For many decades, access to human biological samples, such as cells, tissues, organs, blood, and sub-cellular materials such as DNA, for use in biomedical research, has been central in understanding the nature and transmission of diseases across the globe. However, the limitations of current ethical and regulatory frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa to govern the collection, export, storage and reuse of these samples have resulted in inconsistencies in practice and a number of ethical concerns for sample donors, researchers and research ethics (...) committees. This paper examines stakeholders’ perspectives of and responses to the ethical issues arising from these research practices. (shrink)

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists are effective for treating obesity, but the high cost of these medications endangers the financial viability of our health care system. To ensure that these drugs are available to Medicare beneficiaries, pharmaceutical manufacturers must lower their prices.

This paper addresses the explanatory role of the concept of a motive for action in economics. The aim of the paper is to show the difficulty economists have to accommodate the motive of commitment into their explanatory and predictive framework, i.e. rational choice theory. One difficulty is that the economists’ explanation becomes analytic when assuming preferences of commitment. Another difficulty is that it is highly doubtful whether commitment can be represented by current frameworks while (pre-)serving the ‘folk-psychological’ idea of what (...) is commonly understood by the idea of a commitment. Both difficulties lead to the conclusion that, although motives do matter, conceptualizing the motive of commitment would cause trouble for rational choice theory. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the images of nursing that were presented in the media during the recent industrial action by nurses and midwives in the Republic of Ireland. Although both nurses and midwives took industrial strike action, the strike was referred to as ‘the nurses’ strike’ and both nurses and midwives were generally referred to by the generic term ‘nurses’. Data were gathered from the printed news media of The Irish Times over a period of one (...) month - 4 October to 4 November 1999 - which included the nine days of the strike. Although we limited the source of our data to just one newspaper, the findings do provide an image of how nurses and nursing care are viewed by both health professionals and the public. This image appeared to give a higher value to masculine cultural codes and the performance of technical skills, whereas acts associated with feminine cultural codes of caring were considered of lower value. (shrink)

Background: The process of dying in intensive care units is complex as the technological environment shapes clinical decisions. Decisions at the end of life require the involvement of patient, families and healthcare professionals. The degree of involvement can vary depending on the professional and social culture of the unit. Nurses have an important role to play in caring for dying patients and their families; however, their knowledge is not always sought. Objectives: This study explored nurses’ care practices at the end (...) of life, with the objective of describing and identifying end of life care practices that nurses contribute to, with an emphasis on culture, religious experiences and professional identity. Research Design and context: Grounded theory was used. In all, 10 nurses from intensive care unit in two large hospitals in Bahrain were participated. Ethical Considerations: Approval to carry out the research was given by the Research Ethics Committee of the host institution, and the two hospitals. Findings: A core category, Death Avoidance Talk, was emerged. This was supported by two major categories: (1) order-oriented care and (2) signalling death and care shifting. Discussion: Death talk was avoided by the nurses, doctors and family members. When a decision was made by the medical team that a patient was not to be resuscitated, the nurses took this as a sign that death was imminent. This led to a process of signalling death to family and of shifting care to family members. Conclusion: Despite the avoidance of death talk and nurses’ lack of professional autonomy, they created awareness that death was imminent to family members and ensured that end of life care was given in a culturally sensitive manner and aligned to Islamic values. (shrink)

In this commentary on Osiurak and Reynaud's target article, we argue that action is largely missing in their account of the ascendance of human technological culture. We propose that an action-based developmental account can help to bridge the cognitive-sociocultural divide in explanations of the discovery, production, and cultural transmission of human tool use.

