The informed consent process for genetic testing does not commonly address preferences regarding disclosure of results in the event of the patient's death. Adults being tested for familial colorectal cancer were asked whether they want their exome sequencing results disclosed to another person in the event of their death prior to receiving the results. Of 78 participants, 92% designated an individual and 8% declined to. Further research will help refine practices for informed consent.

Data documenting poor understanding among research participants and real-time efforts to assess comprehension in large-scale studies are focusing new attention on informed consent comprehension. Within the context of biobanking consent, we previously convened a multidisciplinary panel to reach consensus about what information must be understood for a prospective participant’s consent to be considered valid. Subsequently, we presented them with data from another study showing that many U.S. adults would fail to comprehend the information the panel had deemed essential. When asked (...) to evaluate the importance of the information again, panelists’ opinions shifted dramatically in the direction of requiring that less information be understood. Follow-up interviews indicated significant uncertainty about defining a threshold of understanding and what should happen when prospective participants are unable to grasp key information. These findings have important implications for urgently needed discussion of whether... (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Feminist Ethics. Ed. Claudia Card.

As library collections and services have increasingly moved from print to digital, much of the work that used to be done by libraries themselves with regard to creating, maintaining, and managing the systems that hold collections and facilitate user access to them is now done primarily by vendors. This change to the information services landscape for academic libraries is the occasion not only of technical and procedural challenges, but also some internal conflicts concerning the ethical demands of the library profession. (...) This essay examines the ways in which these conflicts become acute and obvious when attention is paid to the way in which attempts to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are undermined by the handover of library services to vendors, even when—or perhaps especially when—those vendors use their control of content and platforms to commodify diverse content instead of making the necessary systemic changes required by truly effective EDI efforts. (shrink)

GraphicalThe need to encourage individuals as active change agents for sustainability transitions has led researchers across disciplines to conceptualize over 70 constructs to assess relevant dispositions to environmental protection and green consumption behaviors. The generated knowledge is, however, fragmented by an unconsolidated set of constructs developed within parallel literature streams. We, hence, use an integrative review method to capture conceptual and operational similarities and distinctiveness of constructs across disciplines in the literature, attempting to unify the knowledge base. Thereby, we identify (...) 34 conceptually distinct constructs relevant for the thematic synthesis on individual-level constructs framing contributions to environmental measures and issues. We followingly propose a taxonomy, systemizing constructs based on their concept type and contextual scope of the environmental challenge addressed. We capture these dimensions in critically assessing relevant and salient conceptual and operational features. We thus create a consolidated picture of extant constructs capturing individual-level environmental sustainability by which we intend a three-fold contribution to the interdisciplinary field. First, the taxonomy and guiding framework for the choice of constructs should assist substantive researchers in identifying appropriate constructs of interest. Second, the systematic integration of similar concepts available in parallel literature streams should assist future endeavors aiming at integrating substantive findings with regard to antecedents, consequences, and other relevant variables. Finally, the taxonomy revealed that conceptualizations mainly scatter around specific combinations of types and scopes while others remain unaddressed. Based on our critical assessment of the relevant features and resulting taxonomy, we identify avenues for future research dedicated to enhancing conceptual rigor and measurement quality in the field and introducing concepts addressing missing but potentially valuable combinations of types and scopes. We conclude that researchers engaging in the proposed avenues with conceptual, methodological, or empirical contributions should consider four critical aspects to advance knowledge accumulation and prevent fragmentation in the interdisciplinary field. We thereby hope to pave the way for a collective, interdisciplinary knowledge base of concepts used to describe and assess individual’s pro-environmental dispositions and practices of green consumption. (shrink)

