The Kāśikāvṛtti, the oldest available complete commentary on Pāṇini’s grammar, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, is found quoted often in the later Pāṇinian grammatical tradition. These quotations throw light on a number of aspects of the text of the Kāśikāvṛtti. This paper focuses on how this later Pāṇinian grammatical tradition views the modifications in the text of the Aṣṭādhyāyī and concludes that also the tradition ascribes these modifications to the Kāśikāvṛtti. Further, this paper also attempts to show that these quotations can be shown (...) to have interacted with the manuscript tradition of the Kāśikāvṛtti and indeed with the help of these quotations it becomes easier to better understand the manuscript transmission of the Kāśikāvṛtti. Thus, this article focuses on one of the applications of the study of quotations: through an analysis of the content of the quoted passages of the Kāśikāvṛtti in later Grammatical literature, it discusses the history of the transmission of the KV and of the text it comments upon, i.e., Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī. It also shows how a study of quotations is an unavoidable complement of the analysis of manuscripts for scholars aiming at the reconstruction of texts so remote in time. (shrink)

As is well known, the Kāśikāvṛtti is the oldest extant rule-by-rule commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini. Two major commentaries on it are available, the Nyāsa from the eighth century and the Padamañjarī, most likely from the eleventh century. In this article we focus on the term pradeśa, which is a familiar feature of the printed editions of the Kāśikāvṛtti on the sañjñā sūtras of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. A closer examination, however, shows that the sentence “Xpradeśāḥ — X... ity evamādayaḥ” is (...) not met with in either of the two commentaries. This has consequences for our understanding of the textual transmission of the Kāśikāvṛtti. (shrink)

Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and (...) disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system—the complete lives system—which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles. (shrink)

In _Reliable Reasoning_, Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni -- a philosopher and an engineer -- argue that philosophy and cognitive science can benefit from statistical learning theory, the theory that lies behind recent advances in machine learning. The philosophical problem of induction, for example, is in part about the reliability of inductive reasoning, where the reliability of a method is measured by its statistically expected percentage of errors -- a central topic in SLT. After discussing philosophical attempts to evade (...) the problem of induction, Harman and Kulkarni provide an admirably clear account of the basic framework of SLT and its implications for inductive reasoning. They explain the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of a set of hypotheses and distinguish two kinds of inductive reasoning. The authors discuss various topics in machine learning, including nearest-neighbor methods, neural networks, and support vector machines. Finally, they describe transductive reasoning and suggest possible new models of human reasoning suggested by developments in SLT. (shrink)

Recognising that offers of payment to research participants can serve various purposes—reimbursement, compensation and incentive—helps uncover differences between participants, which can justify differential payment of participants within the same study. Participants with different study-related expenses will need different amounts of reimbursement to be restored to their preparticipation financial baseline. Differential compensation can be acceptable when some research participants commit more time or assume greater burdens than others, or if inter-site differences affect the value of compensation. Finally, it may be permissible (...) to offer differential incentive payments if necessary to advance the goals of a study. We encourage investigators and Institutional Review Boards to think about whether to offer payment, in what amounts and for what purpose, and also to consider whether differential payment can help promote the scientific and ethical goals of clinical research. (shrink)

Hans Krebs' discovery, in 1932, of the urea cycle was a major event in biochemistry. This article describes a program, KEKADA, which models the heuristics Hans Krebs used in this discovery. KEKADA reacts to surprises, formulates explanations, and carries out experiments in the same manner as the evidence in the form of laboratory notebooks and interviews indicates Hans Krebs did. Furthermore, we answer a number of questions about the nature of the heuristics used by Krebs, in particular: How domain‐specific are (...) the heuristics? To what extent are they idiosyncratic to Krebs? To what extent do they represent general strategies of problem‐solving search?The relative generality of KEKADA allows us to view the control structure of KEKADA and its domain‐independent heuristics as a model of scientific experimentation that should apply over a broad domain. (shrink)

