Bioethics is a subject far removed from the Chinese, even from many Chinese medical students and medical professionals. In-depth interviews with eighteen physicians, patients, and family members provided a deeper understanding of bioethical practices in contemporary China, especially with regard to the doctor-patient relationship (DPR) and informed consent. The Chinese model of doctor-family-patient relationship (DFPR), instead of DPR, is taken to reflect Chinese Confucian cultural commitments. An examination of the history of Chinese culture and the profession of medicine in China (...) is used to disclose the deep roots of these commitments. The author predicts that the DFPR model will further develop in China but that it will maintain its Chinese character. (shrink)

Linear regression and its variants have been widely used for classification problems. However, they usually predefine a strict binary label matrix which has no freedom to fit the samples. In addition, they cannot deal with complex real-world applications such as the case of face recognition where samples may not be linearly separable owing to varying poses, expressions, and illumination conditions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the kernel negative ε dragging linear regression method for robust classification on noised and nonlinear (...) data. First, a technique called negative ε dragging is introduced for relaxing class labels and is integrated into the LR model for classification to properly treat the class margin of conventional linear regressions for obtaining robust result. Then, the data is implicitly mapped into a high dimensional kernel space by using the nonlinear mapping determined by a kernel function to make the data more linearly separable. Finally, our obtained KNDLR method is able to partially alleviate the problem of overfitting and can perform classification well for noised and deformable data. Experimental results show that the KNDLR classification algorithm obtains greater generalization performance and leads to better robust classification decision. (shrink)

The preferences of patients who lack DMC (Decision-Making-Capacity) should have some moral weight. However, I disagree with the author’s stronger claim, which argues that two other types of DMC (bu...

Background Stretch service goals strive to motivate healthcare practitioners to maintain high quality in service provision. However, little is known about how stretch service goals trigger nurses’ unethical behavior. Research aim This study aimed to investigate the influence of stretch service goals on nurses’ unethical behavior, as well as the mediating effects of patient entitlement and nurses’ emotional dissonance. Research design A quantitative cross-sectional study is designed. Participants and research context We sourced data by conducting a time-lagged three-wave survey study (...) from March to September 2020. Random sampling was used, and data were collected from 422 nurse-patient pairs in Chinese hospitals. Bootstrapping method and structural equation modeling were employed to verify the conceptual model. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the designated authority within hospitals and ethical committees. Results Stretch service goals are not directly related to nurses’ unethical behavior. Stretch service goals can trigger nurses’ unethical behavior via patient entitlement. Patient entitlement and nurses’ emotional dissonance play a chain-mediating role between stretch service goals and nurses’ unethical behavior. Conclusions In the context of the healthcare industry, nurses may engage in unethical behavior due to the pressure of achieving stretch service goals. This study contributes to opening the “black box” of stretch service goals and nurses’ unethical behavior by exploring the chain-mediating effect of patient entitlement and nurses’ emotional dissonance. (shrink)

Driven by the theory of sustainable development, Chinese firms have gradually realized the importance of ESG disclosure. Executives play a core role in ESG decision-making, but whether and how top management team (TMT) faultlines affect ESG disclosure has yet to be systematically discussed. Based on the attention-based view and faultline theory, we select 6456 observations of 910 Chinese A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2021 as the research object to empirically test the above critical practical issues that have not been (...) fully answered. We find that TMT information-based faultlines improve firms' ESG disclosure, but TMT social category faultlines reduce firms' ESG disclosure. In addition, the internal mechanism test showed that the TMT's future-oriented attention plays a mediating role in the above relationship. Finally, we also find that institutional shareholding enhances the positive impact of the TMT's future-oriented attention on ESG disclosure. This study enriches the literature on TMT faultlines and ESG disclosure, demonstrating that the composition of the TMT and its attention allocation are important factors for promoting firms' ESG disclosure. The conclusions of this study can help firms strengthen their ESG disclosure by building efficient TMTs and provide important implications for firms to better fulfill their ESG responsibilities. (shrink)

