We summarize the ethnographic literature illustrating that “abnormal birth” circumstances and “ill omens” operate as cues to terminate parental investment. A review of the medical literature provides evidence to support our assertion that ill omens serve as markers of biological conditions that will threaten the survival of infants. Daly and Wilson (1984) tested the prediction that children of demonstrably poor phenotypic quality will be common victims of infanticide. We take this hypothesis one stage further and argue that some children (...) will be poor vehicles for parental investment yet are not of demonstrably poor quality at birth. We conclude that when people dispose of infants due to “superstitious beliefs” they are pursuing an adaptive strategy in eliminating infants who are poor vehicles for parental investment. (shrink)

Against the background of the current debate in Germany, the paper explains and discusses ethical aspects of alternative consent systems for post-mortem organ donation. The focus is on opt-out and prompted choice solutions. The authors explain why libertarian paternalism might favour a prompted choice.

This article presents results from an empirical investigation of the role and importance of ethics in the daily work of Danish oncologyphysicians and Danish molecular biologists. The study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with three groups of respondents: a group of oncology physicians working in a clinic at a public hospital and two groups of molecular biologists conducting basic research, one group employed at a public university and the other in a private biopharmaceutical company.We found that oncology physicians consider (...) ethical evaluation as part of their daily work. They discuss how to treat patients in groups and they have interdisciplinary seminars. In contrast, molecular biologists employed at the university do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, they do not talk about ethics in their daily work and they do not want to prioritise seminars on ethics. Molecular biologists employed in a private biopharmaceutical company do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, but the private company prioritises ethical evaluation. If the company behaves unethical, they will be punished by the consumers and by the investors in the last end. In general, oncology physicians working in the clinic experience a closer relationship between their daily work and ethical problems concerning human beings than molecular biologists conducting basic research. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

Cancer rates in men and women of reproductive age have continued to increase in recent years; however, therapy has dramatically decreased the mortality rates. Since 1990, the prevalence of cancer survivors in young adults increased from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 250 patients due to more aggressive therapies. Current therapies may have profound toxic effects on gamete function with infertility as an expected consequence of cancer therapy. Depending on the site and stage of cancer, age of the patient, and (...) the type of treatment, approximately 90% of men and women diagnosed with cancer may be at risk of permanent infertility.Fertility preservation has emerged as a discipline dedicated to improving the future reproductive potential of cancer survivors. Significant progress in the advancement of fertility preservation therapies and a heightened awareness of the availability of therapies has occurred in the past 10 years. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine have advanced these efforts by formally recognizing the importance of fertility awareness. (shrink)

Bioethical research has tended to focus on theoretical discussion of the principles on which the analysis of ethical issues in biomedicine should be based. But this discussion often seems remote from biomedical practice where researchers and physicians confront ethical problems. On the other hand, published empirical research on the ethical reasoning of health care professionals offer only descriptions of how physicians and nurses actually reason ethically. The question remains whether these descriptions have any normative implications for nurses and physicians? In (...) this article, we illustrate an approach that integrates empirical research into the formulation of normative ethical principles using the moral-philosophical method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium (WRE). The research method discussed in this article was developed in connection with the project ‘Bioethics in Theory and Practice’. The purpose of this project is to investigate ethical reasoning in biomedical practice in Denmark empirically. In this article, we take the research method as our point of departure, but we exclusively discuss the theoretical framework of the method, not its empirical results. We argue that the descriptive phenomenological hermeneutical method developed by Lindseth and Norberg (2004) and Pedersen (1999) can be combined with the theory of WRE to arrive at a decision procedure and thus a foundation for the formulation of normative ethical principles. This could provide health care professionals and biomedical researchers with normative principles about how to analyse, reason and act in ethically difficult situations in their practice. We also show how to use existing bioethical principles as inspiration for interpreting the empirical findings of qualitative studies. This may help researchers design their own empirical studies in the field of ethics. (shrink)

