Background Social media and Internet technologies present several emerging and ill-explored issues for a modern healthcare workforce. One issue is patient-targeted Googling, which involves a healthcare professional using a social networking site or publicly available search engine to find patient information online. The study’s aim was to address a deficit in data and knowledge regarding PTG, and to investigate medical student use of SNSs due to a close association with PTG. Method The authors surveyed final year medical students at the (...) Otago Medical School, University of Otago in January 2016. A subset completed focus groups that were analysed using thematic analysis to identify key themes relating to students’ attitudes towards PTG, and reasons why they might engage in PTG. Results Fifty-four students completed the survey, which showed that PTG was uncommon. Attitudes were varied and context dependent. Most participants saw problems with PTG and favoured more explicit guidance on the issue. SNS usage was high ; participants were concerned by the content of their SNS profiles and who they were connecting with online. Participants showing high SNS use were 1.83 times more likely to have conducted PTG than lower use groups. Conclusions The diverse attitudes uncovered in this study indicated that teaching or guidelines could be useful to healthcare professionals considering PTG. Though ethically problematic, PTG may be important to patient care and safety. The decision to conduct PTG should be made with consideration of ethical principles and the intended use of the information. (shrink)

Usually viewed as the premier apologist for laissez-faire capitalism, Smith is seen in this new interpretation within the context of an earlier tradition that condemned the British aristocracy for relinquishing its moral obligation to promote the public good in favor of an unceasing pursuit of private gain. Through separate chapters on Mandeville, Bolingbroke, and Hume, Gallagher shows that Smith echoed civic humanist sermons against the avaricious inclinations of the nobles who profited most from commercial expansion. Unlike earlier critics, however, (...) Smith concluded that the most prudent response to aristocratic corruption was not to hold ministers, kings, and social notables to higher standards but to limit their access to political power. _The Rule of the Rich?_ accordingly shows that the case for limited government made in _The Wealth of Nations_ was not a defense of individual liberty so much as a concession to the apparent incompetence of the British upper class. (shrink)

Usually viewed as the premier apologist for laissez-faire capitalism, Smith is seen in this new interpretation within the context of an earlier tradition that condemned the British aristocracy for relinquishing its moral obligation to promote the public good in favor of an unceasing pursuit of private gain. Through separate chapters on Mandeville, Bolingbroke, and Hume, Gallagher shows that Smith echoed civic humanist sermons against the avaricious inclinations of the nobles who profited most from commercial expansion. Unlike earlier critics, however, (...) Smith concluded that the most prudent response to aristocratic corruption was not to hold ministers, kings, and social notables to higher standards but to limit their access to political power. _The Rule of the Rich?_ accordingly shows that the case for limited government made in _The Wealth of Nations_ was not a defense of individual liberty so much as a concession to the apparent incompetence of the British upper class. (shrink)

To characterize human emotions, researchers have increasingly utilized Automatic Facial Expression Analysis (AFEA), which automates the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and translates the facial muscular positioning into the basic universal emotions. There is broad interest in the application of FACS for assessing consumer expressions as an indication of emotions to consumer product-stimuli. However, the translation of FACS to characterization of emotions is elusive in the literature. The aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of how FACS (...) has been used to investigate human emotional behavior to consumer product-based stimuli. The search was limited to studies published in English after 1978, conducted on humans, using FACS or its action units to investigate affect, where emotional response is elicited by consumer product-based stimuli evoking at least one of the five senses. The search resulted in an initial total of 1,935 records, of which 55 studies were extracted and categorized based on the outcomes of interest including (i) method of FACS implementation; (ii) purpose of study; (iii) consumer product-based stimuli used; and (iv) measures of affect validation. Most studies implemented FACS manually (73%) to develop products and/or software (20%) and used consumer product-based stimuli that had known and/or defined capacity to evoke a particular affective response, such as films and/or movie clips (20%); minimal attention was paid to consumer products with low levels of emotional competence or with unknown affective impact. The vast majority of studies (53%) did not validate FACS-determined affect and, of the validation measures that were used, most tended to be discontinuous in nature and only captured affect as it holistically related to an experience. This review illuminated some inconsistencies in how FACS is carried out as well as how emotional response is inferred from facial muscle activation. This may prompt researchers to consider measuring the total consumer experience by employing a variety of methodologies in addition to FACS and its emotion-based interpretation guide. Such strategies may better conceptualize consumers' experience with products of low, unknown, and/or undefined capacity to evoke an affective response such as product prototypes, line extensions, etc. (shrink)