Initial vaccine allocations for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be limited. It is crucial to assess the ethical values associated with different methods of allocation, as well as important scientific and practical questions. This Viewpoint identifies three ethical values, benefiting people and limiting harm; prioritizing disadvantaged populations; and equal concern for all. It then explains why these values support prioritizing three groups: health care workers; other essential workers and people in high-transmission settings; and people with medical vulnerabilities associated with (...) poorer COVID-19 outcomes. In contrast, two other groups, people over 65 without medical vulnerabilities and participants in clinical research, present more complex ethical questions. This prioritization also encompasses valuing direct benefits to vaccinated individuals, indirect benefits to individuals protected from spread of infection, and indirect health and socioeconomic benefits to those protected from harm as health system and societal functioning improve. Vaccine allocation that recognizes important ethical values and avoids arbitrariness, waste, and corruption can ensure that the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine is both fair and perceived as fair. (shrink)

Protection of intellectual property as well as its exploitation for monetary benefit have existed for centuries. However, commercialization of intellectual property had not entered the precincts of academic universities in a significant way until the introduction of the Bayh–Dole Act in the 1980s in the United States. The post–Bayh–Dole era has seen a quantitative increase in patenting activity in universities. This article summarizes the ethical conflicts ushered in by increasing commercialization of academic university research. Activities related to the protection and (...) commercial exploitation of intellectual property have led to changes in academic culture that have given room for debate between the puritans and the modernists. Issues contended by the two groups have been identified, and both sides of the argument are discussed. The key to achieving “responsible commercialization of research” is to balance the Bayh–Dole ethos with the traditional Mertonian norms of academic research. (shrink)

This chapter argues that rather than viewing transparency as a right, we should regard it as a finite resource whose allocation involves tradeoffs. It then argues that those tradeoffs should be resolved by using a multi-principle approach to distributive justice. The relevant principles include maximizing welfare, maximizing autonomy, and giving priority to the worst off. Finally, it examines some of the implications for law of recognizing the tradeoffs presented by transparency proposals.

Citizenship and marriage are legal statuses that generate numerous privileges and responsibilities. Legal doctrine and argument have analogized these statuses in passing: consider, for example, Ted Olson’s statement in the Hollingsworth v. Perry oral argument that denying the label “marriage” to gay unions “is like you were to say you can vote, you can travel, but you may not be a citizen.” However, the parallel between citizenship and marriage has rarely been investigated in depth. This paper investigates the marriage-citizenship parallel (...) with a particular focus on three questions prompted by recent developments in law and policy: -/- 1) Should we provide second-best statuses? Some couples — in particular gay and lesbian couples — have been offered permanent statuses, like civil unions, that bear legal privileges but fall short of full marriage equality. In contrast, similar differentiations within citizenship are generally resisted. The history of citizenship may presage the increasing unacceptability of differentiations within status in the gay marriage context. Meanwhile, the history of marriage equality efforts may help present-day citizenship advocates choose legal strategies. -/- 2) Should statuses be a gateway to rights? Some early gay rights advocates unsuccessfully argued that advocates should challenge the primacy of marriage, rather than seek access to the institution. Advocates attempting to expand the rights of current noncitizens face similar choices: should they seek to give current noncitizens greater access to citizenship, or challenge the reservation of important rights to citizens? -/- 3) Can status relationships be plural? Many critics of dual and multiple citizenship argued that allegiance to multiple states was immoral, unadministrable, or both. More recently, polygamous marriage has become a topic of legal and political discourse, first as a foil in anti-gay marriage arguments and later as a political possibility in its own right. I consider whether polygamous marriage advocates can profitably draw on arguments for multiple citizenship, and how multiple-citizenship advocates should responsibly respond to the analogy with polygamy. (shrink)