We contribute to the literature on intentions to report wrongdoing by examining whether Chinese internal auditors make consistent judgments when an ethical dilemma is presented in English and when the same dilemma is presented in Chinese. We invoke cultural frame switching theory, and our findings, which are based on a randomized experiment using between-subjects and within-subject mixed design, support the hypothesis that Chinese internal auditors are more likely to report wrongdoing when the ethical dilemma is presented in English than when (...) it is presented in Chinese. Our results, which demonstrate that internal auditors make inconsistent ethical judgments in English and Chinese, point to language-triggered cognitive bias resulting from cultural mindsets. We suggest practical interventions and language strategies to improve audit quality. (shrink)

ExcerptOne of the most challenging aspects of the wars in Ukraine and Israel is the way in which the conflicts have been constantly shifting in form. In the first place, there is a conventional ground war between Russia and Ukraine, in which the identity and will of the two peoples are at stake. Yet Russia has used weapons supplied by Iran and North Korea, and Ukraine relies on NATO for its own supplies, indicating that this war depends on the maintenance (...) and expansion of alliances. The stability of these alliances in turn depends on a combination of Realpolitik and shared values as the glue that holds them together. This logic of alliances motivates the energy war that Russia is waging with Europe, revealing that, unbeknownst to Europe, Russian energy policy over the last decade was an early form of the war. Similarly, the threat of nuclear war also tests the resolve of NATO, forcing it to consider the values at stake in the conflict. Is the war about Ukraine’s sovereignty or the principle of nation-state sovereignty itself? Is it about human rights for Ukrainians or the entire human rights project? For Russia, is it about self-defense or a pan-Slavic identity? Is it about the protection of Russian minorities in Ukraine or the threat of Western secularization? The answers to these questions will determine the will to fight on each side and thus the length and ferocity of the war. (shrink)

A 78-year-old Chinese woman joined a clinical trial sponsored by a Pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately a serious Serious Adverse Event occurred. The sponsor paid for the cost of the medical care arising from the SAE, but refused the family’s request for compensation. The family then sued the company and the hospital in Beijing. Although the SAE was related to a complication of lower extremity angiography and not the drug itself, it was a direct consequence of participating in the trial. According Good (...) Clinical Practice, a set of regulations promulgated under Chinese law, “the sponsor should provide Insurance to those human subjects who participate in clinical trials, cover the cost of Treatment and the corresponding economic compensation for the occurrence of the harm or death associated with the trial”. The court ordered the trial sponsor to provide a translation of the company’s insurance policy, so that the court could understand the amount of compensation available to the Patient under the policy, but the sponsor never surrendered either the documentation or a translation. Consensus was never reached about the amount of compensation due to the patient through negotiation with the hospital, the company and the family. The Litigation ended after nine hearings and five long years. This chapter provides an ethical analysis of the case relative to at least three areas of Risks of Exploitation when a major, international Pharmaceutical companies sponsors clinical research in a country with an immature legal system and where Research participants have limited resources. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed social shortcomings and ethical failures, but it also revealed strengths and successes. In this perspective article, we examine and discuss one strength: the duty to care. We understand this duty in a broad sense, as more than a duty to treat individual patients who could infect health care workers. We understand it as a prima facie duty to work to provide care and promote health in the face of risks, obstacles, and inconveniences. Although at least one (...) survey suggested that health care workers would not respond to a SARS-like outbreak according to a duty to care, we give reasons to show that the response was better than expected. The reasons we discuss lead us to consider normative accounts of the duty to care based on the adoption of social roles. Then, we consider one view of the relationship between empirical claims and normative claims about the duty to care in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we draw insight from Mengzi, with an emendation from Dewey. Our perspective leaves many question to research, but one point seems clear: there will be future pandemics and the need for health care workers who respond. (shrink)

The major ethical challenges for critical care medicine in China include the high cost of patient care in the ICU, the effect of payment mechanisms on access to critical care, the fact that much more money is spent on patients who die than on ones who live, the extent to which an attempt to rescue and save a patient is made, and the great geographical disparity in distribution of critical care. The ethical problems surrounding critical care medicine bear much relation (...) to the culture, public policy and health care system in China. The essay concludes that China should allocate more resources to ordinary medical services rather than to critical care medicine. (shrink)

