Increasing attention is being paid to the potential of anti-retroviral treatment for HIV prevention. The possibility of eliminating HIV from a population through a universal test and treat intervention, where all people within a population are tested for HIV and all positive people immediately initiated on ART, as part of a wider prevention intervention, was first proposed in 2009. Several clinical trials testing this idea are now in inception phase. An intervention which relies on universally testing the entire population for (...) HIV will pose challenges to human rights, including obtaining genuine consent to testing and treatment. It also requires a context in which people can live free from fear of stigma, discrimination and violence, and can access services they require. These challenges are distinct from the field of medical ethics which has traditionally governed clinical trials and focuses primarily on patient researcher relationship. This paper sets out the potential impact of a population wide treatment as prevention intervention on human rights. It identifies five human right principles of particular relevance: participation, accountability, the right to health, non-discrimination and equality, and consent and confidentiality. The paper proposes that explicit attention to human rights can strengthen a treatment as prevention intervention, contribute to mediating likely health systems challenges and offer insights on how to reach all sections of the population. (shrink)

Background In the wake of mandates for biomedical research to increase participation by members of historically underrepresented populations, community engagement (CE) has emerged as a key intervention to help achieve this goal.Methods Using interviews, observations, and document analysis, we examine how stakeholders in precision medicine research understand and seek to put into practice ideas about who to engage, how engagement should be conducted, and what engagement is for.Results We find that ad hoc, opportunistic, and instrumental approaches to CE exacted significant (...) consequences for the time and resources devoted to engagement and the ultimate impacts it has on research. Critical differences emerged when engagement and research decisionmaking were integrated with each other versus occurring in parallel, separate parts of the study organization, and whether community members had the ability to determine which issues would be brought to them for consideration or to revise or even veto proposals made upstream based on criteria that mattered to them. CE was understood to have a range of purposes, from instrumentally facilitating recruitment and data collection, to advancing community priorities and concerns, to furthering long-term investments in relationships with and changes in communities. These choices about who to engage, what engagement activities to support, how to solicit and integrate community input into the workflow of the study, and what CE was for were often conditioned upon preexisting perceptions and upstream decisions about study goals, competing priorities, and resource availability.Conclusions Upstream choices about CE and constraints of time and resources cascade into tradeoffs that often culminated in “pantomime community engagement.” This approach can create downstream costs when engagement is experienced as improvised and sporadic. Transformations are needed for CE to be seen as a necessary scientific investment and part of the scientific process. (shrink)

Scientists now agree that common diseases arise through interactions of genetic and environmental factors, but there is less agreement about how scientific research should account for these interactions. This paper examines the politics of quantification in gene–environment interaction research. Drawing on interviews and observations with GEI researchers who study common, complex diseases, we describe quantification as an unfolding moral economy of science, in which researchers collectively enact competing “virtues.” Dominant virtues include molecular precision, in which behavioral and social risk factors (...) are moved into the body, and “harmonization,” in which scientists create large data sets and common interests in multisited consortia. We describe the negotiations and trade-offs scientists enact in order to produce credible knowledge and the forms of discipline that shape researchers, their practices, and objects of study. We describe how prevailing techniques of quantification are premised on the shrinking of the environment in the interest of producing harmonized data and harmonious scientists, leading some scientists to argue that social, economic, and political influences on disease patterns are sidelined in postgenomic research. We consider how a variety of GEI researchers navigate quantification’s productive and limiting effects on the science of etiological complexity. (shrink)

Menarche—or a woman's first menstrual period—is a central aspect of body politics. Through explorations of oral and written narratives, I suggest that girls' subjective sense of themselves as maturing women at menarche develops simultaneously with a process of sexualization whereby young women experience themselves as sexualized, and their bodies are produced as sexual objects. While women internalize negative scripts associated with the bleeding female body, they also respond with consciousness and resistance.

