In analytic political philosophy, it is common to view state-sponsored injustice as the work of a corporate agent. But as I argue, structural injustice theory provides grounds for reassessing the agential approach, producing new insights into state-sponsored injustice. Using the case of eugenic sterilization in the United States, this article proposes a structurally-sensitive conception of state-sponsored injustice with six components: authorization, protection, systemization, execution, enablement, and norm- and belief-influence. Iris Marion Young’s models of responsibility for agential and structural injustice, and (...) the place of state-sponsored injustice with respect to these models, are also discussed. (shrink)

In this case study from litigation, we show how ghostwriting of clinical trial results can contribute to the manipulation of data to favor the study medication. Study 329 for paroxetine pediatric use was negative for efficacy and positive for harm. Yet the ghostwritten publication from this study concluded that paroxetine provided evidence of efficacy and safety and continues to be influential. Despite the role of named authors in revisions of the manuscript, the sponsor company remained in control of the (...) message. (shrink)

The present research is the first part of econometric study of the so called sponsored goods and looks at one of the most common types of such goods namely art products created by theaters, concert organizations and museums. The aim of the paper is to analyse the performance of Russian art organizations to find out to what extend the conditions of their functioning in post Soviet times under the development of market economy, democratization of leisure and changes in consumer preferences (...) influence their economic results. Could Russian theaters, museums and concert organizations be self- sufficient in market economy established in Russian in 1991-2010?The set up task determined the object of the study and the statistical data to be used-40 years time series performance indicators that include equal time intervals-1971-1990 for performing arts organizations and 1991-2010-for theaters, concert organizations and museums. The specifics of calculations presented in the article result from the very approach to the testing of cost disease. Its essence is to reveal the symptoms of this disease in art organizations taken as an element of economy as a whole rather than only as a part of cultural activities. Accordingly a new method of diagnostics of the cost disease is suggested that is based on development of specific indexes measuring the lag of labor productivity, advancing dynamics of wages and priority growth in prices for tickets in relation to the corresponding indexes of macroeconomic dynamics as well as determination of cost disease consequences-the deficit of income of providers of cultural goods. The implementation of such an approach allowed to construct three-dimensional space which coordinates describe the dynamics of performance results of art organizations. (shrink)

The paper presents the second part of the study of “sponsored goods” in the cultural sector. It describes economic activities of theaters, concert organizations and museums in three dimensional index space coordinate axes being the lag of labor productivity, faster growth of salaries and tickets prices in relation to the corresponding macroeconomic indices. The methodology of constructing such indexes and statistical data used for this purpose are described in the first article published under the title “Symptoms and consequences of Baumol’s (...) cost disease in cultural sector: an econometric study of “sponsored goods”. The aim of the present article is to construct and analyse econometric model of cost disease based on statistical data on activities of Russian theaters, concert organizations and museums for the period of 1994-2010. The regression analysis based on structural model that reflects theoretically predictable links was chosen as a method of study. Such links include first, influence on cost growth of lag of labour productivity in arts organisations and parallel trend in salaries. Second, dependence of increase of income of such organizations on dynamics of labour productivity and ticket prices, third, balanced equation - product of equilibrium conditions for sponsored goods that describes the interrelation between costs of production, prices and budget subsidies. The calculations made it possible to construct basic and modified econometric models that establish statistical correlations between income deficit and three regressors, namely indexes of labour productivity, salaries and ticket prices. As a result of this model the article presents projections of regression relation of income deficit on «expenditures plane», «income plane» and «economic results plane». Theequations derived allow to conclude that there is a statistically significant income deficit negative elasticity by labour productivity index, positive elasticity by salaries index and ticket price index, as well as rising dynamics of Russian performing arts organization income deficit and its compensation in the nearest future. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 42-48, January 2022.

This study explored employee perceptions of participation in a corporate-sponsored volunteer initiative. Drawing on both questionnaire and focus group data, this study reaffirms the importance of altruistic concerns as a key driver for employee involvement in corporatesponsored volunteering. Characteristics of the volunteering activity also emerged as important determinants of employee's initial engagement and ongoing motivation for involvement in corporate-sponsored volunteering. In the same way that models of work design point to the value of enriched jobs, we see that there is (...) scope to consider how corporate-sponsored volunteer programmes can be enriched so that employees have satisfying experiences and are more likely to participate. Enhancing perceptions of task significance and meaningfulness and incorporating relational elements into the volunteer activity seem to be especially critical in this regard. (shrink)