The doctrine of the atonement is a subject of perpetual curiosity for a number of contemporary theologians. The penal substitution theory of atonement in particular has precipitated a great deal of recent interest, being held up by many Protestants as ‘the’ doctrine of atonement. In this essay, we make a defense against the objection to the Anselmian theory of atonement that is often leveled against it by exponents of the Penal Substitution theory, namely, that Christ’s work does not accomplish anything (...) for those whom it appears he undertakes his atoning work, but merely makes provision for salvation. (shrink)

SummaryThe recent atonement literature reveals a growing trend accepting the thesis that the Reformer’s doctrine just is the biblical doctrine of penal substitution. This is the claim of William Lane Craig in his recent works on the atonement. In the present article, we challenge these set of claims in Craig’s recent works and advance an alternative theory of the atonement that has some significant footing in the Reformed theological tradition, most notably reflected in the theologian, William Ames. Finally, we lay (...) out several reasons why Craig’s doctrine of the atonement fails to capture the biblical data on the atonement and fails to avoid the legal fiction problem parasitic on most, if not all, accounts of penal substitution. (shrink)

Motor development – traditionally studied in WEIRD populations – falls victim to assumptions of universality similar to other domains described by Henrich et al. However, cross-cultural research illustrates the extraordinary diversity that is normal in motor skill acquisition. Indeed, motor development provides an important domain for evaluating cultural challenges to a general behavioral science.

Artificial intelligence systems advising healthcare professionals will be widely introduced into healthcare settings within the next 5–10 years. This paper considers how this will sit with tort/negligence based legal approaches to compensation for medical error. It argues that the introduction of AI systems will provide an additional argument pointing towards no-fault compensation as the better legal solution to compensation for medical error in modern health care systems. The paper falls into four parts. The first part rehearses the main arguments for (...) and against no-fault compensation. The second explains why it is likely that AI systems will be widely introduced. The third part analyses why it is difficult to fit AI systems into fault-based compensation systems while the final part suggests how no-fault compensation could provide a possible solution to such challenges. (shrink)

Faculty plagiarism and fraud are widely documented occurrences but little analysis has been conducted. This article addresses the question of why faculty plagiarism and fraud occurs and suggests approaches on how to develop an environment where faculty misconduct is socially inappropriate. The authors review relevant literature, primarily in business ethics and student cheating, developing action steps that could be applied to higher education. Based upon research in these areas, the authors posit some actions that would be appropriate in higher education (...) and suggest topics for continued study. (shrink)

In the recent history of philosophy few works have appeared which favorably portray Idealism as a plausible philosophical view of the world. Considerably less has been written about Idealism as a viable framework for doing theology. While the most recent and significant works on Idealism, composed by the late John Foster (Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenological Idealism), have put this theory back on the philosophical map, no such attempt has been made to re-introduce (...) Idealism to contemporary Christian theology. Idealism and Christian Theology is such a work, retrieving ideas and arguments from its most significant modern exponents (especially George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards) in order to assess its value for present and future theological construction. As a piece of constructive philosophical-theology itself, this volume considers the explanatory power an Idealist ontology has for contemporary Christian theology. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on professionalism in other health professions, psychology lags behind in the level of attention given to this core competency. In this article, we review definitions from other health professions and how they address professionalism. Next, we review how this competency evolved within health service psychology (HSP), and we propose a definition. We offer an approach for assessing professionalism within HSP. Consideration is given to strategies and methods for providing effective education and training in this multifaceted competency. (...) Finally, recommendations are made for creating a culture of professionalism within HSP and honoring psychology’s social contract with multiple publics. (shrink)

Director compensation can potentially represent an ethical minefield. When faced with supporting strategic decisions that can lead to an increase in director pay, directors may consider their own interests and not solely those of the shareholders to whom they are legally bound to represent. In such cases, directors essentially become agents, rather than those installed to protect principals (shareholders) from agents. Using acquisitions as a study context, we employ a matched-pair design and find a statistically significant difference in outside director (...) compensation between acquiring and control firms. Outside directors of acquiring firms earn more than twice as much as their counterparts in the matched-sample. (shrink)

Severe staffing shortages have emerged as a prominent threat to maintaining usual standards of care during the COVID-2019 pandemic. In dire settings of crisis capacity, healthcare systems assume the ethical duty to maximise aggregate population-level benefit of existing resources. To this end, existing plans for rationing mechanical ventilators and intensive care unit beds in crisis capacity focus on selecting individual patients who are most likely to survive and prioritising these patients to receive scarce resources. However, staffing capacity is conceptually different (...) from availability of these types of discrete resources, and the existing strategy of identifying and prioritising patients with the best prognosis cannot be readily adapted to fit this real-world scenario. We propose that two alternative approaches to staffing resource allocation offer a better conceptual fit: (1)prioritise the worst off: restrict access to acute care services and hospital admission for patients at relatively low clinical risk and (2)prioritise staff interventions with high near-term value: universally restrict selected interventions and treatments that require substantial staff time and/or energy but offer minimal near-term patient benefit. These strategies—while potentially resulting in care that deviates from usual standards–support the goal of maximising the aggregate benefit of scarce resources in crisis capacity settings triggered by staffing shortages. This ethical framework offers a foundation to support institutional leaders in developing operationalisable crisis capacity policies that promote fairness and support healthcare workers. (shrink)