Within the caring science paradigm, variations of a method of interpretation inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation are used. This method consists of several levels of interpretation: a naïve reading, a structural analysis, and a critical analysis and discussion. Within this paradigm, the aim of this article is to present and discuss a means of creating distance in the interpretation and the text structure by using narration in a poetic language linked to the meaning of the (...) text. Ricoeur's ‘Hermeneutical function of distanciation’ will be introduced, and this concept of distanciation will be illustrated with reference to narrations from a study of patient's life experiences living with chronic illness and home mechanical ventilation in Denmark. Distanciation in the interpretation objectifies the text, and narration in a poetic language creates a particular kind of mediation in the interpretation. That narration represents an interpreted understanding of the whole, which facilitates an appropriate and evocative presentation of the interpreted data. This way of objectifying the text through narration can contribute yet another perspective to Ricoeur's rich and varied theory of interpretation. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study presents an empirical investigation of the ethical reasoning and ethical issues at stake in the daily work of physicians and molecular biologists in Denmark. The aim of this study was to test empirically whether there is a difference in ethical considerations and principles between Danish physicians and Danish molecular biologists, and whether the bioethical principles of the American bioethicists Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress are applicable to these groups.MethodThis study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with (...) three groups of respondents: a group of oncology physicians working in a clinic at a public hospital and two groups of molecular biologists conducting basic research, one group employed at a public university and the other in a private biopharmaceutical company.ResultsIn this sample, the authors found that oncology physicians and molecular biologists employed in a private biopharmaceutical company have the specific principle of beneficence in mind in their daily work. Both groups are motivated to help sick patients. According to the study, molecular biologists explicitly consider nonmaleficence in relation to the environment, the researchers' own health, and animal models; and only implicitly in relation to patients or human subjects. In contrast, considerations of nonmaleficence by oncology physicians relate to patients or human subjects. Physicians and molecular biologists both consider the principle of respect for autonomy as a negative obligation in the sense that informed consent of patients should be respected. However, in contrast to molecular biologists, physicians experience the principle of respect for autonomy as a positive obligation as the physician, in dialogue with the patient, offers a medical prognosis based upon the patients wishes and ideas, mutual understanding, and respect. Finally, this study discloses utilitarian characteristics in the overall conception of justice as conceived by oncology physicians and molecular biologists from the private biopharmaceutical company. Molecular biologists employed at a public university are, in this study, concerned with allocation, however, they do not propose a specific theory of justice.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that each of the four bioethical principles of the American bioethicists Tom L. Beauchamp & James F. Childress – respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice – are reflected in the daily work of physicians and molecular biologists in Denmark. Consequently, these principles are applicable in the Danish biomedical setting. (shrink)

This article presents results from a qualitative empirical investigation of how Danish oncology physicians and Danish molecular biologists experience the principle of respect for autonomy in their daily work.

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 21381 "Conversational Agent as Trustworthy Autonomous System ". First, we present the abstracts of the talks delivered by the Seminar’s attendees. Then we report on the origin and process of our six breakout groups. For each group, we describe its contributors, goals and key questions, key insights, and future research. The themes of the groups were derived from a pre-Seminar survey, which also led to a list of suggested readings (...) for the topic of trust in conversational agents. The list is included in this report for references. (shrink)

BackgroundThe experiences of UK ethnic minority healthcare workers are crucial to ameliorating the disproportionate COVID-19 infection rate and outcomes in the UKEM community. We conducted a qualitative study on UKEM healthcare workers’ perspectives on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UKEM community.MethodsParticipants were 15 UKEM healthcare workers. Data were collected using individual and joint interviews, and a focus group, and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsWe generated three themes: heterogeneity, mistrust, and mitigating. Therein, participants distinguished CVH in the UKEM community in educational attainment (...) and ethnicity. They pointed to the role of mistrust in CVH in the UKEM community. They opined that the mistrust underlying CVH in the UKEM community is rooted in history and religion, conspiracy theories, the speedy development and novelty of the vaccines, post-vaccination complications/side effects, false positive test results, and social media and social support/influence. Participants recommended that interventions targeted at mitigating CVH in the UKEM community need to, in a non-judgmental way, tackle dis/misinformation and provide education, and incorporate UKEM healthcare worker endorsement. They also suggested such interventions be community-oriented, enhance the convenience of vaccination centers and the possibility of vaccine choice, and appreciate that overcoming CVH and accepting vaccination is a gradual process involving personal assessment of risks and benefits.ConclusionCVH in the UKEM community is a multifaceted phenomenon requiring multicomponent interventions. (shrink)

