Objective: To examine current research payment practices and to inform development of clearer guidelines for researchers and ethics committees.Design: Exploratory email based questionnaire study of current research participant reimbursement practices. A diverse sample of organisations and individuals were targeted.Setting: Australia.Participants: Contacts in 84 key research organisations and select electronic listservers across Australia. A total of 100 completed questionnaires were received with representations from a variety of research areas .Main measurements: Open-ended and fixed alternative questions about type of research agency; type (...) of research; type of population under study; whether payment is standard; amounts and mechanisms of payment; factors taken into account when deciding on payment practices; and whether payment policies exist.Results: Reimbursement practice is highly variable. Where it occurs it is largely monetary and is for time and out-of-pocket expenses. Ethics committees were reported to be often involved in decision making around reimbursement.Conclusions: Research subject payment practices vary in Australia. Researchers who do provide payments to research participants generally do so without written policy and procedures. Ethics committees have an important role in developing guidelines in this area. Specific guidelines are needed considering existing local policies and procedures; payment models and their application in diverse settings; case study examples of types and levels of reimbursement; applied definitions of incentive and inducement; and the rationale for diverse payment practices in different settings. (shrink)

On July 3, 1996, in Jones v. United States), the United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that plaintiffs in a wrongful birth action cannot recover costs or damages associated with the birth and upbringing of their daughter absent evidence of causation and proof to satisfy liability requirements. Plaintiffs scientific evidence regarding the alleged interaction between antibiotics and oral contraceptives did not satisfy the Daubertstandard, cert. denied,116 S. Ct. 189 )) for admissibility developed by the Supreme (...) Court. In addition, the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of persuasion on duty of care and causation.On January 16, 1992, Karyn Jones went to a U.S. Army gynecologist, Dr. James Murphy, to obtain a prescription for birth control pills. (shrink)

One dark and rainy night, Yuso sexually assaults and tortures Zelan. In escaping from the scene of his crime, he falls heavily and becomes an impotent paraplegic. Instead of treating his fate as divine retribution for his wicked acts, Yuso sees it as sheer bad luck. He shows no remorse for what he has done, and vainly hopes that he will recover his powers, which he now treats as involuntarily hoarded resources to be used on less rainy days. In the (...) presence of others, he pretends that he has turned over a new leaf. He asks for religious and educational books, hoping to make up for his poor education and deprived social background. But he immediately discards them when he is alone in favor of the pornographic magazines which he has bribed a nurse to smuggle in for him. His deception and various obscene acts committed in the hospital are exposed; by the time he comes up for trial, everyone knows that he is still a lustful, sadistic, and unrepentant man. Most retributivists have a sufficient justification for punishing Yuso independently of the social consequences of his punishment. Two features of the case might cause some difficulties. First, Yuso has already experienced considerable suffering and deprivation both before and after his crime, and retributivists might disagree about the relevance of the suffering to his punishment. Secondly, Yuso is unrepentant, and it is unlikely that punishment will change him. This might, as we shall see, create a problem for those who think that the justifying aim of punishment is the moral reform of the offender. (shrink)

At 8 a.m. I get in my car and set off for work. At 7:59 a.m., before I started it, my car was at rest; at 8:01 a.m. it is in motion. When a thing is not in motion, it is at rest, and when it is not at rest, it is in motion. But what was the state of the car at 8:00 a.m., as I was starting it? It would be inaccurate to say that it was in motion (...) but it would be inaccurate, also, to say that it was at rest: it was “just starting.” But, if whenever a thing is not in motion it is at rest, the state of “just starting”—or, of course, the comparable state of “just stopping”—must be either a state of motion or a state of rest. Which? (shrink)

Plants are considered as archetypes of the ramification phenomenon but numerous elementary processes occur in the elaboration of the shaping of each species. This paper aims to identify the part ascribed to different mechanisms in the morphogenesis of a Thallophyte, the red alga Antihamnion plumula.Agonistic-antagonistic models (Bernard-Weil, 1988) can be applied to this alga whose thallus includes two different kinds of whorls, pleuridian and cladomian. In each whorl the agonistic and antagonistic effects are expressed by the full development (S) of (...) the two branches and by their symmetry rate (R) respectively. Variations in S and R show the existence of particular pleuridian whorls having an intermediary dissymmetry and a rhythmic arrangement similarly to that of the cladomian whorls. A unilateral change of the system (removal of a lateral cladome) induces a transitory destabilisation mainly manifested by the stimulating ascendant flow throughout the thallus. (shrink)

The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings’ military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, begun (...) by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics. (shrink)