Based on a case that happened in 2001 in China, the author wants to show the ethical and legal issues arising from a woman's wish, which should be her basic right to have a child by assisted reproduction technology. This paper attempts to analyse if there is some relationship between bioethics and happiness, and to find if there is some reason that bioethics should provide help for those whoever need it. The case is about a woman whose husband was sentenced (...) to death, she applied to court to allow her to have a child for her husband by artificial insemination of her husband. The conclusion of paper is that there is no direct relationship between bioethics and happiness, virtue and vice of bioethics not only depends on its moral background, but also the legal system, social psychology and other social circumstances. (shrink)

ExcerptWe often have the experience of intuiting something without being able to precisely define what that intuition is. Sometimes this intuition leads to a more well-defined insight, and sometimes it might lead to some kind of action, even in the absence of clear conceptual definitions. Yet it is difficult to ascertain what kind of knowledge or awareness such intuitions consist of. What is an intuition as opposed to a defined concept of something? How seriously should we take such intuitions? Are (...) they something separate and qualitatively different than concepts? Are they just fuzzy concepts? Do they really exist at all? These are crucial questions because they lead to conclusions about the status of concepts themselves. If the alternative to clear concepts is nothing at all, then the sociopolitical corollary would be that the alternative to conceptual knowledge and the holders of such knowledge would also be nothing at all. By contrast, if intuitions are separate from concepts and real, then expert knowledge might possibly have some deficiencies in comparison with intuitions. The essays in this issue of Telos explore in one way or another this question of the status of conceptual knowledge as opposed to intuitive awareness. (shrink)

Environmental ethics can be cultivated in China and other Asian countries based on Chinese philosophical perspectives. Two major Chinese philosophies relevant to the issues of environmental ethics—Confucianism and Taoism—suggest certain approaches to developing environmental ethics. These approaches can complement each other in developing a Chinese or East Asian theory of environmental ethics. Drawing on these perspectives, China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve can face the challenge of protecting its pandas while developing the local economy. By adopting a set of strategies with (...) elements from both Confucianism and Taoism, Wolong has fared well in both protecting pandas and promoting environmental ethics. This case has implications for both managerial researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the works of contemporary St. Petersburg artists of different generations and creative trends, as well as the forms and features of their communication with each other and with the general as well as professional public. The trends of artistic communication in the city are determined by the activities of such institutions as art and non-art museums, art galleries and exhibition centers, which are a classic form of presentation of contemporary art; alternative venues such as (...) creative spaces and art clusters. The field of attention also includes the attraction of St. Petersburg authors to the organization of small artistic associations, mainly art groups, for example, "Unconquered", "North-7", "Parasites", etc. In addition to works of art, theoretical works and reflections by researchers of contemporary art in St. Petersburg and the spaces of its public presentation are involved. The methodological basis is the analysis of the works of St. Petersburg masters of the beginning of the XXI century in the context of the development of urban institutions of artistic communication. The research is based on theoretical works devoted to the problem of artistic communication and trends in the current art process. Comparative-interpretative and typological methods are used to compare the works of artists and forms of artistic communication. The problem of artistic communication in the field of fine art in St. Petersburg is becoming the subject of a separate study. This area of city life is currently developing quite dynamically, as new art associations, curatorial practices and alternative classical platforms for the presentation of the work of authors belonging to different generations and art movements are emerging. Traditional museums and galleries, as well as creative spaces, art clusters and other often non-core institutions, such as libraries and cafes, are involved in this process. Against this background, the features of St. Petersburg artistic communication crystallize, which is characterized by a desire to organize communities, to fuse realistic traditions and current trends, to escapism and symbolism, as well as an interest in oriental themes and stylistics. (shrink)