There is an old saw in health policy that everyone wants health care that is good, fast, and cheap — but it’s impossible to have more than two of these at one time.A similar bit of folk wisdom seems intuitively true for the development and testing of new pharmaceutical products. The public is in a bind. We want breakthrough drugs, and fast. But we also want these drugs to be affordable, thoroughly tested, safe, and effective. It seems we can’t have (...) it all.In this paper, we will not claim that one can have it all — but that we can do far better than we are at present. First, we review extensive data on contemporary problems in the design, conduct, and analysis of industry-sponsored clinical trials. Finding major issues that have been solidly documented over more than a decade, we provide many examples of the multifarious ways in which industry-funded trials have been manipulated to raise the likelihood of producing industry-friendly results. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the role the Dutch gymnasium continues to play in the institutional maintenance of educational inequality. To that end we examine the relational and spatial features of state-sponsored elite education in the Dutch system: the unique identity the gymnasium seeks to cultivate; its value to its consumers; its geographic significance; and its market position amidst a growing array of other selective forms of schooling. We argue that there is a strong correlation between a higher social class (...) background and the concern to transmit one’s cultural habitus. We further speculate on the moral implications of state-sponsored elite education, both as it concerns the specific role of the gymnasium in the reproduction of social inequality as well as the curious tendency among its supporters to rationalise the necessity of its existence. (shrink)

The vast number of high quality corporate image and advocacy films, combined with the many other instruments of persuasion and control by corporations, powerfully direct the attitudes of the populace. In the absence of equal access, the best protection against deception from any powerful institution is skepticism — minds trained in critical thinking. But technically proficient, expensive films (costing from $50,00 to $600,000) encourage credulity instead of thought. The schools should train young people, therefore, how to resist corporate film propaganda (...) by teaching them the kinds of questions to ask. An analysis of Chesebrough-Pond Corporation's Family offers an effective method through combining traditional rhetorical awareness of the speaker in a communication, knowledge of informal fallacies, the National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Doublespeak's intensify/downplay approach, and Richard Ohmann's method in Doublespeak and Ideology in Ads. (shrink)

Many consumers fail to identify online sponsored content as advertising. This is an ethical problem because consumers need to know when they are exposed to advertising so they can raise counterargu...

State governments provide preprinted advance directive forms to the general public. However, many adults in the United States (US) lack the skills necessary to read and comprehend health care-related materials. In this study, we sought to determine the readability of state government-sponsored advance directive forms.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fallout from Government-Sponsored Radiation ResearchCarol Mason Spicer (bio)On December 28, 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary publicly appealed to both the executive and legislative branches of the United States Government to consider compensation for individuals who were harmed by their exposure to ionizing radiation while enrolled in government-sponsored studies conducted between 1940 and the early 1970s.1 The call for compensation was issued three weeks after Secretary O'Leary disclosed that (...) radiation experiments involving humans, sometimes without their consent, had occurred under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a forerunner of the Department of Energy (DOE). Secretary O'Leary directed her department to investigate the nature and extent of the experiments, report on their medical and ethical acceptability, and locate the research subjects or their families.Background to the Federal Advisory CommitteeDespite the fact that the existence of many government-sponsored radiation experiments was not a secret—much of the research was reported at the time in scientific journals, and in 1986, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) conducted congressional hearings on such radiation research—Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the AEC experiments and her call for compensation made the experiments common knowledge and sparked a swift and complex governmental response involving both the executive and legislative branches.It is curious that the "radiation experiments" have garnered so much attention now, since they were virtually ignored in the wake of the 1986 hearings. Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the radiation studies grew out of a general reassessment of secrecy in government. In April 1993, the Clinton administration set out to review the system of government secrecy that evolved during the Cold War, and in May 1993, DOE began reviewing and declassifying files pertaining to nuclear weapons research. When Dan Reicher, a top aide to Secretary O'Leary, informed her in November of the impending publication of an Albuquerque Tribune investigative report (Welsome 1993) on an experiment conducted between 1945 and 1947 in which 18 subjects were injected with plutonium, [End Page 147] the topic of questionable research involving the exposure of human subjects to radiation was added to the DOE list of information to be disclosed. At the time, it was thought to be but one small part of a massive quantity of DOE information to be made public.As part of its effort to investigate the radiation experiments, DOE established a toll-free telephone hot line for individuals who thought they might have been the subjects of radiation exposure experiments. The hot line, originally staffed by three people to handle the anticipated few dozen calls per day, received more than 2,000 calls in the first week. By early January the hot line was flooded with 6,000 to 10,000 calls daily, and its staff had increased more than ten-fold. Although many of the calls were deemed not to be candidates for further investigation, the extent of the radiation-related experiments, sponsored not only by AEC, but also by the military and other government departments and agencies, took officials by surprise.On December 30, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration all announced that they were initiating thorough reviews of their files to determine the extent and nature of any radiation experiments conducted under their auspices.2 In January, the CIA and the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health, followed suit.The White House publicly entered the arena in late December announcing that it would hold a meeting on January 3, 1994, to help coordinate the government's investigative effort. At the same time, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) called for a mid-January congressional hearing to investigate experiments conducted between 1946 and 1956 in which mentally retarded boys at the Fernald State School in Massachusetts were fed radioactive iron supplements or milk containing radioactive calcium to enable researchers to trace the absorption of those nutrients. Senator Kennedy's hearing, conducted by the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, was the first of a number of congressional hearings held earlier this year to investigate the... (shrink)

Based on the emerging argument that understandings of digital content comprising both editorial and advertising components require alternative cultures for critical inquiry sufficiently sensitive t...