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's proposal that social and legal institutions should steer individuals toward some options and away from others-a stance they dub "libertarian paternalism"-has provoked much high-level discussion in both academic and policy settings. Sunstein and Thaler believe that steering, or "nudging," individuals is easier to justify than the bans or mandates that traditional paternalism involves. -/- This Article considers the connection between libertarian paternalism and the regulation of reproductive choice. I first discuss the use of nudges to (...) discourage women from exercising their right to choose an abortion, or from becoming or remaining pregnant. I then argue that reproductive choice cases illustrate the limitations of libertarian paternalism. Where choices are politicized or intimate, as reproductive choices often are, nudges become not much easier to justify than traditional mandates or prohibitions. Even beyond the context of reproductive choice, it is not obvious how much easier nudges are to justify than bans or mandates. -/- Part I of this Article briefly introduces Sunstein and Thaler's libertarian paternalism. Part II then turns to the context of reproductive choice. Part II.A reviews restrictions on the right to choose an abortion-particularly post-Casey regulations such as waiting periods, requirements that women receive certain types of information, and requirements that women undergo ultrasound-that pitch themselves as steering choice without entirely closing off the right to choose an abortion. This distinction between nudges and prohibitions echoes Sunstein and Thaler's proposals, but works to subordinate women's choices to the judgment of (often male) experts and administrators-hence my term "libertarian patriarchalism." Part II.B reviews efforts to nudge women-particularly teenagers, HIV-positive women, and others thought to be unsuitable mothers-to avoid pregnancy. -/- Part III considers the normative implications of nudging reproductive decisions. In Part III.A, I argue that the political nature of reproductive choices presents a problem for nudges. I do so by considering a parallel with voting rights. Empirical research shows that voters are more likely to choose the candidate listed first on the ballot. Yet we do not empower the administrator in charge of ballot design to choose a default rule that nudges individuals toward the candidate he sincerely believes would promote choosers' welfare. Given the political nature of reproductive choices, a policymaker's attempting to nudge reproductive decisionmaking in the direction he prefers-or indeed in any direction-fails to show adequate respect for the chooser's agency. In Part III.B, I offer an argument that targets the use of nudges in the context of pregnancy. Finally, in Part III.C, I argue that nudges do not merely add choices to an existing menu, but change the substantive choices available to individuals and thereby impose more-than-trivial costs on them. I conclude by exploring the implications of my arguments for nudges more generally. (shrink)

Although consumers increasingly claim to demand ethical products and state that they are willing to reward firms that are ethical, studies have highlighted that there is a significant gap between consumers’ explicit attitudes toward ethical products and their actual purchase behavior. This has major implications for firm policies revolving around business ethics. This research contributes to the understanding of the attitude–behavior gap in ethical consumption that literature has identified but not explored much. We utilize the model of dual attitudes as (...) a basis for the arguments presented in the paper and test them. We suggest that the gap in ethical consumerism exists because individuals have implicit as well as explicit attitudes, which are impacted differentially by stimuli and elicit dissimilar behavioral responses and thus have different implications for business ethics policies. Two longitudinal studies are conducted to better understand the impact of an individual’s dual attitudes on preferences and choice. Our findings support the presence of dual attitudes in consumers. Explicit attitudes are found to be easily influenced by the nature of the stimuli. On the other hand, implicit attitudes are relatively unaffected by the nature of the stimuli present and remain relatively constant. Based on the findings, implicit attitudes guide behavior and determine an individual’s preferences. Even though explicit attitudes react to the stimuli presented, our findings suggest they have no impact on the choice of consumers. These findings improve the understanding of ethical consumption, provide a reason as to why the attitude–behavior gap exists, provide a foundation for future researchers and help firms better understand the impact of perceived business on creating a behavioral shift in ethical consumption. (shrink)

In this Commentary, I propose an ethical framework for ethical discussions around the allocation of scarce resources in COVID-19 response. The framework incorporates four principles: beneficence (benefiting people by saving lives or years of life), equality, remedying disadvantage, and recognizing past conduct. I then discuss how the framework interacts with ethical constraints against using people as a mere means and against causing death. The commentary closes by criticizing the equation of deontological ethics with random or first-come, first-served allocation and of (...) allocation that aims to save more lives or years of life with utilitarianism.. (shrink)

In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, many states and countries have adopted public health restrictions on activities previously considered commonplace: crossing state borders, eating indoors, gathering together, and even leaving one’s home. These policies often focus on specific activities or groups, rather than imposing the same limits across the board. In this Article, I consider the law and ethics of these policies, which I call tailored policies. In Part II, I identify two types of tailored policies--activity-based and (...) group-based. Activity-based restrictions respond to differences in the risks and benefits of specific activities, such as walking outdoors and dining indoors. Group-based restrictions consider differences between groups with respect to risk and benefit. Examples are policies that treat children or senior citizens differently, policies that require travelers to quarantine when traveling to a new destination, and policies that treat individuals differently based on whether they have COVID-19 symptoms, have tested positive for COVID-19, have previous COVID-19 infection, or have been vaccinated against COVID-19. In Part III, I consider the public health law grounding of tailored policies in the principles of “least restrictive means” and “well-targeting.” I also examine how courts have analyzed tailored policies that have been challenged on fundamental rights or equal protection grounds. I argue that fundamental rights analyses typically favor tailored policies and that equal protection does not preclude the use of tailored policies even when imperfectly crafted. In Part IV, I consider three critiques of tailored policies, centering on the claims that they produce inequity, cause harm, or unacceptably limit liberty. I argue that we must evaluate restrictions comparatively: the question is not whether tailored policies are perfectly equitable, wholly prevent harm, or completely protect liberty, but whether they are better than untailored ones at realizing these goals in a pandemic. I also argue that evaluation must consider indirect harms and benefits as well as direct and apparent ones. (shrink)