As patient autonomy expands, a highly controversial issue has emerged. Should the advance directives of refusing life-saving treatments or requesting euthanasia of persons with dementia who express changed minds or are often in a happy state be fulfilled? There are two autonomy-related positions. The mainstream position in philosophical discussions supports the priority of ADs based on precedent autonomy. Buchanan and Brock, and Dworkin represent this view. The other position supports the priority of PWDs’ current wishes based on minimal autonomy represented (...) by Jaworska. By rethinking the theoretical and practical challenges of the two positions and their arguments respectively, the paper concludes that in such a scenario, the priority of ADs is morally indefensible, and it is also challenging to establish minimal autonomy defend the moral priority of PWDs’ current wishes. For PWDs whose past values, beliefs, and preferences fade away but who retain apparent intrinsic sentience of well-being, a modified defined quality-of-life approach serves as another reasonable basis in their medical decision-making, and the ADs and the QoL should be further merged to reduce the uncertainty of the grey zone. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mahāyāna Interpretation of Christianity:A Case Study of Zhang Chunyi (1871–1955)Lai Pan-chiu and So Yuen-taiMahāyāna Buddhism is one of the most popular religions in East Asia. It reflects the characteristics of the culture of East Asia and has had a tremendous impact on the culture(s) of the region. When Christianity was introduced into East Asia, it did not enter a religious vacuum. Because the people of East Asia have their (...) own culture, including their worldviews, values, and preunderstandings of religion, it is expected that they may interpret the Christian religion in a way significantly different from the Western interpretation of Christianity. One of these possible ways of reinterpreting Christianity is facilitated by the Mahāyāna Buddhist framework.This paper consists of an analysis of the Mahāyāna interpretation of Christianity made by Zhang Chunyi (1871–1955).1 Zhang was a rather well-known Sinologist who published several commentaries on Chinese classics, including Mozi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. Though he had been well trained in Chinese classics, he was attracted to Christianity, with the hope that Christianity might contribute to the social reform of China. He even received baptism in an Anglican church in 1905. However, because of his in-depth study of Buddhism and his disappointment with the actual practices of the Christian churches at that time, he eventually converted to Buddhism during the 1920s. From that point, he formally promoted the slogan "Buddhicizing Christianity" (Fohua Jidujiao). His proposal for Buddhicizing Christianity includes a severe criticism of the "foreign" form of Christianity being "imported" to China mainly by the Western Protestant missionaries who, according to Zhang, preached a simplistic and even distorted "gospel" for they lacked the spiritual training (nei xue, lit., "inner learning") as well as the intellectual ability to understand sophisticated Chinese philosophy and genuine Christianity. Partially under his influence, some of his contemporary Chinese Christians were converted to Buddhism. In fact, he published at least eight books on interpreting and reforming Christian doctrines from the perspectives of Buddhism, Confucianism, and so on.2 He was probably the most prolific writer on the subject of his generation and one of the pioneers [End Page 67] in what is now called Mahāyāna theology. This brief outline of his rather unusual religious journey might have indicated the importance of the study of his Buddhist interpretation of Christianity. However, owing to mainly sociopolitical turmoil as well as the religious atmosphere at that time and in the subsequent decades, his Buddhist interpretation of Christianity has not been formally studied for decades.In recent years, more and more studies of Buddhist-Christian dialogue take place in the Chinese context.3 It is important to study previous cases of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, Mahāyāna theology, and so on. Some of these cases, including Zhang's, have been studied.4 This paper aims to examine Zhang's thought critically and to show that although Zhang advocated a Mahāyāna interpretation of Christianity before and after his conversion to Buddhism, his interpretations before and after his conversion to Buddhism are significantly different. It is proposed that whereas his interpretation before his conversion aimed at the indigenization of Christianity and thus, the evangelization of the Chinese, his interpretation after conversion was made with a view to converting the Christians to Buddhism, even though both aimed at the reformulation, or even reform, of Christianity.Zhang's Proposal of "Buddhicizing christianity"Zhang was a scholar of classical Chinese literature, active during the Republican era. He was knowledgeable in Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Moism. His study of Moism remains highly regarded.5 Zhang became a Christian and worked for the Christian Literature Society for China (Guan xue hui) in Shanghai for some years. He published several books with a view to indigenizing Christian theology by interpreting it through Chinese philosophical and religious concepts. Zhang's attempt aimed at reinterpreting Christian doctrines within the Buddhist framework in order to make Christianity more acceptable to the Chinese. However, in the 1920s, he himself converted to Buddhism and began to promote his proposal of "Buddhicizing Christianity" (Fohua Jidujiao),6 aiming to convert Christians to Buddhism.Because Zhang had... (shrink)