An audiovisual correspondence (AVC) refers to an observer’s seemingly arbitrary yet consistent matching of sensory features across the two modalities; for example, between an auditory pitch and visual size. Research on AVCs has frequently used a speeded classification procedure in which participants are asked to rapidly classify an image when it is either accompanied by a congruent or an incongruent sound (or vice versa). When, as is typically the case, classification is faster in the presence of a congruent stimulus, researchers (...) have inferred that the AVC is automatic and bottom-up. Such an inference is incomplete because the procedure does not show that the AVC is not subject to top-down influences. To remedy this problem, we devised a procedure that allows us to assess the degree of “bottom-up-ness” and “top-down-ness” in the processing of an AVC. We did this in studies of AVCs between pitch and five visual features: size, height, spatial frequency, brightness, and angularity. We find that all the AVCs we studied involve both bottom-up and top-down processing, thus undermining the prevalent generalization that AVCs are automatic. (shrink)

Ecological restoration and native landscaping are increasing, particularly in the American Midwest, where they form part of the area's history and culture of conservation. But practitioners rarely pause to ask philosophical questions related to categories of native and invasive or human control and harmony with nature. This article brings philosophy into conversation with practice, using members of Wild Ones Native Landscaping, a non-profit headquartered in Neenah, WI, as a case study. Philosophers and ethicists who are studying Ecological Restoration and Native (...) Landscaping can learn valuable lessons - in practicality, aesthetics and flexibility - from practitioners such as the Wild Ones. (shrink)

Climate engineering is subject to the “playing God” critique, which charges that humans should not undertake to control nature in ways that seem to overstep the proper scope of human agency. This argument is easily discredited, and in fact the opposite—that we should “play God”—may be equally valid in some circumstances. To revive the playing God critique, I argue that it functions not on a logical but on a symbolic and emotional level to highlight nostalgia for functional dualisms in the (...) face of the bewildering problem of climate change. It also raises significant questions about the virtue of those who might engineer the climate. These two concerns point to questions about the proper role of human agency. I use the scholarship of Aldo Leopold and H. Richard Niebuhr to argue for a model of human agency based on contextual awareness and responsive, communal responsibility. I conclude with some implications of this view for decision-makers engaging the topic of climate engineering. (shrink)

Health policymakers employ utility measures to inform resource allocation decisions. They often rely on a conceptual tool called the quality-adjusted life year that discounts the value of years lived in a state of disability relative to years lived in full health. A representative sample of the general public is asked to place values on hypothetical health states as part of a standard gamble or time trade-off task. Policymakers use the resulting values to calculate the number of QALYs gained through particular (...) interventions. Utilitarian reasoning mandates that policymakers maximize QALYs gained per unit cost.Although many scholars have explored the problems of distributive justice that arise from this system... (shrink)

In qualitative interviews with a diverse group of experts, the vast majority believed unregulated researchers should seek out independent oversight. Reasons included the need for objectivity, protecting app users from research risks, and consistency in standards for the ethical conduct of research. Concerns included burdening minimal risk research and limitations in current systems of oversight. Literature and analysis supports the use of IRBs even when not required by regulations, and the need for evidence-based improvements in IRB processes.

Feminist criticism of health care and ofbioethics has become increasingly rich andsophisticated in the last years of thetwentieth century. Nonetheless, this body ofwork remains quite marginalized. I believe thatthere are (at least) two reasons for this.First, many people are still confused aboutfeminism. Second, many people are unconvincedthat significant sexism still exists and aretherefore unreceptive to arguments that itshould be remedied if there is no largerbenefit. In this essay I argue for a thin,``core'' conception of feminism that is easy tounderstand and (...) difficult to reject. Corefeminism would render debate within feminismmore fruitful, clear the way for appropriaterecognition of differences among women andtheir circumstances, provide intellectuallycompelling reasons for current non-feminists toadopt a feminist outlook, and facilitatemutually beneficial cooperation betweenfeminism and other progressive socialmovements. This conception of feminism alsomakes it clear that feminism is part of alarger egalitarian moral and political agenda,and adopting it would help bioethics focus onthe most urgent moral priorities. In addition,integrating core feminism into bioethics wouldopen a gateway to the more speculative parts offeminist work where a wealth of creativethinking is occurring. Engaging with thisfeminist work would challenge and strengthenmainstream approaches; it should also motivatemainstream bioethicists to explore othercurrently marginalized parts of bioethics. (shrink)