Countermeasures for mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), primarily vaccines, have been in limited supply in many countries during outbreaks. Equitable allocation of scarce resources during public health emergencies is a complex challenge. Identifying the objectives and core values for the allocation of mpox countermeasures, using those values to provide guidance for priority groups and prioritisation tiers, and optimising allocation implementation are important. The fundamental values for the allocation of mpox countermeasures are: preventing death and illness; reducing the association between death (...) or illness and unjust disparities; prioritising those who prevent harm or mitigate disparities; recognising contributions to combating an outbreak; and treating similar individuals similarly. Ethically and equitably marshalling available countermeasures requires articulating these fundamental objectives, identifying priority tiers, and recognising trade-offs between prioritising the people at the highest risk of infection and the people at the highest risk of harm if infected. These five values can provide guidance on preferable priority categories for a more ethically sound response and suggest methods for optimising allocation of countermeasures for mpox and other diseases for which countermeasures are in short supply. Properly marshalling available countermeasures will be crucial for future effective and equitable national responses to outbreaks. (shrink)

Current challenges in medical practice, research, and administration demand physicians who are familiar with bioethics, health law, and health economics. Curriculum directors at American Association of Medical Colleges-affiliated medical schools were sent confidential surveys requesting the number of required hours of the above subjects and the years in which they were taught, as well as instructor names. The number of relevant publications since 1990 for each named instructor was assessed by a PubMed search.In sum, teaching in all three subjects combined (...) comprises less than two percent of the total hours in the American medical curriculum, and most instructors have not recently published articles in the fields they teach. This suggests that medical schools should reevaluate their curricula and instructors in bioethics, health law, and health economics. (shrink)

Biomedical research has increased in magnitude over the last two decades. Increasing number of researchers has led to increase in competition for scarce resources. Researchers have often tried to take the shortest route to success which may involve performing fraudulent research. Science suffers from unethical research as much time, effort and cost is involved in exposing fraud and setting the standards right. It is better for all students of science to be aware of the methods used in fraudulent research so (...) that such research can be detected early. Biomedical research is one area that seems to have attracted maximum numbers of fraudulent researchers; hence this article devotes itself to biomedical research scenario. (shrink)

Addressing distributive justice issues in health policy—ranging from the allocation of health system funding to the allocation of scarce COVID-19 interventions like intensive care unit beds and vaccines—involves the application of ethical principles. Should a principle of sustainability be among them? I suggest that while the value of temporal neutrality underlying such a principle is compelling, it is already implicit in the more basic principle of equal treatment. Munthe et al imagine sustainability accompanying four other principles: need, prognosis, equal treatment (...) and cost-effectiveness. Some are spelled out, however, in ways that are ambiguous or incomplete. (shrink)