In this essay, Amy Voss Farris and Pratim Sengupta argue that a democratic approach to children's computing education in a science class must focus on the aesthetics of children's experience. In Democracy and Education, Dewey links “democracy” with a distinctive understanding of “experience.” For Dewey, the value of educational experiences lies in “the unity or integrity of experience.” In Art as Experience, Dewey presents aesthetic experience as the fundamental form of human experience that undergirds all other forms of experiences (...) and that can bring together multiple forms of experiences, locating this form of experience in the work of artists. Particularly relevant to the focus of this essay, computational literacy, Dewey calls the process through which a person transforms a material into an expressive medium an aesthetic experience. Farris and Sengupta argue that the kind of experience that is appropriate for a democratic education in the context of children's computational science is essentially aesthetic in nature. Given that aesthetics has received relatively little attention in STEM education research, the authors' purpose here is to highlight the power of Deweyan aesthetic experience in making computational thinking available and attractive to all children, including those who are disinterested in computing, and especially those who are likely to be discounted by virtue of location, gender, or race. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article proposes rhetorical hegemony as a new materialist intervention into the production of alternative political economic futures. It problematizes contemporary theories of hegemony that assert affect as beyond rhetorical engagement, suggesting that these accounts fail to produce viable political economic alternatives because they use, but do not reinvent, the prevailing affective relations. Turning to and extending Foucault's middle and late work to forge a different model, the article discusses rhetorical hegemony as the entangled relationships between materiality and power. (...) In conversation with other contemporary theories, it argues for a practice of rhetorical hegemony that materially recapacitates energetic potential and, consequently, the milieu. The article ends by outlining the rhetorical, political, and intellectual implications of this shift. (shrink)

This volume takes a multi-disciplinary approach to continental philosophy of religion, engaging with philosophy, theology, religious studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and new religious movements, to explore patterns of mind and mortality, existence and ecstasy, creativity and expression, political possibility and religious matrix.

Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato’s true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial _Plato’s Philosophers_, Catherine Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order (...) in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama’s earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy’s limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues’ central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: what is the best way to live? Plato’s dramatization of Socratic imperfections suggests, moreover, that he recognized the apparently unbridgeable gap between our understandings of human life and the nonhuman world. At a time when this gap continues to raise questions—about the division between sciences and the humanities and the potentially dehumanizing effects of scientific progress—Zuckert’s brilliant interpretation of the entire Platonic corpus offers genuinely new insights into worlds past and present. (shrink)

We introduce a novel form of experimental knowledge that is the result of institutionally structured communication practices between farmers and university- and local community-based agronomists (agricultural extension specialists). This form of knowledge is exemplified in these communities’ uses of the concept of grower standard. Grower standard is a widely used but seldom discussed benchmark concept underpinning protocols used within agricultural experiments. It is not a one-size-fits-all standard but the product of local and active interactions between farmers and agricultural extension specialists. (...) Grower standard is in some ways similar to more familiar epistemic objects discussed in philosophy of experiment, such as controls or background conditions. However, we argue that grower standard is epistemically novel, due to how knowledge arising from it is coproduced by farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Further, in the United States, this knowledge coproduction is institutionally structured by federal legislature dating back to the 19th century. We use our analysis of grower standard to focus a discussion of the positionality of the coproducers as well as the epistemic products of this form of knowledge coproduction, and we explore the role extension work plays in shaping agricultural science more broadly. (shrink)