We investigated how two cues to contrast—beat gesture and contrastive pitch accenting—affect comprehenders' cognitive load during processing of spoken referring expressions. In two visual‐world experiments, we orthogonally manipulated the presence of these cues and their felicity, or fit, with the local (sentence‐level) referential context in critical referring expressions while comprehenders' task‐evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) were examined. In Experiment 1, beat gesture and contrastive accenting always matched the referential context of filler referring expressions and were therefore relatively felicitous on the global (...) (experiment) level, whereas in Experiment 2, beat gesture and contrastive accenting never fit the referential context of filler referring expressions and were therefore infelicitous on the global level. The results revealed that both beat gesture and contrastive accenting increased comprehenders' cognitive load. For beat gesture, this increase in cognitive load was driven by both local and global infelicity. For contrastive accenting, this increase in cognitive load was unaffected when cues were globally felicitous but exacerbated when cues were globally infelicitous. Together, these results suggest that comprehenders' cognitive resources are taxed by processing infelicitous use of beat gesture and contrastive accenting to convey contrast on both the local and global levels. (shrink)

For the last eighteen months, I have worked with a group of disability and health policy researchers. I began this interview-based project trying to learn how these researchers’ disability identities shaped their work. How did their disability standpoint contribute to the liberatory nature of their research? I found that the disability standpoint of these researchers was in fact hard-won and grew not just out of their own disability experiences but out of their connections with the larger disability community. These connections, (...) for the most part, helped researchers come to “claim crip,” and that later influenced their research. (shrink)

The word yoginī is an ambivalent term, generally defined as a female yogin. For the purposes of the University of Hawai′i′s Center for South Asian Studies’ Symposium on the Ineffable in Religion and Ritual, I envisioned the ambivalence of the yoginī as characterized by semantic ineffability. This ineffability is seen in the divergence of definitions and descriptions of the yoginī in text and ethnography. The tantras portray her as flying, blood thirsty, and the object of tantric sex rites; she is (...) rarely portrayed as a yoga practitioner. Human yoginīs in India, by in contrast, often identify themselves as sannyāsinī (renunciate), practice some form of yoga, and are often celibate. To address the question of why textual and human yoginīs bear little in common, I render a polythetic definition of the yoginī by first looking at the many modes of definition and classification used to render meaning of the concepts that are integral to the formation of the yoginī. I then problematize the categorical construction of the yoginī and the disjunction between textual references to the yoginī in tantras of the Vidyāpīṭha (“Wisdom Mantra Corpus” or “Seat of Wisdom”), the Śaiva and Śākta Purāṇas, and ethnographic accounts of embodied yoginīs. These three sources, which emerge from various sectarian, historical, and social milieus offer interrelated yet distinct descriptions of the yoginī and as such provide a broad base of signification upon which to render a polythetic definition. (shrink)

Consumption--the flow of physical materials in human lives--is an important ethical issue. Be it fair trade coffee or foreign oil, North Americans' consumption choices affect the well-being of humans around the globe, in addition to impacting the natural world and consumers themselves. In this book, Laura Hartman seeks to formulate a coherent Christian ethic of consumption.

We surveyed IRB chairs' perspectives on offering individual genetic research results to participants and families, including family members of deceased participants, and the IRB's role in addressing these issues. Given a particular hypothetical scenario, respondents favored offering results to participants but not family members, giving choices at the time of initial consent, and honoring elicited choices. They felt IRBs should have authority regarding the process issues, but a more limited role in medical and scientific issues.