This article discusses teaching survivors of violence in an introductory women's studies course and addresses the pedagogical question of whether we are able to promote individual agency and empowerment effectively and, if so, how might we best go about it. Survivors spoke out in their journals and in the classroom about their experiences, shared feelings about empowerment, and assessed the ways and extent to which the course helped them to heal. I found that survivors benefited from being able to talk (...) about their experiences and from being encouraged to place their personal experiences in a broader political context, but that a crucial component was the affirmation, validation, and solidarity they felt with each other in the classroom. (shrink)

The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in the U.S., (...) and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called “culture free.” The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical values and ethical intentions. The results also indicate that the positive effect of corporate ethical values on ethical intentions is greater for managers with low idealism and high relativism. We also discuss the implications of our results for managers of international businesses. (shrink)

Background Over the last decade, the return of results (ROR) in precision medicine research (PMR) has become increasingly routine. Calls for individual rights to research results have extended the “duty to report” from clinically useful genetic information to traits and ancestry results. ROR has thus been reframed as inherently beneficial to research participants, without a needed focus on who benefits and how. This paper addresses this gap, particularly in the context of PMR aimed at increasing participant diversity, by providing investigator (...) and researcher perspectives on and questions about the assumed value of ROR in PMR.Methods Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of investigators and researchers across federally funded PMR studies in three national consortia, as well as observations of study activities, focused on how PM researchers conceptualize diversity and implement inclusive practices across research stages, including navigating ROR.Results Interviewees (1) validated the value of ROR as a benefit of PMR, while others (2) questioned the benefit of clinically actionable results to individuals in the absence of sufficient resources for translating findings into health care for diverse and disadvantaged populations; (3) expressed uncertainties in applying the presumed value of ROR as a benefit for non-clinical results; and (4) and debated when the promise of the value of ROR may undermine trust in PMR, and divert efforts to return value beyond ROR.Conclusions Conceptualizations of diversity and inclusion among PM researchers and investigators raise unique ethical questions where unexamined assumptions of the value of ROR inform study recruitment efforts to enroll minoritized and under-represented populations. A lack of consideration for resources and infrastructure necessary to translate ROR into actionable information may hinder trustworthy community-research relationships. Thus, we argue for a more intentional interrogation of ROR practices as an offer of benefit and for whom. (shrink)

In opening this new edited volume, Moreau, Lee and Okpokiri argue for an ‘encompassing approach’ to engaging with discourses of family (3). They have certainly achieved this, presenting a very dive...

Janet Lee Mitchell. Conscious Evolution. Ballantine Books, 1990, 210 pages.

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)

This essay explores the theological and anthropological significance of birth, in order to discern what might be lost with the adoption of complete ectogestation (“artificial wombs”). Specifically, it considers both Saint Augustine and Karl Barth’s respective accounts of humanity’s whence—that is, their theological answer to the question of the nature and significance of our origins as individuals. I suggest that Augustine’s account of his origins emphasizes both his epistemic and biological dependency on his mother and nurses, while Barth’s stresses the (...) individual’s immediate derivation from God. Those disparate answers affect how they construe the relationships of parents and children and work themselves throughout their theological visions and imaginations. I conclude that careful consideration of humanity’s whence cannot answer whether we ought to pursue ectogestation; but it does help us account for how our understanding of God and ourselves might be altered if we gestate human life outside the womb. (shrink)

이 책자는 형식 논리의 일종인 양상논리에 입문하고 싶으신 분들을 위한 짧은 교재입니다. “양상논리 맛보기” 라는 말마따나, 이 책자는 양상논리에 관심은 있지만 아직 본격적으로 공부를 시작하진 않은 분들께서 ‘맛보기’를 하기에 적합한 안내 책자입니다. 아무쪼록 이 책자가 양상논리를 공부해나가시는데 유용한 첫 발판이 될 수 있기를 바랍니다. / This booklet is a Korean adaptation and translation of Part VIII of forall x: Calgary (Fall 2021 edition), which is intended to be introductory material for modal logic. The original text is based on Robert Trueman's (...) A Modal Logic Primer, which is revised and expanded by Richard Zach and Aaron Thomas-Bolduc in forall x: Calgary. (forall x: Calgary is based on forall x: Cambridge by Tim Button, which is in turn based on forall x by P. D. Magnus, and also includes material from forall x: Lorain County Remix by Cathal Woods and J. Robert Loftis.) This booklet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. (shrink)

"This stunning work is without question a major contribution to Cartesian studies, to the field of early modern philosophy, and to general epistemology--original, provocative, and philosophically interesting.

"This stunning work is without question a major contribution to Cartesian studies, to the field of early modern philosophy, and to general epistemology- ...

