The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

The prospect of consumable meat produced in a laboratory setting without the need to raise and slaughter animals is both realistic and exciting. Not only could such in vitro meat become popular due to potential cost savings, but it also avoids many of the ethical and environmental problems with traditional meat productions. However, as with any new technology, in vitro meat is likely to face some detractors. We examine in detail three potential objections: 1) in vitro meat is disrespectful, either (...) to nature or to animals; 2) it will reduce the number of happy animals in the world; and 3) it will open the door to cannibalism. While each objection has some attraction, we ultimately find that all can be overcome. The upshot is that in vitro meat production is generally permissible and, especially for ethical vegetarians, worth promoting. (shrink)

We live in the Information Age. Advances over the past 50 years in computing technology have enabled ever-expanding capacity to generate, store, transfer, process and analyse information about people, societies, products, services, the environment—nearly every aspect of the world. In parallel, concerns over how such data is being used have emerged, focusing especially on issues of privacy and confidentiality. Yet as technological capabilities continue to expand, the debate over ethical uses of data inevitably has evolved as well. Whereas we used (...) to just talk about data, now there is great concern over Big Data. This chapter explores what, exactly, Big Data is; the ethical ramifications of its emergence, particularly for consent and anonymization; and what sorts of policy solutions are being proposed to address these emerging challenges. We will not defend one particular approach, but hope this chapter can be a useful reference for those who are contemplating difficult questions surrounding responsible management of Big Data. (shrink)

This article explores Franz Brentano's opposition to papal infallibility, and sets this in the context of his development as a Catholic scholar. An active participant in the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century, Brentano contributed to the emergence of neoscholasticism through his philosophical rehabilitation of Aristotle. Brentano ultimately left the Church however as the result of intensive scrutiny of his faith occasioned by his analysis of infallibility. This article explores this crisis of faith by analyzing, for the first time, Brentano's (...) position on papal infallibility, and suggesting ways that it informed his philosophical development. (shrink)

For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

The predominant view is that a study using health data is observational research and should require individual consent unless it can be shown that gaining consent is impractical. But recent arguments have been made that citizens have an ethical obligation to share their health information for research purposes. In our view, this obligation is sufficient ground to expand the circumstances where secondary use research with identifiable health information is permitted without explicit subject consent. As such, for some studies the Institutional (...) Review Board/Research Ethics Committee review process should not assess the practicality of gaining consent for data use. Instead the review process should focus on assessing the public good of the research, public engagement and transparency. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

The future of health research will be characterised by three continuing trends: rising demand for health data; increasing impracticability of obtaining specific consent for secondary research; and decreasing capacity to effectively anonymise data. In this context, governments, clinicians and the research community must demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of health data. IRBs and RECs sit at heart of this process because in many jurisdictions they have the capacity to grant consent waivers when research is judged to be of (...) particular value. However, several different terms are used to refer to this value, indicating a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the appropriate test for access to health data for research without consent. In this paper we do three things. First we describe the current confusion and instability in terminology relating to public interest in the context of consent waivers. Second we argue for harmonisation of terminology on the grounds of clarity, transparency and consistency. Third we argue that the term ‘public interest’ best reflects the normative work required to justify consent waivers because it is the broadest of the competing terms. ‘Public interest’ contains within its scope positive and negative implications of a study, as well as welfare, justice and rights considerations. In making this argument, we explain the normative basis for consent waivers, and provide a starting place for further discussion about the precise conditions in which a given study can be said to advance the public interest. Ipsos MORI study found that: … the public would be broadly happy with administrative data linking for research projects provided Those projects have social value, broadly defined. Data are de-identified. Data are kept secure. Businesses are not able to access the data for profit. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and created deep rifts in society. It has thrust us into deep ethical thinking to help justify the difficult decisions many will be called upon to make and to protect from decisions that lack ethical underpinnings. This paper aims to highlight ethical issues in six different areas of life highlighting the enormity of the task we are faced with globally. In the context of COVID-19, we consider health inequity, dilemmas in triage and allocation of (...) scarce resources, ethical issues associated with research, ethical considerations relating to tracing apps, and exit strategies such as immunity passports and COVID-19 vaccines. Finally, we consider environmental issues in light of COVID-19. The paper also offers some ethical reflection on these areas as many parts of the world contemplate the recovery phase. (shrink)