America’s COVID-19 pandemic has both devastated and disparately harmed minority communities. How can the allocation of scarce treatments for COVID-19 and similar public health threats fairly and legally respond to these racial disparities? Some have proposed that members of racial groups who have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic should receive priority for scarce treatments. Others have worried that this prioritization misidentifies racial disparities as reflecting biological differences rather than structural racism, or that it will generate mistrust among groups who (...) have previously been harmed by medical research. Still others complain that such prioritization would be fundamentally unjust. I argue that, to pass muster under current law, policymaking in this area must recognize a crucial distinction: prioritizing minority communities, such as hard-hit neighborhoods, without regard to individual race is typically legal, but prioritizing individuals on the basis of their racial identity faces is likely not. I also explain how prioritization on the basis of Native American status is allowable and legally distinct from prioritization on the basis of individual race. -/- In Part II, I provide a brief overview of current and proposed COVID-19 treatments and identify documented or likely scarcities and disparities in access. In Part III, I argue that randomly allocating scarce medical interventions, as some propose, will not effectively address disparities: it both permits unnecessary deaths and concentrates those deaths among people who are more exposed to infection. In Part IV, I explain why using individual-level racial classifications in allocation is precluded by current Supreme Court precedent. Addressing disparities will require focusing on factors other than race, or potentially considering race at an aggregate rather than individual level. I also argue that policies prioritizing members of Native American tribes can succeed legally even where policies based on race would not. In Part V, I examine two complementary strategies to narrow racial disparities. One would prioritize individuals who live in disadvantaged geographic areas or work in hard-hit occupations, potentially alongside race-sensitive aggregate metrics like neighborhood segregation. These approaches, like the policies school districts adopted after the Supreme Court rejected individualized racial classifications in education, would narrow disparities without classifying individuals by race. The other strategy would address the starkly disparate racial impact of deaths early in life by limiting the use of age-based exclusions from vaccine or treatment access that explicitly deprioritize the prevention of early deaths and so disparately exclude minorities, and by considering policies that prioritize the prevention of early deaths. (shrink)

We argue that the ethical case for instituting vaccine benefit programs is justified by 2 widely recognized values: (1) reducing overall harm from COVID-19 and (2) protecting disadvantaged individuals. We then explain why they do not coerce, exploit, wrongfully distort decision-making, corrupt vaccination's moral significance, wrong those who have already been vaccinated, or destroy willingness to become vaccinated. However, their cost impacts and their effects on public perception of vaccines should be evaluated.

In this article, we provide a tutorial overview of some aspects of statistical learning theory, which also goes by other names such as statistical pattern recognition, nonparametric classification and estimation, and supervised learning. We focus on the problem of two-class pattern classification for various reasons. This problem is rich enough to capture many of the interesting aspects that are present in the cases of more than two classes and in the problem of estimation, and many of the results can be (...) extended to these cases. Focusing on two-class pattern classification simplifies our discussion, and yet it is directly applicable to a wide range of practical settings. (shrink)

Health policy is only one part of social policy. Although spending administered by the health sector constitutes a sizeable fraction of total state spending in most countries, other sectors such as education and transportation also represent major portions of national budgets. Additionally, though health is one important aspect of economic and social activity, people pursue many other goals in their social and economic lives. Similarly, direct benefits—those that are immediate results of health policy choices—are only a small portion of the (...) overall impact of health policy. This chapter considers what weight health policy should give to its “spill-over effects,” namely non-health and indirect benefits. (shrink)

We consider an ethical dilemma in global health: is it ethically acceptable to provide some patients cheaper treatments that are less effective or more toxic than the treatments other patients receive? We argue that it is ethical to consider local resource constraints when deciding what interventions to provide. The provision of cheaper, less effective health care is frequently the most effective way of promoting health and realizing the ethical values of utility, equality, and priority to the worst off.

Although policymakers and investigators still struggle to quantify and compare the effects of various Covid-related interventions, we are steadily amassing data that could help inform choices. The pandemic’s medical, social, and economic harms have been immense, and they warrant a continuous policy response. All decision makers use some type of mental model to weigh the pros and cons of various policy options. Rigorous economic evaluation formalizes this process. Value judgments will still be required, but economic evaluation can make the decision-making (...) process more systematic, comprehensive, and transparent. (shrink)

Claudette Kulkarni explores lesbian experience from a Jungian and feminist perspective, through interviews with women who see themselves as lesbians or who are in a lesbian relationship. Although a feminist treatment of the subject challenges the heterosexism of Jungian theory, the author presents a link between theory and experience that is consistent with both approaches. She concludes that when a woman finds herself loving another woman she is often responding to a profound psychological instinct to act, in spite of (...) internal conflict or external opposition, and that this is a significant move in the service of personal and collective individuation and a movement toward achieving self-understanding. (shrink)