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)

If business requires ethical solutions that are viable in the liminal landscape between concepts and corporate office, then business ethics and corporate social responsibility should offer tools that can survive the trek, that flourish in this well-traveled, but often unarticulated, environment. Indeed, feminist ethics produces, accesses, and engages such tools. However, work in BE and CSR consistently conflates feminist ethics and feminine ethics and care ethics. I offer clarification and invoke the analytic power of three feminist ethicists 'in action' whose (...) investigations into the "grey zones" of harms; identity and representational conventions; and "asymmetrical reciprocity" harmonize with business ethics' requirements. (shrink)

The articles in this issue span across multiple media sectors, yet all focus on questions of credibility and engagement.Even some of the best public relations veterans will acknowledge that they ca...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:217 HUME'S IDEAS ABOUT NECESSARY CONNECTION 1. Introduction Hume asks, "What is our idea of necessity, when we say that two objects are necessarily connected together"? He later says that he has answered this question, but it is difficult to see what his answer is, or even to see precisely what the question was. Currently there are two main ways of understanding Hume's views about our idea of necessary (...) connection. These interpretations divide on the question whether Hume allows that we can speak meaningfully of an objective and necessary connection between two events. The one interpretation, which I will call epistemological, says that Hume does allow meaning to that phrase. On this view, justification is the only topic of Hume's negative message about necessary connection. We can mean what we say when we talk about necessary connection, but we cannot justify what we (meaningfully) say. That, according to this interpretation, is the negative outcome toward which Hume aims his investigation of the origin of our idea of necessary connection. He isn't denying we have that very idea; he is denying that its origin allows us to justify applying it to anything. The other interpretation, which I will call psychological, says that Hume does not allow meaning to the phrase, "an objective and necessary connection between two events." According to this interpretation, once we see the origin of our idea of necessary connection, we realize that we cannot mean by "necessary connection" what we thought we meant. Those words allow us to speak only of a certain 218 feeling in our minds, not of an objective feature of the world. Of course, the psychological interpretation partly resembles the epistemological one: it, too, denies that we can justify saying objective necessary connections exist. But on the psychological interpretation this follows a fortiori from the central negative claim, a claim which itself concerns meaning, not justification. In what follows, I will present these two interpretations more carefully and critically, and then I will advance my own. I think Hume was trying to express a view very different in kind from either of the two I've just mentioned. I think we can get a good idea of the kind of view Hume had by looking at Newton's treatment of gravitational force. Roughly, Newton thought that while there certainly are gravitational forces in objects, we can say nothing about them except that they are whatever it is that accounts for a specific set of observable regularities. Hume's views about necessary connection, or causal power, are roughly parallel. He does not doubt that we may speak meaningfully of objective necessary connections — rE we mean just some unknown quality in objects that underlies the constant conjunction of their sensible qualities. Inevitably we try to mean something more than this, but any such attempt is doomed to failure. Showing that we cannot mean something more is the point of investigating the origin of the "idea." I will be arguing that with this interpretation we can handle the sets of texts and problems that undercut the prevailing two interpretations, and reconcile those sets of texts with one another, despite their apparent inconsistency. This interpretation also has the advantage of attributing to Hume a view closely connected with a 219 distinctively eighteenth-century way of setting up these problems. Finally, I think the interpretation brings out nicely an instructive and central failing of Hume's views about necessary connection. 2. The Epistemological View Although there are hints of this kind of interpretation in other books, it is really articulated and defended only in Barry Stroud's book, 2 Hume. In what follows here, I mean to be sketching out and commenting on that interpretation. Hume wants to find out what our idea of necessary connection is. He conducts his investigation according to the dictum, "as we have no idea, that is not deriv'd from an impression, we must find some impression, that gives rise to this idea of necessity, if we assert we have really such an idea." (T 155) He argues, of course, that among our experiences of causes and effects, there are no impressions of necessary connection. Our experiences of... (shrink)

In his work on Wu wei, Edward Slingerland argues that the classical Chinese ideal is an inherently paradoxical concept that is first and foremost spiritual and political only secondarily. Through a close reading of the Dao de Jing, the first major classical text to substantially deploy and develop the concept, I argue that Wu wei isn’t inherently paradoxical and that this is seen precisely when it is viewed in terms of its political primacy. On my reading, the emergence of Wu (...) wei in the Daoist canon is an equilibrating moment of political mediation between the highly intentionalized sphere of human pursuits and the purposeless fluidity and boundless flux of the natural world. Wu wei here takes on a different aspect—mystery rather than paradox—when considered within a form of political collectivity in which the intentional and the innate, purposive and natural are constantly juxtaposed and contending with one another. (shrink)

This paper examines visual representation from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing communications and marketing representations, suggesting an analysis that makes identity creation central to societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, drawing upon tourist promotions, advertisements, and mundane objects in material culture. Moreover, music is an important force in marketing communication: visual representations in music (...) promotions are also explored as data for inquiry. Offers an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing and consumer research scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation. (shrink)

