Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

Jeune écrivain sénégalais, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr s’est fait enquêteur en Sicile, dans un petit village qui accueille des migrants d’Afrique subsaharienne. Le résultat de cette pratique d’enquête a été l’écriture d’un roman : Silence du chœur.

Moral and ethical aspects in Mahabharata and Ramayana epics.

There is a great deal of literature on matching, theoretical, and empirical, concerning stable assignments and mechanisms that achieve them. The starting point of this study is an interesting question about assignment procedures: given a situation where some agents (the senior workers) on one side have a priority status, which changes the classical theory. The core of game may not be stable. We prove the existence of a quasi stable constrained core. This constrained core may not be a lattice but (...) it is a finite and disjoint union of complete lattices that check the properties of the core’s classical assignment game. We study the manipulability questions that derive. (shrink)

With regard to the theoretical place of environmental factors in development, three approaches to evolution and development can be distinguished. One is the neo-Darwinist approach in which genetic programs are central. The other two present themselves as alternatives to the gene-centrism in present-day biology. I discuss pairwise similarities and differences between the three approaches. Goodwin's approach differs from neo-Darwinism in its favoured types of causes, but shares the internalist perspective on embryological development. The constructionist alternative proposes to enlarge the developmental (...) system to include external factors, and shares with neo-Darwinism the emphasis on contingent causes. Thus there is neither a grand dichotomy in biology, between neo-Darwinism and its alternative, nor a grand trichotomy. Different purposes make different approaches useful. I conclude by arguing that environmental influences should have a more prominent place in developmental biology. (shrink)

Official Dutch food information apparently tries to avoid images but is implicitly shaped by the metaphor that food is fuel. The image of food as fuel and its accompanying view of the body as a machine are not maximally helpful for integrating two important human desires: health and pleasure. At the basis of the split between health and pleasure is the traditional mind–body dichotomy, in which the body is an important source of evil and bodily pleasure is sinful and dangerous. (...) In the search for alternatives, new metaphors are proposed that integrate mind and body as well as pleasure and health. The relevance of metaphors for ethics is at least twofold. (1) Moral thought and theory are at least partly shaped by metaphors. In the light of this growing recognition, the analysis of morality needs innovation. (2) With regard to food, new metaphors, such as slow food, or the image of enjoyment as an art, enable a new search for morally responsible forms of hedonism, based on more love and respect for human as well as animal bodies. But new metaphors are specific and selective, just like old ones. I argue that a search for the best overall metaphor would be misguided, but that more diverse forms of attention to bodily aspects of life, including experiences related to food, will result in richer vocabularies of the body, the mind, and body–mind relations. This holds a promise of moral progress. (shrink)

Two prevailing paradigms explain the diversity of sex-determining modes in reptiles. Many researchers, particularly those who study reptiles, consider genetic and environmental sex-determining mechanisms to be fundamentally different, and that one can be demonstrated experimentally to the exclusion of the other. Other researchers, principally those who take a broader taxonomic perspective, argue that no clear boundaries exist between them. Indeed, we argue that genetic and environmental sex determination in reptiles should be seen as a continuum of states represented by species (...) whose sex is determined primarily by genotype, species where genetic and environmental mechanisms coexist and interact in lesser or greater measure to bring about sex phenotypes, and species where sex is determined primarily by environment. To do otherwise limits the scope of investigations into the transition between the two and reduces opportunities to use studies of reptiles to advance understanding of vertebrate sex determination generally. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

On 10 July 1973, Laurens, our second son, was born in the same Dutch hospital where I worked as an intensive care physician. Two weeks after we brought him. home from the hospital, my wife heard him crying at about 5:45 A.M. Rather than going to him, she decided to wait until his scheduled feeding time. At about 6:10 when she went to Laurens's room to feed him, she saw him. face down in the corner of his crib. He appeared (...) dead. She screamed for me. I ran from upstairs to Laurens's room on the ground floor. I initiated cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and continued the CPR while my wife called our general practitioner. He arrived in about 10 minutes and the ambulance arrived a minute later. (shrink)