With the ever expanding array of professional journals, pressures on the peer review process have increased considerably. Unless editors and publishers recognize the need for improving the efficiency of the process, the future of traditional peer review may be at risk. This is a review of the studies that have followed up the suggestions made by Ingelfinger in 1974 for improvement of manuscript peer review. Implementation of changes has been slow, despite the abundance of literature that suggests the necessary improvements. (...) Conscientious self-regulation is expected of editors who, in the current publication scenario, possess enormous power without liability. Suitability of peer review to outsourcing should be assessed and if it is absolutely essential to outsource peer review, care should be taken to ensure that it is implemented systematically and monitored regularly for quality. Finally, it is time for high earning publishers to consider compensation for the efforts of the reviewers. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced clinicians, policy-makers and the public to wrestle with stark choices about who should receive potentially life-saving interventions such as ventilators, ICU beds and dialysis machines if demand overwhelms capacity. Many allocation schemes face the question of whether to consider age. We offer two underdiscussed arguments for prioritising younger patients in allocation policies, which are grounded in prudence and fairness rather than purely in maximising benefits: prioritising one’s younger self for lifesaving treatments is prudent from an (...) individual perspective, and prioritising younger patients works to narrow health disparities by giving priority to patients at risk of dying earlier in life, who are more likely to be subject to systemic disadvantage. We then identify some confusions in recent arguments against considering age. (shrink)

This paper takes a novel approach to the active bioethical debate over whether advance medical directives have moral authority in dementia cases. Many have assumed that advance directives would lack moral authority if dementia truly produced a complete discontinuity in personal identity, such that the predementia individual is a separate individual from the postdementia individual. I argue that even if dementia were to undermine personal identity, the continuity of the body and the predementia individual’s rights over that body can support (...) the moral authority of advance directives. I propose that the predementia individual retains posthumous rights over her body that she acquired through historical embodiment in that body, and further argue that claims grounded in historical embodiment can sometimes override or exclude moral claims grounded in current embodiment. I close by considering how advance directives grounded in historical embodiment might be employed in practice and what they would and would not justify. (shrink)

Household debt has been widely discussed among social scientists, policy makers, and activists. Many have questioned the levels of debt households are required to take on, and have made various proposals for assisting households in debt. Yet theorists of distributive justice have left household debt underexamined. This article offers a normative examination of the distributive justice issues presented by proposals to relieve household debt or protect households from overindebtedness. I examine two goals at which debt relief proposals aim: remedying disadvantage (...) and stabilizing expectations. I then examine strategies for relieving existing debts such as debt abolition, forgiveness, bankruptcy, and mitigation, as well as strategies that aim to prevent future indebtedness, such as public provision or financing of costly goods and credit or interest rate regulations. (shrink)

In this short response to Kerstein and Bognar, we clarify three aspects of the complete lives system, which we propose as a system of allocating scarce medical interventions. We argue that the complete lives system provides meaningful guidance even though it does not provide an algorithm. We also defend the investment modification to the complete lives system, which prioritizes adolescents and older children over younger children; argue that sickest-first allocation remains flawed when scarcity is absolute and ongoing; and argue that (...) Kerstein and Bognar are mistaken to base their allocation principles on differences in personhood. (shrink)

Advocates, activists, and academics have criticized pharmaceutical intellectual property ("pharma IP") rights as obstacles to access to medicines for the global poor. These criticisms of pharma IP holders are frequently exceptionalist: they focus on pharma IP holders while ignoring whether others also bear obligations to assist patients in need. These others include holders of other lucrative IP rights, such as music copyrights or technology patents; firms, such as energy companies and banks, that do not rely on IP; and wealthy private (...) individuals. Their resources could be used to aid patients by providing direct medical assistance, funding prizes or biomedical research, or purchasing pharmaceutical patents and granting rights to the disadvantaged. -/- After identifying this exceptionalism, this Article evaluates several arguments in its defense. These are that pharma IP holders are unique in (1) owning what poor patients need, (2) being in special proximity to these patients, (3) being able to assist at low cost to themselves, (4) having a professional duty to help these patients, or (5) being implicated by their past conduct in these patients' plight. It concludes that none of these arguments are compelling: while IP holders have a duty to help, this duty is not fundamentally different from the duties others owe. -/- Even though this project criticizes exceptionalism, it does not absolve pharma IP holders of duties to help the sick. Rather, it argues that spreading the costs of aiding patients in need across a greater number of market actors, via publicly funded "pull" programs like prizes and patent buyouts or "push" programs like grants, would be preferable. So would allowing pharmaceutical firms to seek contribution from others who are able to help. However, if others cannot be held to account, imposing burdens on pharma IP holders can be justified in order to promote global health: treating wealthy firms arbitrarily is preferable to ignoring the urgent needs of the global poor. (shrink)

Prof Dr. Vaman Mahadev Kulkarni is a well-known Scholar, Teacher and Researcher in the field of Sanskrit and Prakrit Studies, especially, Poetics, Jainism and Manuscript-studies. This publicity-shy gentleman-scholar contributed his mite to the research fields from various angles. A Felicitation Volume in his honours was a long felt desideratum, in view of his solid and outstanding contributions, distinguishing him from other scholars in ways more than one.