A strength of liberal political institutions is their ability to accommodate pluralism, both allowing divergent comprehensive doctrines as well as constructing the common ground necessary for diverse people to live together. A pressing question is how far such pluralism extends. Which comprehensive doctrines are simply beyond the pale and need not be accommodated by a political consensus? Rawls attempted to keep the boundaries of reasonable disagreement quite broad by infamously denying that political liberalism need make reference to the concept of (...) truth, a claim that has been criticized by Joseph Raz, Joshua Cohen, and David Estlund. In this paper, we argue that these criticisms fail due to the fact that political liberalism can remain non-committal on the nature of truth, leaving the concept of truth in the domain of comprehensive doctrines while still avoiding the issues raised by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund. Further substantiating this point is the fact that Rawls would, and should, include parties in the overlapping consensus whose views on truth may be incoherent. Once it is seen that political liberalism allows such incoherence to reasonable parties, it is clear that the inclusion of truth and the requirement of coherence urged by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund requires more of reasonable people than is necessary for a political consensus. (shrink)

High degrees of uncertainty and a lack of effective therapeutic treatments have characterized the COVID-19 pandemic and the provision of drug products outside research settings has been controversial. International guidelines for providing patients with experimental interventions to treat infectious diseases outside of clinical trials exist but it is unclear if or how they should apply in settings where clinical trials and research are strongly regulated. We propose the Professional Oversight of Emergency-Use Interventions and Monitoring System as an alternative pathway based (...) on guidance developed for the ethical provision of experimental interventions to treat COVID-19 in Singapore. We support our proposal with justifications that establish moral duties for physicians to record outcomes data and for institutions to establish monitoring systems for reporting information on safety and effectiveness to the relevant authorities. Institutions also have a duty to support generation of evidence for what constitutes good clinical practice and so should ensure the unproven intervention is made the subject of research studies that can contribute to generalizable knowledge as soon as practical and that physicians remain committed to supporting learning health systems. We outline key differences between POEIMS and other pathways for the provision of experimental interventions in public health emergencies. (shrink)

We study the values on which managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) draw when constructing their personal and organizational-level engagement with environmental issues, particularly climate change. Values play an important mediating role in business environmental engagement, but relatively little research has been conducted on individual values in smaller organizations. Using the Schwartz Value System (SVS) as a framework for a qualitative analysis, we identify four “ideal-types” of SME managers and provide rich descriptions of the ways in which values shape (...) their constructions of environmental engagement. In contrast to previous research, which is framed around a binary divide between self-enhancing and self-transcending values, our typology distinguishes between individuals drawing primarily on Power or on Achievement values and indicates how a combination of Achievement and Benevolence values is particularly significant in shaping environmental engagement. This demonstrates the theoretical usefulness of focusing on a complete range of values. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. (shrink)

We define and study a new notion called k-immunity that lies between immunity and hyperimmunity in strength. Our interest in k-immunity is justified by the result that θ does not k-tt reduce to a k-immune set, which improves a previous result by Kobzev [7]. We apply the result to show that Φ′ does not btt-reduce to MIN, the set of minimal programs. Other applications include the set of Kolmogorov random strings, and retraceable and regressive sets. We also give a new (...) characterization of effectively simple sets and show that simple sets are not btt-cuppable. (shrink)

In their response to ‘Public interest in health data research: laying out the conceptual groundwork’, Grewal and Newson critique us for inattention to the law and putting forward an impracticably broad conceptual understanding of public interest. While we agree more work is needed to generate a workable framework for Institutional Review Boards/Research Ethics Committees, we would contend that this should be grounded on a broad conception of public interest. This broadness facilitates regulatory agility, and is already reflected by some current (...) frameworks such as that found in the guidelines approved under Australia’s Privacy Act. It remains unclear which elements of our broad account Grewal and Newson would reject, or indeed where the substantive disagreement with our position lies. (shrink)