Social media and Internet technologies present several emerging and ill-explored issues for a modern healthcare workforce. One issue is patient-targeted Googling, which involves a healthcare professional using a social networking site or publicly available search engine to find patient information online. The study’s aim was to address a deficit in data and knowledge regarding PTG, and to investigate medical student use of SNSs due to a close association with PTG. The authors surveyed final year medical students at the Otago Medical (...) School, University of Otago in January 2016. A subset completed focus groups that were analysed using thematic analysis to identify key themes relating to students’ attitudes towards PTG, and reasons why they might engage in PTG. Fifty-four students completed the survey, which showed that PTG was uncommon. Attitudes were varied and context dependent. Most participants saw problems with PTG and favoured more explicit guidance on the issue. SNS usage was high ; participants were concerned by the content of their SNS profiles and who they were connecting with online. Participants showing high SNS use were 1.83 times more likely to have conducted PTG than lower use groups. The diverse attitudes uncovered in this study indicated that teaching or guidelines could be useful to healthcare professionals considering PTG. Though ethically problematic, PTG may be important to patient care and safety. The decision to conduct PTG should be made with consideration of ethical principles and the intended use of the information. (shrink)

Background Dynamic consent has been proposed as a process through which participants and patients can gain more control over how their data and samples, donated for biomedical research, are used, resulting in greater trust in researchers. It is also a way to respond to evolving data protection frameworks and new legislation. Others argue that the broad consent currently used in biobank research is ethically robust. Little empirical research with cohort study participants has been published. This research investigated the participants’ opinions (...) of adding a dynamic consent interface to their existing study. Methods Adult participants in the Extended Cohort for E-health, Environment and DNA longitudinal cohort study who are members of the EXCEED Public and Participant Engagement Group were recruited. Four focus groups were conducted and analysed for thematic content. Discussion topics were derived from a review of the current literature on dynamic consent. Results Participants were in favour of many aspects of a dynamic consent interface, such as being able to update their information, add additional data to their records and choose withdrawal options. They were supportive provided it was simple to use and not intrusive. Participants expressed a markedly high level of trust in the study and its investigators and were unanimously happy with their current participation. No strong support was found for adding a dynamic consent interface to EXCEED. Conclusions Trust in the study researchers was the strongest theme found. Openness and good data security were needed to retain their trust. While happy to discuss dynamic consent, participants were satisfied with the current study arrangements. There were indications that changing the study might unnecessarily disturb their trust. This raised the question of whether there are contexts where dynamic consent is more appropriate than others. This study was limited by the small number of participants who were committed to the study and biased towards it. More research is needed to fully understand the potential impact of adding a dynamic consent interface to an existing cohort study. (shrink)

Public bioethics bodies are used internationally as institutions with the declared aims of facilitating societal debate and providing policy advice in certain areas of scientific inquiry raising questions of values and legitimate science. In the United States, bioethical experts in these institutions use the language of consensus building to justify and define the outcome of the enterprise. However, the implications of public bioethics at science-policy boundaries are underexamined. Political interest in such bodies continues while their influence on societal consensus, public (...) debate, and science policy remains ambiguous. This article presents a theoretical discussion of public bioethics bodies as boundary organizations and examines them in terms of relationship to the moral and cognitive authority of science and other forms of expertise, mechanisms for public participation in controversial science policy, and the deployment of consensus models. The theoretical discussion is examined in the case of the U.S. Human Embryo Research Panel. (shrink)

I offer a novel interdisciplinary approach to understanding the communicative task of listening, which is under-theorised compared to its more conspicuous counterpart, speech. By correlating a Rylean view of mental actions with a virtue ethical framework, I show listeners’ internal activity as a morally relevant feature of how they treat people. The listener employs a policy of responsiveness in managing the extent to which they allow a speaker's voice to be centred within their more effortful, engaged attention. A just listener's (...) policy of responsiveness avoids unwarrantedly dismissing speakers’ messages on the basis of peripheral attention alone. (shrink)