On the ultimate reality of Hindu philosophy.

This article proposes a novel strategy, one that draws on insights from antidiscrimination law, for addressing a persistent challenge in medical ethics and the philosophy of disability: whether health systems can consider quality of life without unjustly discriminating against individuals with disabilities. It argues that rather than uniformly considering or ignoring quality of life, health systems should take a more nuanced approach. Under the article's proposal, health systems should treat cases where quality of life suffers because of disability-focused exclusion or (...) injustice differently from cases where lower quality of life results from laws of nature, resource scarcity, or appropriate tradeoffs. Decisionmakers should ignore quality-of-life losses that result from injustice or exclusion when ignoring them would improve the prospects of individuals with disabilities; in contrast, they should consider quality-of-life losses that are unavoidable or stem from resource scarcity or permissible tradeoffs. On this proposal, while health systems should not amplify existing injustice against individuals with disabilities, they are not required to altogether ignore the potential effects of disability on quality of life. (shrink)

In the literature, CSR’s roles on firm performance are found to be positive, negative, or neutral. This inconclusive pattern suggests there may be a more complicated mechanism at work than the traditional focus on simple linear associations. We propose and test an inverted-U-shaped relationship between CSR and shareholder value, the fundamental measure of firm performance. Further, we incorporate a critical firm attribute, marketing capability, to moderate the nonlinear link between CSR and shareholder value, thereby exploring a previous understudied area involving (...) the interplay between CSR and market-side competency. The results show that an initial increase in CSR engagement positively drives firm shareholder value, but the effect turns negative when a firm pursues excessive CSR engagement. Notably, however, this negative association does not apply to firms that have a high marketing capability. Our research generates meaningful implications for a stakeholder view of CSR, strategic management, firm valuation, resource-based theories, and business practices. (shrink)

Certifications of immunity are sometimes called “immunity passports” but are better conceptualized as immunity-based licenses. Such policies raise important questions about fairness, stigma, and counterproductive incentives but could also further individual freedom and improve public health. Immunity licenses should not be evaluated against a baseline of normalcy, ie, uninfected free movement. Rather, they should be compared to the alternatives of enforcing strict public health restrictions for many months or permitting activities that could spread infection, both of which exacerbate inequalities and (...) impose serious burdens. This Viewpoint presents a framework for analyzing the ethics of immunity licenses. (shrink)

On the life and philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya.

When hospitals face surges of patients with COVID-19, fair allocation of scarce medical resources remains a challenge. Scarcity has at times encompassed not only hospital and intensive care unit beds—often reflecting staffing shortages—but also therapies and intensive treatments. Safe, highly effective COVID-19 vaccines have been free and widely available since mid-2021, yet many Americans remain unvaccinated by choice. Should their decision to forgo vaccination be considered when allocating scarce resources? Some have suggested it should, while others disagree. We offer a (...) framework for evaluating when it is ethical and briefly discuss its legality in American law. (shrink)

This Article examines whether policies—sometimes termed “vaccine mandates” or “vaccine requirements”— that consider vaccination status as a condition of employment, receipt of goods and services, or educational or other activity for participation are legally permitted, and whether such policies may even sometimes be legally required. It does so with particular reference to COVID-19 vaccines. -/- Part I explains the legality of private actors, such as employers or private universities, considering vaccination status, and concludes that such consideration is almost always legally (...) permissible unless foreclosed by specific state legislation. Part II examines the consideration of vaccination status by state or federal policy. It concludes that such consideration is similarly allowed at the state level unless expressly foreclosed, and is allowed at the federal level if appropriately supported by federal regulatory authority. Part III examines what may be a future front in these debates: whether policies considering vaccination status may be required rather than merely permitted, just as some courts have found that mask requirements may be federally required in certain circumstances. (shrink)