_Vi gennemførte i 2016 et omfattende empirisk studie på Aalborg Universitetshospital med henblik på at afdække de forskellige sundhedsprofessioners etiske holdninger. Hensigten var at afdække eventuelle forskelle mellem professionerne samt at få begrebsliggjort de etiske tankemønstre, der er tilstede i den kliniske praksis. Vi fandt i den indledende dataanalyse, at vi med signifikans kunne vise, at plejegruppen i højere grad bruger nærhedsetiske og omsorgsetiske vurderinger, til forskel fra lægegruppen, der er mere pligtetisk funderet__. Undersøgelsen blev sat op ved brug af (...) vignetmetoden, der giver mulighed for at indsamle kvantitative data, der er velegnede til en statistisk analyse, men som samtidig også muliggør en kvalitativ undersøgelse ved en efterfølgende hermeneutisk analyse af udvalgte besvarelser. I denne artikel studerer vi undersøgelsens resultater inden for sygeplejegruppen alene med det formål at uddrage, hvad deres vurderinger kommer an på, og at diskutere, hvordan disse faktorer indbyrdes forholder sig til hinanden og skaber sammenhæng. Med udgangspunkt i dette finder vi frem til, hvordan sygeplejerskernes etiske holdninger som helhed formes af de særlige værdier, som den nærhedsetiske profil understøtter, men som videre også giver et mere fleksibelt og nuanceret billede af sygeplejeetikken._ _Nøgleord:_ sygeplejeetik, vignetmetoden, hermeneutik, patientperspektiv, klinisk praksis _ _ _English title: _Factors that influence nurses' attitude to "good clinical practice" - a qualitative analysis of data from an empirical study at Aalborg University Hospital In 2016, we conducted a comprehensive empirical study at Aalborg University Hospital in order to uncover the ethical attitudes of various health professions. The intention was to uncover any differences between professions as well as to conceptualize the ethical thought patterns present in clinical practice. We found in the preliminary data analysis that we could show with significance that the group of care givers uses relational ethics and care ethics assessments to a greater extent as opposed to the more duty ethics based group of physicians. The study was set up using the vignette method, which allows for the collection of quantitative data suitable for statistical analysis, but which also allows for a qualitative study by a subsequent hermeneutical analysis of selected answers. In this article we study the results of the study within the nursing group solely for the purpose of extracting what their assessments depend on and discussing how these factors relate to each other and create some form of moral coherence. Based on this we find how nurses' ethical attitudes are shaped by the particular values ​​that the relational ethical profile supports, but also how this profile is modified and flexible to the conditions of clinical settings and situations. In the end our interpretation provides us with a more nuanced picture of nursing ethics than a single theoretical perspective or a set of guidelines provide. _Keywords:_ nursing ethics, the vignette method, hermeneutics, patient perspective, clinical practice. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that there are differences in physicians’ and caregivers’ ethical attitudes towards clinical situations. The assumption is that the difference is driven by different values, views and judgements in specific situations. At Aalborg University Hospital, Denmark, we aimed to investigate these assumptions by conducting a large quantitative study. The study design, based on the Factorial Survey Method, was a carefully constructed survey with 50 questions designed to test which factors influenced the respondents’ ethical reasoning. The factors were (...) clustered into three categories of ethical reasoning and values. The categories were formulated in terms of easily recognizable ethical positions: consequential ethics, deontological ethics and relational ethics. Based on 2129 respondents, we found significant support for the assumption of differences between physicians and caregivers. The group of caregivers favoured the relational ethics view in clinical ethical situations, and the group of ph... (shrink)

The emerging area of philosophy of birth is invaluable, first, to diagnose fallacious assumptions about the relation between the womb and reason, and, ultimately, to challenge potentially damaging narratives with major impact on birth care. With its analysis of eighteenth-century epistemic and medical discussions about the role of the uterus in women's reasoning, this article supports two arguments: first, that women's “flawed thinking” was a premise drawn by many modern intellectual men, one that was presented as based upon (...) empirical evidence; and second, that the pervasive construction of the uterus as an element that renders women wild, uncontrollable, and irrational continues to influence contemporary obstetrics, even as today's medicine and science consider themselves to be free of any such prejudices.This article shows the role that Giacomo Casanova played in debunking these prejudices and presents his short manuscript on the issue as an important contribution to the literature of the Enlightenment, with its argument against women's supposed “natural” inferiority and for the idea that differences in education were to blame for women's subordinate position in society.Detailed analysis of the “thinking uterus” debate illuminates the different ways in which various arguments from/by the “anti-uterine” lobby were used to justify the subordination of women: sometimes emphasizing the connection between the uterus and thought and sometimes negating it, but always concluding that women's inferiority is to be found in some known or yet-to-be-discovered anatomical, and mainly sexual, deficiency or problem. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential (...) reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. (shrink)

