Medical tourism is a practice, whereby individuals travel across national borders with the intention of receiving medical care. Medical tourists are motivated to travel abroad by a number of factors, including the affordability of care abroad, access to treatments not available at home, and wait times for care at home. In this article, we share the findings of interviews conducted with 32 Canadian medical tourists with the aim of developing a better understanding of medical tourism, the ethical issues it raises (...) for public health within Canada and other source countries for medical tourists, and to identify research gaps and policy responses to this practice. While patient and academic perspectives overlap in several regards, we suggest areas in which academic consideration of the ethical issues raised by medical tourism can be informed by patient perspectives. (shrink)

Background: Medical tourism involves patients travelling internationally to receive medical services. This practice raises a range of ethical issues, including potential harms to the patient's home and destination country and risks to the patient's own health. Medical tourists often engage the services of a facilitator who may book travel and accommodation and link the patient with a hospital abroad. Facilitators have the potential to exacerbate or mitigate the ethical concerns associated with medical tourism, but their roles are poorly understood. -/- (...) Methods: 12 facilitators were interviewed from 10 Canadian medical tourism companies. -/- Results: Three themes were identified: facilitators' roles towards the patient, health system and medical tourism industry. Facilitators' roles towards the patient were typically described in terms of advocacy and the provision of information, but limited by facilitators' legal liability. Facilitators felt they played a positive role in the lives of their patients and the Canadian health system and served as catalysts for reform, although they noted an adversarial relationship with some Canadian physicians. Many facilitators described personally visiting medical tourism sites and forming personal relationships with surgeons abroad, but noted the need for greater regulation of their industry. -/- Conclusion: Facilitators play a substantial and evolving role in the practice of medical tourism and may be entering a period of professionalisation. Because of the key role of facilitators in determining the effects of medical tourism on patients and public health, this paper recommends a planned conversation between medical tourism stakeholders to define and shape facilitators' roles. (shrink)

One of the most important philosophical principles in contemporary natural science is the principle of the universality of evolutionary development , which was argued with much force and depth in F. Engels's The Dialectics of Nature. For the more than a century that has passed since Engels's sweeping synthesis of knowledge in the natural sciences, his revelation of the unity of the processes of evolution in inanimate and animate nature, including the inevitably and law-governed appearance of its "highest flower, the (...) thinking mind," where appropriate conditions for that appearance arise, this principle of development has assisted in the achievement of many impressive advances. The general outlines of the evolutionary process of nature, in its infinite diversity, are now emerging in ever sharper relief, although our knowledge of that process still contains many rather serious lacunae. It is significant to note that the progress of natural science leads not only to modifications but often even to radical revisions of many notions about the evolution of nature, including those that seemed unchallengeable. (shrink)

After the First Conference, the situation with regard to the relation between natural scientists and philosophers improved considerably in the sense that, as we can see, philosophers, by their work on questions of methodology, are helping natural scientists more and more, while natural scientists are giving increasing attention to the results of the work of philosophers, and are becoming interested in the philosophical conclusions following from their research and in general problems of philosophical significance.

Издание представляет результаты исследования малоизученной темы социально-экономических доктрин консерватизма. Оно отражает их развитие от времени выражения их в виде утопий, погруженных в более общие социально-философские и политические учения.

Монография является итогом многолетних исследований силлогистических теорий с точки зрения символической логики. Впервые ставится и исследуется проблема полноты множества логических констант в силлогистической теории. Для специалистов.