Regulating clinical trials for testing new drugs is fraught with risk. Misregulation can slow development of innovative and useful new drugs, but in other ways misregulation can foster trials that are inefficient and unethical, driven by commercial rather than scientific ends, and that can harm patients. In this paper, we argue not for more but for better regulation, based on the goal of rapidly producing innovative and safe products that represent significant advances in medical care. Data on industry-funded, late-stage clinical (...) trials demonstrate an urgent need for dramatic changes in how these trials are designed, conducted, and analyzed. On the one hand, current patent rules can dissuade development of innovative new products with smaller markets and press trial designers to create positive results too rapidly. But at the same time, numerous studies show that when the pharmaceutical industry sponsors clinical trials, the results are systematically biased in favor of the sponsor's product, often to the detriment of patients and the public. The reasons for this bias are both complex and unavoidable, and the ways in which clinical trial design, conduct, and reporting can be inappropriately influenced are so varied and nuanced, that efforts to manage this conflict of interest and prevent harms are inevitably unsuccessful. Instead, we conclude such conflict should be avoided and a strong firewall should exist between drug developers and the final stages of clinical testing in humans. All financial support for phase III clinical trials should pass through a public-private partnership organization — perhaps tied to a broader clinical effectiveness research enterprise — which would be charged with designing, funding, and monitoring late-stage human clinical trials of new pharmaceutical products. (shrink)

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) comprise a powerful organizational sector that has been criticized for its lack of accountability to governments and their citizens. These organizations are established to serve the public as a whole by targeting the needs of particular groups or fulfilling specific functions. Often they use practices adopted from the business sector, and sometimes they enter the marketplace as profitmaking enterprises. In light of the contribution of GSE Fannie Mae to the 2008 world economic (...) crisis, the impact of this sector on effective democratic government bears further examination. In this article, I present a systems model that suggests how researchers might comprehensively assess the accountability of organizations in this sector, here termed the "gray sector," with respect to their government missions. I focus on four systems dimensions: mission, organizational design, organizational outcomes, and the information feedback process. Organizational design and the nature of the sector population are cited as emerging issues of particular importance. (shrink)

Projects may exist in many forms, depending on the purpose and organisational context. Irrespective of the type and nature, however, the effective management of any project requires a high degree of commitment by the project members to the accomplishment of project objectives. The high degree of reliance on external international funding makes project management in non-profit organisations of developing societies a challenging task. The marriage of two entirely different sets of values and philosophical orientations creates an invisible tensile force, impacting (...) the different stages of the project life cycle. The present paper, which is exploratory in nature, broadly aims to study the impact of sponsors’ values on the different project-management activities, including both the planning and the implementation stages of the project. The research involves conceptualisation of the different significant issues in effective project management. The analysis of the identified issues is first made on the basis of the experience of the selected stakeholders in Tanzanian non-profit organisations. The analysis is further linked to the selected context-specific contemporary philosophical thoughts affecting the socio-cultural values in the region. The analysis shows that the variation in the values of project owners and stakeholders is one of the major challenges in the effective implementation of a project in the given context. The study is novel in its approach and raises some fundamental issues arising due to the different philosophical orientations and value-sets of the different partner-project organisations. It is expected that the study will stimulate further academic debate on the broader theme of ‘values, philosophy and project management’. The study is also likely to contribute to knowledge development in the subject area of management in general and practical management philosophy in particular. (shrink)

Proceedings of the National Seminar on the Philosophy of Ramanuja, sponsored by ICPR, New Delhi during 4-6 April, 2016.

In their target article, Friesen et al. (2023) offer recommendations primarily aimed at IRBs for reaching a better balance in the ongoing challenge of the protection-inclusion dilemma. The authors...