Here, we describe how Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) shamanic practices of the North American Southwest used tobacco shamanism, a ritual stance called the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, and cultural expectations to generate trance experiences of soul flight and divination. We introduce a conceptual model that holds that specific trance experiences are the emergent result of human minds interacting with additional factors including entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures/movement, and sound/stimulation. Experimental and ethnographic evidence indicates initiating trance (...) with either tobacco intoxication or the TD posture accompanied with a rapidly beating drum or rattle corresponds with perceptions of soul flight, transformation, and divination/information acquisition. Both have similar results but pairing them together as they were during the Medio period likely helped ensure the culturally desired trance experiences. This practice of mutually reinforcing factors was likely part of tobacco‐based shamanism found in other New World cultures as well. We suggest our general model can be applied to other contexts to examine how various aspects of trance induction interact to produce the cultural patterns (and resulting cosmological and spiritual frameworks) anthropologists have documented in other cultures. (shrink)

Goal: To assess public knowledge and attitudes towards the family’s role in deceased organ donation in Europe. -/- Methods: A systematic search was conducted in CINHAL, MEDLINE, PAIS Index, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science on December 15th, 2017. Eligibility criteria were socio-empirical studies conducted in Europe from 2008 to 2017 addressing either knowledge or attitudes by the public towards the consent system, including the involvement of the family in the decision-making process, for post-mortem organ retrieval. Screening and data collection (...) were performed by two or more independent reviewers for each record. -/- Results: Of the 1482 results, 467 studies were assessed in full-text form, and 33 were included in this synthesis. When the deceased has not expressed any preference, a majority of the public support the family's role as a surrogate decision-maker. When the deceased expressly consented, the respondents' answers depend on whether they see themselves as potential donors or as a deceased's next-of-kin. Answers also depend on the relationship between the deceased and the decision-maker(s) within the family, and on their ethnic or cultural background. -/- Conclusions: Public views on the authority of the family in organ donation decision-making require further research. A common conceptual framework and validated well-designed questionnaires are needed for future studies. The findings should be considered in the development of Government policy and guidance regarding the role of families in deceased organ donation. (shrink)

This article examines the various pedagogic models suggested by widely used texts and finds them to be predominately rule-based or rule directed. These approaches to the subject matter of business ethics are quite valuable ones, but we find them to leave no room for the study of the virtues. We intend to articulate our reasons for supporting a central if not exclusive role for virtue ethics.

Conceptions of teaching quality and teacher accountability, and the values and assumptions that underpin them, are relatively under‐examined by policy makers. We suggest ways in which philosophers might address this deficit, with reference to policy concerns found in the United Kingdom (UK). Further philosophical questions are generated by this process of reflection and we offer a partial analysis of those we judge to be of particular significance. While optimistic generally, we identify three challenges to asserting a role for philosophical analysis (...) in policy, practice and research concerned with teacher education, and urge philosophers of education to engage in constructive dialogue with other critical and reflective thinkers in the field of education. (shrink)

I argue that descartes thinks he can be metaphysically certain about each premise in the argument for god's existence, Even before he draws the argument's final conclusion that all his distinct ideas are metaphysically certain. The certainty of the personal premises is secured in the second meditation. The certainty of the causal premises, I argue, Arises from their central role in generating reasons for doubt of the kind that interest descartes.

I argue that although in his earlier work descartes thought of the laws of motion as "eternal truths," he later came to think of them as truths whose necessity is of a different type.

Sixty-five undergraduates participating in a wide range of psychological research experiments were interviewed in depth about their research experiences and their views on the process of informed consent. Overall, 32% of research experiences were characterized positively and 41 % were characterized negatively. One major theme of the negative experiences was that experiments were perceived as too invasive, suggesting incomplete explication of negative aspects of research during the informed consent process. Informed consent experiences were viewed positively 80% of the time. However, (...) most of the participants had a limited view of the purpose of informed consent: Less than 20% viewed the process as a decision point. Results suggest a number of common pitfalls to standard informed consent practices that have not generally been recognized. Results are discussed in terms of both ethical and methodological implications. Suggestions for improving the informed consent process are also provided. (shrink)