Re-consent in research, the asking for a new consent if there is a change in protocol or to confirm the expectations of participants in case of change, is an under-explored issue. There is little clarity as to what changes should trigger re-consent and what impact a re-consent exercise has on participants and the research project. This article examines applicable policy statements and literature for the prevailing arguments for and against re-consent in relation to longitudinal cohort studies, tissue banks and biobanks. (...) Examples of re-consent exercises are presented, triggers and non-triggers for re-consent discussed and the conflicting attitudes of commentators, participants and researchers highlighted. We acknowledge current practice and argue for a greater emphasis on ‘responsive autonomy,’ that goes beyond a one-time consent and encourages greater communication between the parties involved. A balance is needed between respecting participants' wishes on how they want their data and samples used and enabling effective research to proceed. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, Henry Knowles Beecher published his essay on clinical research ethics in the New England Journal of Medicine. The culmination of more than a decade and a half’s rumination and reflection on the use of patients and “captive populations” in research, Beecher’s 1966 article understandably casts a large shadow in American bioethics. In 1976, the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences established the Henry Knowles Beecher Award for Contributions to Ethics and the Life Sciences and named (...) the Harvard professor as the first recipient of the Award. “It is unusual for a researcher,” Daniel Callahan explained, on behalf of the Board of Directors of the... (shrink)

This monograph consists of five parts: (1) introductory material including a conference overview; (2) papers presented at an international symposium on the topic of ethical issues in disability and rehabilitation as a section of the Annual Conference of the Society for Disability Studies; (3) responses to the symposium, prepared by four of the participants; (4) selected additional papers which offer views from perspectives or cultures not represented at the Denver conference; and (5) an annotated international bibliography. Representatives from 10 countries (...) discussed ethical issues and decision making in disability and rehabilitation. Conference papers include: "Genetic Engineering--The New Eugenics? Evolving Medical Attitudes towards the Quality of Life" (Hugh Gallagher);"Description of the Decision-Making Project" (Daryl Evans); "Treatment and Nontreatment Decisions with Respect to Extremely Premature, Very Low Birthweight Infants (500-750g)" (Ernle Young); "Allocation of Resources and Distributive Justice" (John Mather); "Quality Assurance as an Aid to Ethical Decision Making in Disability Management: Lessons from Recent Ethical Issues Involving Disadvantaged Groups in New Zealand" (Peter Gow); "Disability and Ethical Issues: A Point of View from the Netherlands" (Yolan Koster-Dreese); "Who Shall Live or How Shall They Live? Consumer and Professional Perspectives on Treatment/Non-Treatment Decisions" (Joseph Kaufert and Patricia Kaufert); and "Debates across Social Movements on Reproductive Technologies, Genetic Engineering, and Eugenics" (Theresia Degener). Conference commentaries include: "The Meeting of Disability and Bioethics: A Beginning Rapprochement" (Adrienne Asch); "A Plea for More Dialogue: Commentary on Ethics Conference" (Robert Slater); "Healing Our Wounds" (Martha Lentz Walker); "Theories and Values: Ethics and Contrasting Perspectives on Disability" (Harlan Hahn); and "Current Example of Ethical Dilemma" (Susan Lacetti). Selected additional papers include: "High-tech Medicine Is Basic Care" (Frederick Abrams); "Prevention of Disabilities as a Medical Question" (G. Schioler); "The Ethics of Disability Prevention: A Parent's Point of View" (Mrs. J. Baker); "A Reference Matrix for Issues of Life and Personhood" (Mike Miles); "Nazi Scientists and Ethics of Today" (Isabel Wilkerson); "Ethical and Policy Issues in Rehabilitation Medicine (Hastings Center Report)" (Arthur Caplan et al.); and "Differing Approaches to Prevention of Disability and Treatment of Impaired Infants Creates Controversies Worldwide" (Barbara Duncan). (JDD). (shrink)