Cooley's argument that persons with pre‐dementia have a Kantian duty to die has led to much debate. Cooley gives two reasons for his claim, the first being that a person with pre‐dementia should end his/her life when he/she will inevitably and irreversibly lose rationality and be unable to live morally as a result. This paper argues that this reason derives from an unsubstantiated premise and general confusion regarding the condition for a Kantian duty to die. Rather, a close reading of (...) Kant reveals that such a condition occurs when a person confronts an external handicap that does not undermine his/her rational ability but deprives him/her of the possibility of living the way a person should. People do not confront this experience with progressive dementia. The other reason Cooley proposes is that a person should not allow their continued existence to become a burden to others. This claim partly stems from a radical interpretation of a case discussed by Kant and is partly based on a misuse of Kant's formulation of humanity. Based on a prudent inference from Kantian ethics, this article argues against Cooley that persons with pre‐dementia have no Kantian duty to die. (shrink)

Since the SARS crisis in 2003, institutionalized emergency management systems have been established in each government level for improving inter-organizational collaboration in China. Major accidents require participation of public organizations affiliated with multiple government levels, and the lack of collaboration and coordination among the involved organizations within the critical time constraints during the response process is an existing problem. In this research, a case study of examining the intergovernmental and cross-sectoral collaboration for responding to a well-known oil pipeline explosion accident (...) in China by a complex network method is conducted. The aim is to obtain managerial insights in improving the existing emergency management system in a centralized political-administrative context, such as China. A mixed method of data collection is applied to identify the participating organizations and to determine the interaction spanning organizational boundaries in both hierarchical and horizontal dimensions. An emergency response network is built and visualized for representing intergovernmental and interorganizational collaboration during the response process of the major accident by social network analysis tools. The SNA indicators are used to measure quantitatively the network structure at the levels of the whole network, subnetwork, and node. The obstacles of achieving intergovernmental collaboration are found, and managerial suggestions for improving the existing emergency management system are provided. This research indicates that the Chinese government should pay attention to establishing and sustaining partnerships with private and nonprofit organizations and conduct a blend of hierarchical, market, and network principles in fostering collaboration for addressing major accidents. The public organizations in the local government level are shown to be more active than other participators in coordinating their response operations, and their capability should be emphasized for improvement. Additionally, the interactive relationships among specific emergency function groups and between the affected communities and organizations performing emergency command and coordination function should be strengthened. (shrink)

Writings on Hindu cosmology and science.

This study conducted a cross-sectional investigation of facial appearance dissatisfaction between patients before undergoing orthognathic surgery and a non-surgical sample to evaluate the potential influencing factors of facial appearance dissatisfaction. A sample of 354 participants completed a set of questionnaires concerning facial appearance dissatisfaction, interpersonal pressure, media pressure, and fear of negative appearance evaluation (112 patients, 242 controls). The patients reported higher facial appearance dissatisfaction, more media pressure, more interpersonal pressure, and a greater fear of negative appearance evaluation among others (...) than the control group. Moreover, regression analyses identified interpersonal pressure and fear of negative appearance evaluation as the main influencing factors on facial appearance dissatisfaction whether in the orthognathic patients or in the control groups. The associations between the perceptions of interpersonal pressure, fear of negative appearance evaluation, and facial appearance dissatisfaction support the possible utility of strengthening social experiences and psychological intervention in preventing and treating these appearance-concerns, especially for the orthognathic patients. (shrink)