This article describes what the earliest concepts are like and presents a theory of the spatial primitives from which they are formed. The earliest concepts tend to be global, like animal and container, and it is hypothesized that they consist of simplified redescriptions of innately salient spatial information. These redescriptions become associated with sensory and other bodily experiences that are not themselves redescribed, but that enrich conceptual thought. The initial conceptual base becomes expanded through subdivision, sometimes aided by language that (...) points up these divisions or suggests new spatial analyses, and by the analogical extension of spatially derived concepts to nonspatial domains. This formulation is contrasted with Fodor's (1998) metaphysical theory of concept formation. (shrink)

Based on interviews with 40 first-time mothers, the authors develop an argument that supplements the critique of medicalized childbirth by focusing on the social context in which women give birth. Particularly important about that context is women's privatized responsibility for babies' well-being, and a dearth of social supports for mothering, including the sharing of that responsibility by fathers. Contextualizing childbirth in this way makes clearer not only why many women are favorable toward medical intervention but also the decisions women (...) make during hospital births. The women we interviewed displayed widely ranging reactions to giving birth in the hospital. Describing their experiences, these women often emphasized pain and anxiety. Both conditions appear to have been relieved as effectively by social support as by medical assistance. Furthermore, women who had generally supportive partners were less likely to receive medical intervention during the birth and less likely to suffer postpartum depression. (shrink)

In ‘Dilemma for Appeals to the Moral Significance of Birth’, we argued that a dilemma is faced by those who believe that birth is the event at which infanticide is ruled out. Those who reject the moral permissibility of infanticide by appeal to the moral significance of birth must either accept the moral permissibility of a late-term abortion for a non-therapeutic reason or not. If they accept it, they need to account for the strong intuition that her (...) decision is wrong as well as deny the underlying normative principle that killing a viable fetus requires good reason, and not wanting to care for the child when the child could be easily placed for adoption is not a good enough reason to abort. If they reject the moral permissibility of the late-term abortion, they need to explain why her decision is wrong. Doing so, however, will undermine their own project of denying infanticide by appeal to birth. Walter Veit argues that the dilemma relies too much on intuition and does not live up to biological continuity. We explain why his criticisms are unconvincing. (shrink)

We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African Media database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social condition – moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader ‘experience’ the actual content. In addition to making the anti-immigrant rhetoric appear legitimate, and the danger immediate and real, we argue (...) that the apparent seamless content is often biased by selection and structured in such a way as to deny voice to immigrants and their advocates. Among other things, we conclude that since the readers’ interpretations are filtered through lenses of subjectivities defined by communicative contexts characterized by job scarcity, poverty, crime and wanting healthcare, the news content heightens anxiety and miseducates more than it enlightens readers on migration issues. Hence there is a danger of SAM becoming unwitting conveyors of the same vices they preach against. (shrink)

Authenticity has become one of the defining ideals of the modern world. It is the quality we are meant to demand in that which we consume; a value to be opposed to all that is ‘fake’ or ‘phoney’ or ‘artificial’. Above all, it is what an individual is meant to aspire to be: true to one’s self, self-actualising and self-expressing. Authenticity today has an almost ethical force. It underpins identity politics, legitimises transgenderism and informs the ubiquitous demand for often legal (...) recognition and informal respect. But what does its elevation say about the condition of modernity? What is its historical and conceptual relationship to ideas of freedom and autonomy? And to what extent is it really possible or even desirable, as Shakespeare’s Polonius insisted it was, to be true to thine own self? (shrink)

The critiques of The Birth of Ethics (henceforth BE) that my co-symposiasts have provided are of the very highest quality and I have benefitted enormously from thinking about them and considering h...

Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video ‘community’ YouTube Broadcast Yourself. Searching the word ‘birth’ (...) on YouTube results in close to one million ‘hits’. This article is based on a small-scale, qualitative research project, which involved viewing and making notes on several hundred online videos of birth on YouTube and the accompanying posts and commentaries about the videos. These data were analysed through a feminist, poststructuralist and geographical lens. Throughout the article the term ‘cyber/space’ is used to highlight the mutually constituted nature of ‘real’ and virtual spaces. The article concludes that although YouTube has the potential to open up new windows on birth, this potential is not yet being realized. YouTube does not overcome or render insignificant material expressions of power, instead it typically privileges US experiences of birth, reiterates discourses of ‘good’ mothering and censors particular (mainly vaginal) representations of birth. (shrink)