The article deals with trust in applied social science research in the light of applied researchers’ increased dependence on project funding. Taking Norway as a case study it shows how the societal organization of research funding has implications for scientific freedom and ultimately for the confidence we have in research. The article gives an account of various ways the sponsors can influence on applied social science research and discusses the legitimacy of different limitations on scientific freedom. The article concludes with (...) proposals for how the challenges to scientific freedom posed by the research funding framework can be addressed structurally, as well as on the level of the research community. (shrink)

Imagine a study in which HIV-infected pregnant women are given antiretroviral treatment to determine how effectively it will prevent HIV transmission during childbirth. Each mother’s involvement in this study ends with the birth of her child, at which time her access to antiretrovirals provided by the study also ceases. At the outset of the study, the investigator and sponsor agree that after the child’s birth, they will refer mothers who require treatment for their HIV to a national program that (...) provides antiretroviral treatment and care. Assuming the Institutional Review Board raises no objections to this plan, should the research team consider their ethical obligations to participants fulfilled? If the investigator and sponsor were to consult the Common Rule, they would find little to suggest that there are any further ethical issues to address. (shrink)

The Common Rule creates a division of moral labor in research. It implies that investigators and sponsors can outsource their ethical obligations to IRBs and participants, thereby fostering a culture of compliance, rather than one of responsibility. The proposed revisions to the Common Rule are likely to exacerbate this problem. To harness the expressive power of the law, I propose the Common Rule be revised to include the ethical responsibilities of investigators and sponsors.

This survey has been designed as a multinationalcollaboration to collect data from several countries focusing ondeveloping countries. The main purpose was to elaborate thefunctions of ethics committees regarding externally-sponsoredresearch . In March 2004 a total of 89 open-endedquestionnaires were sent to ethics review committees inmedical schools, medical research institutes and hospitalsaffiliated to the public and private medical universities inJapan.Twenty two ECs replied , and among them five ECshad reviewed eleven ESR proposals in 2002-3. Five of thoseESR proposals have been approved (...) and four proposals havebeen approved after some revisions. Two proposals weredeferred but not resumed. In their review, respondents weremore concerned about “individual consent” than “communityconsent”. Post-trial access to effective interventions was not areal concern. As for “Standard of care”, seven ECs replied thatthey review the ESR proposal based on the internationalstandards and four based on the local standards. WhetherESR proposal is matched with the national health prioritieswas not a great concern. Respondents expressed theirconcern about socio-cultural issues.Ethics in research especially dealing with externallysponsoredresearch is a relatively new subject and underdevelopment in Japan. Although Japan is not a developingcountry, in order to protect individual human subjects and localcommunity, capacity building in ethics review especially inresearch collaboration with other developed and developingcountries is crucial and it has to be included in ethics inresearch programs through out the country. (shrink)

Some participants will get HIV-infected in HIV prevention trials, despite risk reduction measures. The subsequent treatment responsibilities of sponsor-investigators have been widely debated, especially where access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is not available. In this paper, we explore two accounts of beneficence to establish whether they can shed light on sponsor-investigator responsibilities. We find the notion of general beneficence helpful insofar as it clarifies that some beneficent actions will be obligatory where they can be dispensed without scuppering the (...) trial. We find the notion of specific beneficence helpful insofar as it directs investigators to attend to the needs of trial participants; however the range of interventions that could be provided remains unhelpfully broad. We then examine accounts of the investigator-participant relationship to narrow the range of interventions that investigators should provide, concluding that health-care, and HIV infection, are appropriate foci. We conclude that when investigators are able to meet the ART needs of their participants (e.g. referral, assisted referral or direct provision) without sacrificing trial quality, they must do so. However, there is little of this explicit direction to be found in the account of specific beneficence itself, but rather it is found in accounts of the relationship that are compatible with beneficence. (shrink)

Calls for the inclusion of women in clinical trials raise the obvious question: why have sponsors excluded them? The answer most often given is one tragically evocative word: Thalidomide. The tragedies of the children born with seal limbs because their mothers took this over-the-counter sleeping pill and cure for morning sickness showed that, contrary to previous perceptions, the placenta could not be depended upon to filter out toxins before they reached the fetus. The specter of birth defects spawned sponsors’ fears (...) of a variety of catastrophes which contributed to closing the doors of clinical trials for women.This paper will not argue that the possibility of birth defects arising from the ingestion of an experimental drug does not exist. Sadly, scientists do not yet have the ability to predict which drugs will cause birth defects. Rather, it will argue that case law does not provide a basis for sponsor liability when a woman gives informed consent and the regulations governing clinical trials are followed. (shrink)

Private industry funds more than half of all medical research in the United States. While industry involvement in research has benefits, it can also create conflicts of interest. The most common policies adopted to address conflict of interest in medical research are focused primarily on the ways in which industry sponsorship may undermine a clinician’s judgment regarding patient care. Insufficient attention has been given to the ways in which industry sponsorship may undermine judgment relative to the goal of scientific integrity (...) in research. The most common conflict of interest policies do not adequately address this problem. Disclosure policies alone will not remove or ameliorate all conflicts. Further, severing or monitoring ties between clinicians and industries will not adequately address the problem, since in many cases it is not the clinicians who are making the relevant research judgments. In order to address the problem of conflict of interest inindustry-sponsored research, fundamental changes in strategy and practice must be adopted which either remove the power to make research decisions from industry employees, or increase the review of those decisions by independent investigators. (shrink)