An informed consent and voluntary assent in biomedical research with adolescents is contingent on a variety of factors, including adolescent and parent perceptions of research risk, benefit, and decision-making autonomy. Thirty-seven adolescents with asthma and their parents evaluated a high or low aversion form of a pediatric asthma research vignette and provided an enrollment decision; their perceptions of family influence over the participation decision; and evaluations of risk, aversion, benefit, and burden of study procedures. Adolescents and their parents agreed on (...) research participation decisions 74% of the time, yet both claimed ultimate responsibility for the participation decision. Both rated most study procedures as significantly more aversive than risky. Parents were more likely to rate aspects of the hypothetical study as beneficial and to provide higher risk ratings for procedures. Disagreements concerning research participation decisions and decision-making autonomy have implications for the exercise of voluntary assent in biomedical research. (shrink)

Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, Sodom and Gomorrah represent locales in which threats to national formation are couched in sexual terms. The biblical narrative insists on a particular social invisibility for those sexual activities not blessed by the bonds of matrimony. Reclaiming Sodom surveys a number of institutions that have had an interest in perpetuating these views: the police, the state, the church and the law. The collection ranges through biblical scholarship, an investigation of the Founding Fathers' beliefs, the legal mobilization (...) towards the category of sodomy in 18th and 19th century England, and the US Supreme Court's 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick decision. Analysis is provided of the ways in which the Judeo-Christian tradition has shaped anthropological accounts of the same-sex practices of non-Western people, as well as essays on how colonial gestures have marked lesbian identity in the Carribean, and derformed narratives about the racial geography of AIDS. Reclaiming Sodom explores alternatives to the force of the Sodomitic biblical narrative in Islamic, non-western, and western traditions, and discusses the ways in which sodomy calls into question normative definitions of sexuality and gender. The collection pursues the "pleasures and dangers" of these alternatives, and takes on Proust's refusal to imagine a social movement founded on the "stigma" of Sodom. The collection examines the relations between sex/gender identities and sexual acts in important and provocative ways, and argues for the political use and usefulness of both Sodom and sodomy. Reclaiming Sodom makes an important and controversial contribution to the literature on sexuality and gender, as well as the nature of sex in our culture. Contributors: Dorothy Allison, Robert Alter, Neil Bartlett, Leo Bersani, Gerald Creed, Marc Daniel, Lee Edelman, Janet E. Halley, Jonathan Ned Katz, Pierre Klossowski, Rocky O'Donovan, Guy Hocquenghem, Cindy Patton, Marquis de Sade, David Shannon, Makeda Silver, Jonathan Goldberg. (shrink)

There is a basic methodological difference in the way anarchists and non-anarchists think about politics, often more implicit than explicit. Anarchists see politics and justice as being concerns of social institutions, norms, and relations generally – both inside and outside the state. Much of academic political philosophy talks of politics and justice as if they are definitionally concerns about what states should do, or our relationships with each other through the state. In this chapter, we argue that the anarchists are (...) on the right side of this difference. We call the insight that undergirds the anarchists’ understanding of politics and justice “methodological anarchism.” We seek to exorcise the policy framework in favor of methodological anarchism. Indeed, we believe it should be embraced by all political philosophers, not only the anarchists among their ranks. Political philosophers ought to abstain from the policy framework for two reasons. Firstly, it is analytically impoverished inasmuch as, when followed to its logical conclusion, it is unable to engage with enormous areas of analysis that are relevant to what makes a society just or unjust. Secondly, it instills subtle prejudice against other important approaches to mitigating injustice that are unconcerned with public policy. This also carries the danger of lending ideological support for existing injustices and thereby entrenching them. Accepting our critique of the policy framework and adopting methodological anarchism does not necessarily require the acceptance of any kind of substantive political anarchism. But it does mean thinking a bit more like an anarchist about how to make society more just – thus our characterization of it as “methodological.”. (shrink)

The controversial question of whether a future child can be harmed by the use of reproductive technology turns on the way that the future child's identity is understood. As a result, analysis of the ethical and legal obligations to the children of reproductive technology that are based upon the possibility of such harm depends upon the conception of identity that is used. This paper reviews the contributions of two recent books, David DeGrazia's Human Identity and Bioethics (2005) and Philip Peters' (...) How Safe is Safe Enough? (2004) to this area of inquiry. It suggests that the use of a narrative rather than numerical conception of identity makes it possible to coherently claim that future children can be harmed by the use of reproductive technologies and that, as a result, potential parents can have obligations regarding the use of those technologies based upon that possibility of harm. (shrink)

* Broad ranging anthology that presents the best classical and contemporary material within the context of current trends in the philosophy of science (can be used as a core text or a supplemental reader).