As a highly technological innovation, cultured meat is the subject of techno-optimistic as well as techno-sceptical evaluations. The chapter discusses this opposition and connects it with arguments about seeing the world in the right way. Both sides not only call upon us to see the world in a very particular light, but also point to mechanisms of selective attention in order to explain how others can be so biased. I will argue that attention mechanisms are indeed relevant for dealing with (...) the Anthropocene, but that dualism has paralysing effects. In a dualistic framework, cultured meat is associated with ecomodernist optimism, bold technological control over nature and alienation from animals. But interested citizens and farmers in focus groups rather envisioned the future of cultured meat through small scale production on farms combined with intensive relations with animals. Such scenarios, involving elements from both sides of the dualistic gap, depend on constructive ways of dealing with dualisms and ambivalence. (shrink)

This paper provides a formal description of two legal domains. In addition, we describe the generation of various artificial datasets from these domains and explain the use of these datasets in previous experiments aligning learning and reasoning. These resources are made available for the further investigation of connections between arguments, cases and rules. The datasets are publicly available at https://github.com/CorSteging/LegalResources.

African Meditations is a unique contemporary portrait of a young philosopher and creative writer as he seeks to establish himself as a teacher upon his return to Senegal, his homeland, after years of study abroad. It is a seamless blend of autobiography, journal entries, and fiction; aphorisms and brief narrative sketches; humor and Zen reflections.

Although most people still behave like happy meat eaters, there are good reasons to think that many are in fact ambivalent about meat. Following up on earlier findings, in this paper we describe how, in focus groups, cultured meat triggered much discussion about meat, especially among older people. While young people wondered whether they would eat cultured meat products, older people thought about diet changes in a historical perspective and wondered if and how cultured meat might become a societal success. (...) Beneath the surface of everyday behavior, in which they followed mainstream norms, many of our research participants harbored moral concerns and in various ways expressed an interest in collective change. Reflecting on the focus group discussions, we suggest, first, that appreciating the important role of ambivalence in processes of moral change requires rethinking relations between ambivalence and morality. Second, the entanglement of ambivalence with ambiguity increases the “fluidity” of such processes of change: when it is no longer clear what exactly meat is, the meanings and experiences of eating it also become unsettled. This has implications for thinking about morality in times of change. Studying consumer choices cannot do justice to processes of ambivalence and ambiguity below the surface of behavior. More generally, the idea that morality resides in making up our minds about clear moral choices gives way to the need to become skilled, collectively as well as individually, in dealing imaginatively with ambivalence and ambiguity. (shrink)

Teksten van 12 moderne filosofen over de mens.

Should we put our agricultural hopes in new technologies or in regenerative approaches? Dualisms, and their suggestion that we must choose, frame many debates. By offering just two options, they tend to discourage more wideranging and creative searches. Yet dualism can also be helpful, for example in the form of critical discussion, an antidote against confirmation bias and wishful thinking. But then again, critical dialogue is not necessarily connected with the dualism of winning or losing. Why choose, if we are (...) actually ambivalent? This lecture looks for pragmatic ways of dealing with dualisms. It proposes pilot farms as places, and as metaphors, for finding new directions on the basis of tensions, through back and forth thinking between tradition and innovation. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

Questions the dominant biological approach of explaining animal development as entirely genetic by exploring the explanatory value of investigating environmental influences.

The technology required for tissue-engineering food is the same as for medical applications, and in fact is derived from it. There are major differences in the implementation of those technologies, primarily related to the enormous scale required for food production and the different economical framework. In addition, the emotional context of food tissue engineering is also more complex than for medical applications. On the other hand, the tissues that are generated do not need to integrate in the body, with less (...) risk of adverse effects in the event of incomplete functional, neuronal or humoral adaptation. The implementation of tissue engineering for food is still in its infancy. No products exist yet. It will be extremely challenging to make these products a reality for the consumer, but the reward and return in terms of value for our society will be tremendous. (shrink)