BackgroundGenealogical research and ancestry testing are popular recreational activities but little is known about the impact of the use of these services on clients’ biological and social families. Ancestry databases are being enriched with self-reported data and data from deoxyribonucleic acid analyses, but also are being linked to other direct-to-consumer genetic testing and research databases. As both family history data and DNA can provide information on more than just the individual, we asked whether companies, as a part of the consent (...) process, were informing clients, and through them clients’ relatives, of the potential implications of the use and linkage of their personal data.MethodsWe used content analysis to analyse publically-available consent and informational materials provided to potential clients of ancestry and direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies to determine what consent is required, what risks associated with participation were highlighted, and whether the consent or notification of third parties was suggested or required.ResultsWe identified four categories of companies providing: 1) services based only on self-reported data, such as personal or family history; 2) services based only on DNA provided by the client; 3) services using both; and 4) services using both that also have a research component. The amount of information provided on the potential issues varied significantly across the categories of companies. ‘Traditional’ ancestry companies showed the greatest awareness of the implications for family members, while companies only asking for DNA focused solely on the client. While in some cases companies included text recommending clients inform their relatives, showing they recognised the issues, often it was located within lengthy terms and conditions or privacy statements that may not be read by potential clients.ConclusionsWe recommend that companies should make it clearer that clients should inform third parties about their plans to participate, that third parties’ data will be provided to companies, and that that data will be linked to other databases, thus raising privacy and issues on use of data. We also suggest investigating whether a ‘generational consent’ should be created that would include more than just the individual in decisions about participating in genetic investigations. (shrink)

Past studies have shown that women’s volunteer work benefits communities but that women themselves tend to minimize their efforts. Most of these studies, however, have been limited to women volunteering in suburban and urban contexts. Drawing on a study of women volunteers in rural Iowa, the authors find that women frame their volunteer experiences in three ways: as an expression of their maternal nature, as a way to socialize, and as a contribution to the local economy. The authors’ findings depart (...) from past research in that the women in their sample do not downplay the importance of their volunteer work; rather, they recognize the importance of their unpaid labor for the social and economic vitality of the community. The authors argue this recognition stems from the particular context in which their volunteerism takes place, namely, in a devastated rural economy in which future economic potential rests on women’s hospitality work. (shrink)

Households around the world have shifted structurally from a breadwinner/homemaker model to dual-income earning arrangements. What this trend means for marital power has been a contested issue among scholars. Most studies suggest that household power is determined by a complex interplay between each spouse's economic contributions to the household and existing gender norms. Few scholars, however, have examined how this interplay is worked out under particular political-economic conditions. Responding to the dearth of research on the developing world in this area, (...) the author examines a community in Costa Rica where neo-liberal economic restructuring has led to an increase in women's informal work and a decrease in men's income-earning power. Drawing from ethnographic and interview data on married life in Costa Rica, the author analyzes the effect that these trends have on marital power and the division of household labor. The author argues that changing economic circumstances may blur the traditional gender boundaries in Costa Rican households but they do not necessarily erase them. (shrink)

Contemporary social philosophy is paying increasing attention to the politics of language use, from social epistemology and questions of testimonial injustice to political worries about freedom of expression, silencing, and hate speech. We argue about how to reduce the harms arising from such injustices, but to solve these debates, we need a framework which lets us track how social change unfolds, and which lets us drive such changes toward more just outcomes. I argue that my Discourse Ecology Model serves this (...) role, using a linguistically-informed model of language change to explicate the relationships between language users and their discursive, social, and political environments. With the Discourse Ecology Model in place, I follow the history of the rise and spread of veganism to see how linguistic habits and social habits interface with each other, and how we can cultivate changes in our environment that lead to widespread social change. (shrink)

A live issue in anthropology and development studies, humanism is not typically addressed by analytic philosophers. Arguing for humanism as a view about truths, Humanism and Embodiment insists that disembodied reason, not religion, should be the target of secularists promoting freedom of enquiry and human community. Susan Babbitt's original study presents humanism as a meta-ethical view, paralleling naturalistic realism in recent analytic epistemology and philosophy of science. Considering the nature of knowledge, particularly the radical contingency of knowledge claims upon (...) causal mechanisms, religious thinkers like Thomas Merton and Ivan Illich offer more scientific conceptions of practical deliberation than are offered by some non-religious ethicists. Drawing on philosophical sources such as Marxism, Buddhism and Christianity, this original study considers implications of an embodied conception of reason, revealing philosophical, practical and political implications. (shrink)

This book makes the connection between early Buddhism and nature. Early Buddhism was a system of thinking which applied the universal laws of nature to human beings. It was not a religion. It was a comprehensive worldview. But after the first 400-500 years, it was slowly lost.