I examine the dynamics of measure development using two case studies: temperature, and health-related quality of life. I argue, following Bas van Fraassen and Leah McClimans that in each case these dynamics have a hermeneutic structure. Measure development is plagued by epistemic circularity, as is the task of interpreting a text, and similar strategies can be used in both measure development and hermeneutics to overcome that circularity. I show that Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in particular are an effective lens (...) through which to examine the development of the temperature standard as described by Hasok Chang. Despite similar grounding in hermeneutics, I note an important difference between measure development for temperature and for health-related quality of life. Namely, while the meaning of temperature can be standardized, the meaning of health-related quality of life cannot. This standardization of meaning for the temperature concept represents a limit to the analogy with hermeneutics. Finally, I argue that the indeterminacy we find in health-related quality of life measurement is a result not only of analogy with the hermeneutic task, but of full-fledged participation in it. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 26-28.

This article draws on in-depth case studies of 61 women and men of diverse sexual identities to show how gender, while apparently diminishing in significance, continues to shape interpretations and experiences of virginity loss in complex ways. Although women and men tended to assign different meanings to virginity, those who shared an interpretation reported similar virginity-loss encounters. Each interpretation of virginity—as a gift, stigma, or process—featured unequal roles for virgin and partner, which interacted with gender differences in power to produce (...) interpretation-specific patterns of gender subordination, only one of which consistently gave men power over women. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: General Assessments of Assisted Reproduction Pre‐birth Testing Conclusion References Further reading.

Interpretations of family carer empowerment in much nursing research, and in home‐care practice and policy, rarely attend explicitly to families’ choice or control about the nature, extent or length of their involvement, or control over the impact on their own health. In this article, structural empowerment is used as an analytic lens to examine home‐care nurses’ interactions with families in one Western Canadian region. Data were collected from 75 hrs of fieldwork in 59 interactions (18 nurses visiting 16 families) and (...) interviews with 12 nurses and 11 family carers. Generally, nurses prioritized client empowerment, and their practice with families appeared oriented to supporting their role and needs as carers (i.e. rather than as unique individuals beyond the caring role), and reinforcing the caring role through validation and recognition. Although families generally expressed appreciation for these interactions, a structural empowerment lens illustrates how the broad context of home care shapes the interpretation and practice of empowerment in ways that can, paradoxically, be disempowering for families. Opportunities to effectively support family choice and control when a client is being cared for at home are discussed. (shrink)

A worldwidemental health crisis is expected, as millions worldwide fear death and disease while being forced into repeated isolation. Thus, there is a need for new proactive approaches to improve mental resilience and prevent mental health conditions. Since the 1990s, art has emerged as an alternative mental health therapy in the United States and Europe, becoming part of the social care agenda. This article focuses on how visual esthetic experiences can create similar patterns of neuronal activity as those observed when (...) the reward system is activated. The activation of the reward structures could have a stress buffering effect, given the interdependence observed between the reward and stress systems. Therefore, could visual esthetic experiences stimulate mental resilience? And if this were the case, could art-based interventions be offered for mental health in the context of COVID-19 and beyond? (shrink)

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the present commentary, here translated into English for the first time, Alexander (...) develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time, including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the Middle Ages and later. (shrink)

The vice of acedia deserves—and rewards—a closer reading than is implied in the old rendering ‘sloth’, or even in contemporary readings of ‘spiritual sloth’. Such is at least true in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, the subject of the following close reading of this enigmatic vice. Investigating the question on acedia and its grounding in portions of I-II, I first establish acedia’s basis not in a sovereign spiritual ‘choice’ but in the sensitive appetite and the passion of sorrow. This turns the portrait (...) of acedia’s ‘patients’ from those who avoid to those who embrace the labors of love, those who experience acedia’s sorrow in the very midst of pursuing divine joy. A third section steps back to show the entire problem of acedia, including its ‘slothful’ effects, in terms of this one fundamental sorrow that suppresses joy—real rest—in the Lord. I end with Thomas’s remedy, the hope-charged possibility of rising up in defense of the divine joy, turning back acedia’s sorrow at every point of its attack and reclaiming the pleasure of sharing in God’s life. (shrink)

Science is revolutionizing human reproduction. New techniques are already with us, such as artificial insemination, the freezing of sperm, in vitro fertilization and the use of surrogate mothers. Artificial wombs are clearly on the horizon.