With regard to the theoretical place of environmental factors in development, three approaches to evolution and development can be distinguished. One is the neo-Darwinist approach in which ‘genetic programs’ are central. The other two present themselves as alternatives to the gene-centrism in present-day biology. I discuss pairwise similarities and differences between the three approaches. Goodwin's approach differs from neo-Darwinism in its favoured types of causes, but shares the internalist perspective on embryological development. The ‘constructionist’ alternative proposes to enlarge the developmental (...) system to include external factors, and shares with neo-Darwinism the emphasis on contingent causes. Thus there is neither a grand dichotomy in biology, between neo-Darwinism and its alternative, nor a grand trichotomy. Different purposes make different approaches useful. I conclude by arguing that environmental influences should have a more prominent place in developmental biology. (shrink)

Official Dutch food information apparently tries to avoid images but is implicitly shaped by the metaphor that food is fuel. The image of food as fuel and its accompanying view of the body as a machine are not maximally helpful for integrating two important human desires: health and pleasure. At the basis of the split between health and pleasure is the traditional mind–body dichotomy, in which the body is an important source of evil and bodily pleasure is sinful and dangerous. (...) In the search for alternatives, new metaphors are proposed that integrate mind and body as well as pleasure and health. The relevance of metaphors for ethics is at least twofold. (1) Moral thought and theory are at least partly shaped by metaphors. In the light of this growing recognition, the analysis of morality needs innovation. (2) With regard to food, new metaphors, such as slow food, or the image of enjoyment as an art, enable a new search for morally responsible forms of hedonism, based on more love and respect for human as well as animal bodies. But new metaphors are specific and selective, just like old ones. I argue that a search for the best overall metaphor would be misguided, but that more diverse forms of attention to bodily aspects of life, including experiences related to food, will result in richer vocabularies of the body, the mind, and body–mind relations. This holds a promise of moral progress. (shrink)

Frans de Waal’s view that empathy is at the basis of morality directly seems to build on Darwin, who considered sympathy as the crucial instinct. Yet when we look closer, their understanding of the central social instinct differs considerably. De Waal sees our deeply ingrained tendency to sympathize (or rather: empathize) with others as the good side of our morally dualistic nature. For Darwin, sympathizing was not the whole story of the workings of sympathy ; the (selfish) need to receive (...) sympathy played just as central a role in the complex roads from sympathy to morality. Darwin’s understanding of sympathy stems from Adam Smith, who argued that the presence of morally impure motives should not be a reason for cynicism about morality. I suggest that De Waal’s approach could benefit from a more thorough alignment with the analysis of the workings of sympathy in the work of Darwin and Adam Smith. (shrink)

Two approaches to an integration of evolution and development are often distinguished, one neo-Darwinian and the other structuralist. Should these approaches in turn be integrated? Kelly Smith recently stated that we need a more complete theory of biological order, suggesting integration as the ideal. In response to him, I argue that a recognition of different types of scientific questions and causal explanation is more urgent. Do we understand development when we know the crucial factors in the process of differentiation, or (...) rather when we know the laws that govern the transformations of fields? Without a recognition of these different explanatory ideals, integration is likely to have the character of annexation. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambiguous notion of bodily integrity, focusing on male and female circumcision. In the empirical part of the study we describe and analyse the various meanings that are given to the notion of bodily integrity by people in their daily lives. In the philosophical part we distinguish (1) between a person-oriented and a body-oriented approach and (2) between four levels of interpretation, i.e. bodily integrity conceived of as a biological wholeness, an experiential wholeness, an intact wholeness, and (...) as an inviolable wholeness. We argue that bodily integrity is a prima facie principle in its own right, closely connected with, but still fundamentally different from, the principle of personal autonomy, that is, autonomy over the body. (shrink)

New technology has a prominent place in the theory and practice of innovation, but the association between high tech and innovation is not inevitable. In this paper, we discuss six metaphorical heroes of agricultural innovation, starting with the dominant hero of frontier science and technology. At first sight, our six heroes can be divided in those who are pro- and those who are anti-technology. Yet in the end technology, and more specifically GM technology, does not emerge as the main issue. (...) Empowering the poor, finding solutions for urgent climate problems, and enhancing the quality of our daily relations to food and the environment – these are the issues the heroes are fighting for. Relations between innovation and technology are better seen as a matter of pragmatic consideration, we will argue. (shrink)