Examino textos de Leopoldo Lugones y de José Ingenieros, escritos para homenajear a Domingo Faustino Sarmiento en el primer centenario de su nacimiento en 1911. Mi hipótesis es que tanto Lugones como Ingenieros se proponen legitimar un gobierno de un círculo inteligente que tiene la autoridad (la palabra y la decisión), y expone, por ende, un dogma que da fundamento a la patria y a la democracia. Dicho de otro modo, todos los actores de la patria, (productores de riqueza, obreros, (...) militares, artistas, maestros, etc.,) deben ser conducidos por esta elite inteligente (a la cual pertenecen, según ellos, tanto Sarmiento como Lugones e Ingenieros). El elitismo asociado a escritores (en el caso de Lugones) o de científicos (en el caso de Ingenieros) es el eje que articula todos sus argumentos, y es desde esta perspectiva que interpretan y evocan la figura y los escritos de Sarmiento en el primer centenario de su natalicio. I scrutinize texts of Leopoldo Lugones and José Ingenieros, written to honour Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in the first centennial of his birth in 1911. My theory is that Lugones and Ingenieros intend to legitimize a government of a clever circle that has the authority (the word and the decision), and exposes, therefore, a dogma that gives foundation to motherland and democracy. In other words, all the actors of the motherland (producers of richness, workers, military men, artists, teachers, etc.) must be led by this intelligent elite (to which, according to them, Sarmiento, Lugones and Ingenieros belong). The elitism associated to writers (in Lugones's case) or to scientists (in Ingenieros's case) is the axis that articulates the whole argument and it is since this perspective that they interprete and evoke Sarmiento's figure and writings in the first hundred anniversary of his birth. (shrink)

Birth, whether at home or in the hospital, should involve shared decision making that empowers women to choose or decline the interventions that are best for the woman and her baby. Obstetricians and home birth midwives must share important information with their patients.

Most countries provide some form of nationality or citizenship either by birthright or inheritance. This paper accepts Jacques Derrida’s invitation to imagine nationality or citizenship otherwise, this time by death and burial: you are from where you die or are buried. I read Derrida’s invitation alongside his four studies of Martin Heidegger’s use of “Geschlecht” to argue that we ought to reconsider the relationship between the nation and (its) philosophy. I show that Derrida’s proposed “law of the eclipse” provides us (...) new resources to rethink nationalism today. (shrink)

Traces the development of Nietzsche's ideas on Jesus, St. Paul, and early Christianity.

The Birth of String Theory by Cappelli et al. tells the story of the beginnings of string theory and of the evolutionary process it has undergone from its origins in S-matrix theory to its current status as a candidate unification theory. The book is intended for an audience of students and researchers in physics, as well as historians and philosophers of science with some background in quantum field theory.In the 50s and early 60s, theoretical particle physics focused on formulating (...) a theory to explain the strong interactions. Due to issues with the application of perturbative quantum field theory to the strong interactions, theoretical particle physicists shifted their attention to Heisenberg’s ‘S-matrix’ theory, which focused solely on observable quantities. This endeavour led in 1968 to the breakthrough of the famous ‘Veneziano amplitude’, which along with the Dolen–Horn–Schmid duality between the s- and the t-channels led to the dual resonance model . Following Ve .. (shrink)

Using birth stories as our object of inquiry, this article examines the ways in which normative discourses about gender, disability and Down syndrome construct the birth stories of three mothers of children with Down syndrome. Their stories are composed of the mothers’ recollections of the first hours after birth as a time when their infants are separated from them and their postpartum needs are ignored. Together, their stories illustrate socio-cultural tropes that position Down syndrome as a dangerous (...) form of the “other” and mothers who give birth to children with Down syndrome as implicated in transgressing cultural norms. (shrink)

A study of the abnormal sex ratio at birth in China reveals that it is not an entirely new phenomenon that emerged since the 1980s, but is simply more visible at present. Deliberate intervention to determine the sex of children has existed in the past few decades, at least in certain groups. Apart from modern medical methods, traditional Chinese medical practice is shown to be highly accurate in identifying the sex of a fetus. This may lead to sex-selective abortion (...) and an abnormal sex ratio at birth. The possible causes of the abnormal sex ratio at birth include not only the real imbalance due to the disturbance of social factors, but also a spurious one attributable to the under-counting of female births. The real magnitude of the imbalance has been exaggerated by statistical error. The phenomenon is a complicated one reflecting the comprehensive socioeconomic setting. Among these factors, the stage of the fertility transition is one of the most decisive. (shrink)