to take novel steps to accommodate people’s beliefs and preferences in the determination of death. This, coupled with criticism by some academics of the brain death criterion, raises some questions about the issues surrounding the determination of death. In this paper, we (...) discuss some of the main approaches to death determination that have been theoretically proposed or currently put into practice and propose a new approach to death determination called "weak pluralism" as a reasonable ethical and political alternative to respect diversity in death determination. (shrink)

Organ shortage constitutes an unsolved problem for every country that offers transplantation as a therapeutic option. Besides the largely implemented donation model and the eventually implemented market model, a theorized automatic organ procurement model has raised a rich debate in the legal, medical and bioethical community, since it could show a higher potential to solve organ shortage. In this paper, we study the main arguments for and against this model. We show how, in the light of empirical data extracted from (...) countries with a universal health care system, its implementation could lead to a positive impact on organ procurement rates. Three factors are envisioned as fundamental in the comprehension and a possible regulation of the automatic organ procurement model: the lack of recognition of the conscientious objection, the preservation of the right to choose end of life conditions, and the need to avoid incentives for families or healthcare professionals. (shrink)

The ethics of deceased organ procurement (OP) is supposedly based on individual consent to donate, either explicit (opt-in) or presumed (opt-out). However, in many cases, individuals fail to express any preference regarding donation after death. When this happens, the decision to remove or not to remove their organs depends on the policy’s default option or on family preferences. Several studies show that in most countries the family plays a significant and often decisive role in the process of decision-making for OP. (...) Depending on the country, the family may be allowed to take different kinds of actions in different situations, and this may be granted either by law or by clinical practice only. This adds much complexity to the usual classification of consent policies in two categories: opt-in and opt-out. Here we propose a novel and comprehensive taxonomy of the models of consent for OP according to three variables: (1) the deceased’s wishes, if any, (2) family wishes, if any, and (3) default policies. By analysing these models of consent, we show that they rely on at least three different concepts of autonomy: individual autonomy, relational autonomy, and family autonomy. In light of this analysis, we discuss the ethical debates surrounding two policy approaches: presumed consent and family veto. (shrink)

Este artículo busca avizorar, desde el terreno de las pretensiones del humanismo, la posibilidad de una ética desprovista de «centro» que se asiente en la «compasión». Se buscará comprender la necesidad de abandonar los intentos de retornar al proyecto «humanístico» y se señalará su mayor riesgo: el «cínico ilustrado». Adicionalmente, se considerará «el humanismo» como el solemne destello de una «estrella que murió hace mucho» pero que da señales para la construcción de una ética excéntrica fundada en la compasión y (...) el dolor. Para tales efectos, se presentarán tres secciones: a) el humanista un cínico ilustrado b) mecanismos de evasión. La miseria y el modo de vida burgués y c) la ausencia de centro y la posibilidad de una ética excéntrica. (shrink)