The Rift Valley fever (RVF), which first appeared in Kenya in 1912, is an anthropozoonosis widespread in tropical areas. In Senegal, it is particularly felt in the Ferlo area where a strong presence of ponds shared by humans, cattle and vectors is noted. As part of the studies carried out on the environmental factors which favour its start and propagation, the focus of this paper is put on the decision making process to evaluate the impacts, the interactions and to make (...) RVF monitoring easier. The present paper proposes a model based on data mining techniques and dedicated to trade experts. This model integrates all the involved data and the results of the analyses made on the characteristics of the surrounding ponds. This approach presents some advantage in revealing the relationship between environmental factors and RVF transmission vectors for space–time epidemiology monitoring purpose. (shrink)

This article examines how people with type 2 diabetes perceive autonomous decision making and which moral capacities they consider important in diabetes nurses' support of autonomous decision making. Fifteen older adults with type 2 diabetes were interviewed in a nurse-led unit. First, the data were analysed using the grounded theory method. The participants described a variety of decision-making processes in the nurse and family care-giver context. Later, descriptions of the decision-making processes were analysed using hermeneutic text interpretation. We suggest first- (...) and second-order moral capacities that nurses specializing in diabetes need to promote the autonomous decision making of their patients. We recommend nurses to engage in ongoing, interactive reflective practice to further develop these moral capacities. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to augment the ethical discussion among nurses with the findings from empirical research on autonomy of older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. There are many factors influencing autonomy. These include: health conditions, treatment, knowledge, experience and skills, personal approach as well as familial patterns, type of relationship, life history and social context. Fifteen older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus were interviewed in a nurse-led diabetes clinic. These participants perceive three processes which support (...) autonomy in responsive relationships: preserving patterns of concern and interaction, nurturing collaborative responsibilities and being closely engaged in trustful and helpful family relations. People with diabetes realize autonomy in various responsive relationships in their unique life context. Next, we performed a literature review of care ethics and caring in nursing with regard to relational autonomy. We classified the literature in five strands of care: attitude-oriented, dialogue-oriented, activity-oriented, relationship-oriented and life-oriented. According to our respondents, autonomy in responsive relationships is fostered when patient, nurses, professionals of the health team and family members carry out care activities supported by a relational attitude of care. They can best realize autonomy in relationships with others when several essential aspects of care and caring are present in their lives. Therefore, we advocate a comprehensive approach to care and caring. (shrink)

The Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) in Africa aims to strengthen the capacities of selected science granting councils (SGCs) in sub-Saharan Africa in order to support research and evidence-based policies that will contribute to Africa’s economic and social development. As part of SGCI, a study was conducted in 2021 to investigate strategies that have been adopted by fifteen SGCs participating in SGCI in promoting ethical practice in research and innovation. Data collection for the study was mainly based on a data (...) abstraction form that was completed for each country by an assigned focal person with a background in research ethics. The focal persons relied on various methods including document and website review and interviews with senior officers at the SGCs. The study specifically sought to describe the strategies and activities being implemented by the 15 SGCs in promoting ethics and integrity in research and innovation. The study revealed various strategies that were being implemented by the 15 SGCs aimed at promoting ethics in research and innovation including requiring proof of research ethics committee approval before releasing research funds and the inclusion of ethics questions in the application form for funding. It was observed that some activities and strategies were generic to most SGCs for example the development of general/standard guidelines for the conduct of research in each respective country. Overall, the different SGCs were involved in a broad spectrum of activities aimed at promoting research ethics and this paper presents an opportunity for cross fertilization of ideas. By providing a summary of the various strategies that SGCs are using in promoting ethical conduct of research, it is hoped that this paper will lead to improvements in the ways SGCs provide support and oversight over the research that they fund. (shrink)