The development of some COVID-19 vaccines by private companies like Moderna and Sanofi-GSK has been substantially funded by various governments. While the Sanofi CEO has previously suggested that countries that fund this development ought to be given some priority, this suggestion has not been taken seriously in the literature. Considerations of nationalism, sustainability, need, and equitability have been more extensively discussed with respect to whether and how much a country is entitled to advance purchase orders of the vaccine under conditions (...) of absolute scarcity. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether prior investment into developing a vaccine entitles a country to some priority with respect to these orders. Moreover, while not a majority view, some survey results show that a significant minority of the populace does endorse some view like this. This article argues that the minority have a point: recognizing funder countries some priority is justified by the weak Lockean claim (WLC). According to the WLC, the fact that someone has contributed to the development of something gives them some entitlement to the resultant product. This article will defend the WLC, and address objections to the argument, including those pertaining to questions of historical injustice and medical need. This argument does not imply an unconstrained entitlement. Rather, contribution to development is one morally relevant factor that must be tempered by and weighed against potentially more substantial claims to priority based on need, equity, and other considerations. (shrink)

This paper argues that one problem that besets black-box AI is that it lacks algorithmic justifiability. We argue that the norm of shared decision making in medical care presupposes that treatment decisions ought to be justifiable to the patient. Medical decisions are justifiable to the patient only if they are compatible with the patient’s values and preferences and the patient is able to see that this is so. Patient-directed justifiability is threatened by black-box AIs because the lack of rationale provided (...) for the decision makes it difficult for patients to ascertain whether there is adequate fit between the decision and the patient’s values. This paper argues that achieving algorithmic transparency does not help patients bridge the gap between their medical decisions and values. We introduce a hypothetical model we call Justifiable AI to illustrate this argument. Justifiable AI aims at modelling normative and evaluative considerations in an explicit way so as to provide a stepping stone for patient and physician to jointly decide on a course of treatment. If our argument succeeds, we should prefer these justifiable models over alternatives if the former are available and aim to develop said models if not. (shrink)

The development of some COVID-19 vaccines by private companies like Moderna and Sanofi-GSK has been substantially funded by various governments. While the Sanofi CEO has previously suggested that countries that fund this development ought to be given some priority, this suggestion has not been taken seriously in the literature. Considerations of nationalism, sustainability, need, and equitability have been more extensively discussed with respect to whether and how much a country is entitled to advance purchase orders of the vaccine under conditions (...) of absolute scarcity. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether prior investment into developing a vaccine entitles a country to some priority with respect to these orders. Moreover, while not a majority view, some survey results show that a significant minority of the populace does endorse some view like this. This article argues that the minority have a point: recognizing funder countries some priority is justified by the weak Lockean claim (WLC). According to the WLC, the fact that someone has contributed to the development of something gives them some entitlement to the resultant product. This article will defend the WLC, and address objections to the argument, including those pertaining to questions of historical injustice and medical need. This argument does not imply an unconstrained entitlement. Rather, contribution to development is one morally relevant factor that must be tempered by and weighed against potentially more substantial claims to priority based on need, equity, and other considerations. (shrink)

Die erweiterte und komplett überarbeitete 2. Auflage ist ein modernes Lehrbuch für Astrophysik-Vorlesungen. Der Bergmann-Schaefer-Reihe angemessen, stehen experimentelle Methoden und Messungen im Vordergrund; doch die Einbettung der Messergebnisse in die Theorie wird ebenfalls ausführlich dargestellt. Neu hinzugefügt wurden die Kapitel 1 Grundlagen der Astronomie und Kapitel 2 Terrestrische Observatorien. In Kapitel 3 (Extraterrestrische Observatorien) fanden die europäischen Beiträge eine stärkere erücksichtigung. Kapitel 6 Kosmologie wurde völlig neu verfasst. Mit den vielen praktischen Hinweisen zur Nutzung des Internets ist das Buch auch (...) nützlich für Amateur-Astronomen. Leser, die sich allgemeinbildend für die Astrophysik interessieren, finden hier Informationen über alle neuen Entwicklungen. Mit dem ausführlichen Register ist das Buch auch zum Nachschlagen geeignet. Weitere Informationen zum Bergmann/Schaefer finden Sie hier. (shrink)

Regrettably, in the original version of this article the name of one of the authors was spelt incorrectly. "Li Yan Hsu" should be "Li Yang Hsu".

