An ethical issue that has largely been overlooked and neglected is the potential conflict of interests faced by medical professionals in the recruitment, counselling and reimbursement of egg donors. It must be noted that fertility treatment in private practice is an overwhelmingly profit-driven enterprise. To attract more patients and generate more income, there is a strong incentive for fertility clinics and doctors to actively and aggressively recruit women for their egg donation programme. In some countries where substantial financial remuneration for (...) egg donation is permitted—for example, the United States,1 2 fertility doctors and clinical embryologists often act as the “middleman” or broker to facilitate the transaction of eggs between donor and recipient. Very often, the usual practice is for fertility clinics to charge patients a commission for sourcing egg donors, which is an additional profit on top of substantial medical fees that would be earned from provision of fertility treatment to the same patient. This is ethically contentious; because the money earned is not directly related to medical services rendered to the patient, but is instead attributed to the brokerage and transaction of donated human material.There is a risk that the welfare of the …. (shrink)

Heng Xian is a previously unknown text reconstructed by Chinese scholars out of a group of more than 1,200 inscribed bamboo strips purchased by the Shanghai Museum on the Hong Kong antiquities market in 1994. The strips have all been assigned an approximate date of 300 B.C.E., and Heng Xian allegedly consists of thirteen of them, but each proposed arrangement of the strips is marred by unlikely textual transitions. The most plausible hypothesis is one that Chinese scholars do (...) not appear to take seriously: that we are missing one or more strips. The paper concludes with a discussion of the hazards of studying unprovenanced artifacts that have appeared during China’s recent looting spree. I believe the time has come for scholars to ask themselves whether their work indirectly abets this destruction of knowledge. (shrink)

B C Hurst; Means, Ends, Content and Objectives in Curriculum Planning: a critique of Sockett and Hirst, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1.

B C Hurst; Teaching, Telling and Changes in Belief, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 215–224, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

According to both deontologists and consequentialists, if there is a reason to promote the general happiness – or to promote any other state of affairs unrelated to one's own projects or self-interest – then the reason must apply to everyone. This view seems almost self-evident; to challenge it is to challenge the way we think of moral reasons. I contend, however, that the view depends on the unwarranted assumption that the only way to restrict the application scope of a reason (...) for action is by restricting it to those agents whose interests or projects are involved in the reason. In fact normative theories may coherently restrict application scopes in other ways. Thus we must take seriously the possibility that the reason to promote the general happiness, although genuine, does not apply to everyone. (shrink)

An attempt is made here to examine the analysis three political thinkers - Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and Jeremy Bentham have offered of the idea of equality. The inquiry underrtaken is philosophical and not historical in character, since no attempt is made either at tracing the influence ht the biographical-cum-intellectual level of one of them upon the other or at treating their ideas on equality as born out of their preoccupation with the same problem to which they give various answers (...) and which can therefore be considered within a single overall framework. Instead, each thinker is considered independently. And a study is undertaken of the way he understands equality, the way he justifies it, the sort of equality he considers most important and his reasons for this, the area of life he takes the idea of equality to illuminate, the manner in which he relates it to other ideas, etc.. In each case, a fairly coherent philosophy of equality is sought to be constructed out of their respective writings. These three thinkers are selected for two reasons. The idea of equality looms quite large in their thought; as such, it was felt that looking at their writings from the standpoint of equality may illuminate their certain features that may otherwise remain obscure or relatively underemphasized. Further, as they consider equality from different philosophical positions it was believed that a critical examination of their writings could, perhaps, point to the general merits and limitations of their respective positions in terms of equality. in chapter I, it is argued that there are distinct views of God discernible in Paine's writings, and that corresponding to them are three distinct views of equality, though only two of them are discussed by Paine at any length. in chapter II, it is argued that, though Godwin begins as a thoroughgoing rationalist, three are shifts in his general philosophical position, and that, with each shift, his ideas on truth, rationality and equality undergo important changes. Finally, in chapter III, it is argued that there are two distinct theories of equality in Bentham and that tension between them remains unresolved. (shrink)

Bradford C Bemiss, Chad A WittDepartment of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA: Chronic rejection is a major cause of death after the first year following lung transplantation. Bronchiolitis obliterans is the most common pathologic finding on biopsy, characterized by fibrous granulation tissue, which obliterates the lumen of the bronchiole. Clinically, in the absence of tissue for pathology, BO syndrome refers to a progressive irreversible drop in the forced (...) expiratory volume in 1 second. Recently, a broader definition of chronic rejection, termed "chronic lung allograft dysfunction", has been used to encompass a more inclusive definition of posttransplant dysfunction. Recently, the lung transplant community has come to realize that chronic rejection may be the final common result after repetitive epithelial insults. Acute rejection, infection, and alloreactivity to mismatched HLA antigens are a few of these insults that damage the surface of the bronchioles. Recent evidence of autoimmunity to the normally hidden structural proteins collagen V and K-α1 tubulin have been correlated with a BO phenotype as well, perhaps correlating the epithelial damage with a mechanism for developing BO lesions. Many immunomodulatory medications and treatments have been studied for effectiveness for the treatment of chronic lung allograft dysfunction. New drugs, which more precisely target the immune system, are being developed and tested. Further study is required, but recent advances have improved our understanding of the pathogenesis and potential intervention for this common and deadly complication of lung transplantation.Keywords: lung transplant, bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome, rejection. (shrink)

What, ultimately, is there good reason to do? This book proposes a unified theory of agent-dependent reasons and agent-independent reasons. It holds that principles which assign reasons to agents are valid if and only if they make maximally good sense in the light of relevant data and background theories. The theory avoids problems encountered by views associated with Nagel, Parfit, Brandt, Hubin, Gert, Baier, and Tiberius, amongst others. By what criteria should a normative theory of ultimate reasons be judged? Plausible (...) meta-level criteria emerge from a process of identifying the criteria that have been used, sometimes unwittingly, by various theorists; categorizing and evaluating the criteria in the light of each other; and proposing revisions on that basis. This method escapes the drawbacks of rival approaches, such as those associated with Parfit, Gert, and Darwall. The resulting criteria cast a favorable light on the proposed normative theory of ultimate reasons. (shrink)

Contributed articles, with reference to India.