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams.Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is (...) necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those rare books that fruitfully combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world. It is both an object lesson in reaching across academic barriers and a demonstration of how the best of feminist philosophy can be in conversation with the best of “mainstream” philosophy—as well as affect the lives of real people. (shrink)

No one denies that people adapt what they say and how they interpret what is said to them, depending on their interactive partners. What is controversial is when and how they do so. Several psycholinguistics research programs have found what appear to be failures to adapt to partners in the early moments of processing and have used this evidence to argue for modularity in the language processing architecture, claiming that the system cannot take into account a partner’s distinct needs or (...) knowledge early in processing. We review the evidence for both early and delayed partner‐specific adaptations, and we identify some challenges and difficulties with interpreting this evidence. We then discuss new analyses from a previously published referential communication experiment (Metzing & Brennan, 2003) demonstrating that partner‐specific effects need not occur late in processing. In contrast to Pickering and Garrod (2004) and Keysar, Barr, and Horton (1998b), we conclude that there is no good evidence that early processing has to be be “egocentric,”“dumb,” or encapsulated from social knowledge or common ground, but that under some circumstances, such as when one partner has made an attribution about another’s knowledge or needs, processing can be nimble enough to adapt quite early to a perspective different from one’s own. (shrink)

By definitively establishing that racism has broad implications for how the entire field of philosophy is practiced -- and by whom -- this powerful and ...

In this paper we consider the potential role of metarepresentation—the representation of another representation, or as commonly considered within cognitive science, the mental representation of another individual's knowledge and beliefs—in mediating definite reference and common ground in conversation. Using dialogues from a referential communication study in which speakers conversed in succession with two different addressees, we highlight ways in which interlocutors work together to successfully refer to objects, and achieve shared conceptualizations. We briefly review accounts of how such shared conceptualizations (...) could be represented in memory, from simple associations between label and referent, to “triple co-presence” representations that track interlocutors in an episode of referring, to more elaborate metarepresentations that invoke theory of mind, mutual knowledge, or a model of a conversational partner. We consider how some forms of metarepresentation, once created and activated, could account for definite reference in conversation by appealing to ordinary processes in memory. We conclude that any representations that capture information about others' perspectives are likely to be relatively simple and subject to the same kinds of constraints on attention and memory that influence other kinds of cognitive representations. (shrink)

Where research was once strictly confined to one laboratory or office, investigators now widely share and compare their plans, analyses, and results. With the advent of genomic knowledge, researchers are seeking to understand the genetics and genomics of complex human disease. They are combining their efforts into international consortia in order to take on problems that face individuals around the world, such as cancer and malaria — problems that are too large to solve by one country alone. These consortia bring (...) together diverse research groups from different parts of the world to focus on a common goal. Their projects may all focus on one disease or condition, but examine it from different perspectives and share the newly gained information with each other and the wider scientific community. (shrink)

Susan Babbitt dissects a common moral perspective for judging importance which she calls 'moral imagination.' In order to explain ourselves, and to recognize in others, what we often already perceive intuitively to be right or good, we instinctively create a story as a framework. She argues that we intentionally create stories which appear artless or chaotic, something capable of imperfection. This allows the story-maker to eventually deviate if he or she chooses, without a loss of hope, even if that (...) direction and goal may not yet be able to be fully articulated or defended. (shrink)

METCO, America’s longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, has for 34 years bused black children from Boston’s city neighborhoods to predominantly white suburban schools. In contrast to the infamous violence and rage of forced school busing within the city in the 1970s, METCO has quietly and calmly promoted school integration. How has this program affected the lives of its graduates? Would they choose to participate if they had it to do over again? Would they place their own children on the bus (...) to suburbia? Sixty-five METCO graduates vividly recall their own stories in this revealing book. Susan E. Eaton interviewed program participants who are now adults, asking them to assess the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines on their way to school. Their answers poignantly show that this type of racial integration is not easy—they struggled to negotiate both black and white worlds, often feeling fully accepted in neither. Even so, nearly all the participants believe the long-term gains outweighed the costs and would choose a similar program for their own children—though not without conditions and apprehensions. Even as courts and policymakers today are forcing the abandonment of desegregation, educators warn that students are better prepared in schools that reflect our national diversity. This book offers an accessible and moving account of a rare program that, despite serious challenges, provides a practical remedy for the persistent inequalities in American education. (shrink)