An incomplete degree is cuppable if it can be joined by an incomplete degree to a complete degree. For sets fulfilling some type of simplicity property one can now ask whether these sets are cuppable with respect to a certain type of reducibilities. Several such results are known. In this paper we settle all the remaining cases for the standard notions of simplicity and all the main strong reducibilities.

In this conceptual article, we look at the impact of culture on ethical decision making from a Douglasian Cultural Theory (CT) perspective. We aim to show how CT can be used to explain the diversity and dynamicity of ethical beliefs and behaviours found in every social system, be it a corporation, a nation or even an individual. We introduce CT in the context of ethical decision making and then use it to discuss examples of business ethics in the Indian business (...) context. We argue that the use of CT allows for a theoretically more sophisticated treatment of culture in ethical decision making and thus the avoidance of some common problems with existing cross-cultural studies of business ethics. In our discussion, we raise questions about the compatibility between management systems and processes created in one context and ethical behaviours in another. (shrink)

The right to withdraw from participation in research is recognized in virtually all national and international guidelines for research on human subjects. It is therefore surprising that there has been little justification for that right in the literature. We argue that the right to withdraw should protect research participants from information imbalance, inability to hedge, inherent uncertainty, and untoward bodily invasion, and it serves to bolster public trust in the research enterprise. Although this argument is not radical, it provides a (...) useful way to determine how the right should be applied in various cases. (shrink)

In this paper we report a study of the approach of six U.K. water and electricity companies towards managing the relationship with their ''green'' stakeholders. Stakeholders are accorded increasing importance in political discourse and stakeholder theory is emerging as a promising framework for the analysis of corporate social performance.We studied the companies'' general approach towards green stakeholders, their dealings with specific stakeholder groups and whether they emphasised the consultation or the information aspect of stakeholder management. We found that none of (...) the six companies had a systematic stakeholder approach that extended to all potential green stakeholders. Rather, the importance of specific stakeholder groups seemed to be determined by managers'' intuition and by the stance that the stakeholders themselves displayed towards the company. (shrink)

Both experimental and ethnographic studies show that reciprocal exchanges (in which actors unilaterally provide benefits to each other without formal agreements) produce stronger trust than negotiated exchanges secured by binding agreements. We develop the theoretical role of risk and uncertainty as causal mechanisms that potentially explain these results, and then test their effects in two laboratory experiments that vary risk and uncertainty within negotiated and reciprocal forms of exchange. We increase risk in negotiated exchanges by making agreements nonbinding and decrease (...) uncertainty in reciprocal exchanges by having actors communicate their intentions. Our findings support three main theoretical conclusions. (1) Increasing risk in negotiated exchange produces levels of trust comparable to those in reciprocal exchange only if the partner's trustworthiness is near-absolute. (2) Decreasing uncertainty in reciprocal exchange either increases or decreases trust, depending on network structure. (3) Even when reciprocal and negotiated exchanges produce comparable levels of trust, their trust differs in kind, with reciprocal exchange partners developing trust that is more resilient and affect-based. (shrink)

Ethics committees like Institutional Review Boards and Research Ethics Committees are typically empowered to approve or reject proposed studies, typically conditional on certain conditions or revisions being met. While some have argued this power should be primarily a function of applying clear, codified requirements, most institutions and legal regimes allow discretion for IRBs to ethically evaluate studies, such as to ensure a favourable risk-benefit ratio, fair subject selection, adequate informed consent, and so forth. As a result, ethics committees typically make (...) moral demands on researchers: require them to act in a way the committee considers ethically right or appropriate. This paper argues that moral demands are legitimate only if publicly justifiable; and as a result, committee decisions are subject to a public justification requirement. Ethics committees can permissibly request for more information, changes to the research protocol or that the research is delayed or even stopped only if these demands are publicly justifiable. This latter claim is in turn justified on the basis that moral demands to φ are permissible only if we are in a position to know that the addressee ought to φ and that we are in a position to know a proposition only if it is publicly justifiable. This argument suggests that ethics committees must consciously and explicitly appeal to public reasons in their decision-making. In cases where public reasons cannot be offered, committees would not be permitted to reject a given study or make approval conditional on an amendment. (shrink)

& Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala activation. In (...) the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cor-. (shrink)

Angela Ballantyne (2010) argues that international research is exploitative when the transactions between researchers and participants who lack basic goods do not provide participants with the maxi...