This volume recognizes and addresses the health care issues of prisoners, to establish best practices and to learn about approaches to these challenges from around the world. It presents new evidence on several emerging and classical prison health issues. The first goal of this volume is to address emerging issues related to health in prison. Second, it presents the most recent research-based evidence and translates it to the practice. The third goal, is that it allows for sufficient diversity while also (...) incorporating updates of some important already recognized prison health. The volume discusses prisons and the life and well-being of prisoners and staff, after growing problems as drug misuse (incl. tobacco smoking), infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STIs and TB), psychiatric problems, inadequate and unhealthy living conditions (incl. nutrition), overcrowding of prisons. These are addressed adequately in order to meet the international requirements of equivalence of health care. The scope of this volume is at the same type specific and diverse enough to cover the interests of a large audience that includes many types of practitioners involved in health-related issues in the field of prison health care, such as psychologists, nurses and prison administration officers responsible for health care, legal professionals and social workers. (shrink)

Pregnant people experience moral judgment in healthcare settings that may be coded into clinical documentation. Stigmatizing language in medical records transmits bias between clinicians, potentially exacerbating disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality. We examined obstetrical records from 100 randomly selected patients who received prenatal and delivery care in an academic hospital system. Qualitative analysis sought to identify linguistic features conveying negative attitudes or moral judgment, revealing themes of epistemic injustice: (1) discrediting patient testimony as incompetent, unreliable, and hysterical; (2) unnecessary (...) details that are objectifying, stigmatizing, or unprofessional; and (3) judgments of maternal fitness, where women are labeled “bad mothers” by emphasizing neglectful, selfish, and debauched characteristics. We conclude by advocating for further validation of our findings, revisiting medical education paradigms, and supporting the development of natural language processing (NLP) technologies to detect and intercept stigma. (shrink)

This article considers the engagement of Mario Tronti - one of the leading figures of classical Italian workerism [operaismo] - with the thought of Max Weber. Weber constituted one of Tronti’s most important cattivi maestri. By analysing Weber’s influence upon Tronti’s development, this article aims to show the ways in which this encounter affected his Marxism and political theory in general. In particular, during the period of the debate in Italian Marxism about the thesis of the autonomy of the political, (...) Tronti increasingly adopted Weberian terminology and theoretical points of reference. Ultimately, the article argues that Tronti’s heretical method led him to incorporate and to re-propose theoretical and political problematics that are characteristic of bourgeois political theory: namely, the dyad administration/charisma, and a teleological and anthropological approach to history. Focusing upon this heterodox encounter therefore enables us to understand one of the trajectories of the transformation of Marxism that occurred during its recurrent rendezvous with the ‘Marx of the bourgeoisie’. (shrink)

This paper addresses three factors that have contributed to shifts in decision making in health care. First, the notion of patient autonomy, which has changed due to the rise of patient-centred approaches in contemporary health care and the re-conceptualization of the physician-patient relationship. Second, the understanding of patient autonomy has broadened to better engage patient participation. Third, the need to develop cross-cultural health care ethics. Our paper shows that the shift in the West from the individual to the relational self (...) indicates an important change in the understanding of autonomy through the lens of culture. Practices that recognize the notion of the relational self allow for a more balanced view of autonomy and a richer conception of moral agency. (shrink)

Tracing the sign -- Signing the trace -- The messianic without messianism -- Mourning terminable and interminable : law and (commmodity) fetishism -- Justice, law, and Antigone's singular act -- Generalizing the economy of fetishism.

Ohad Nachtomy restates the main points of “Plenitude and Compossibility” with admirable fidelity and economy. His proposed revisions, based on the distinction between incomplete and complete substances and on the mind-relativity of relations, are intriguing additions to his earlier paper in Studia Leibnitiana and deserve careful consideration. Some brief remarks on the context of the problem, will, I hope, help to set the stage for the assessment of our various views.

Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous “Machiavellian” politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli’s Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a (...) major reinterpretation of Machiavelli’s prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli’s two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works—La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories—under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli’s Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli’s teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained. (shrink)

This study of the metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz gives a clear picture of his philosophical development within the general scheme of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Catherine Wilson examines the shifts in Leibniz's thinking as he confronted the major philosophical problems of his era. Beginning with his interest in artificial languages and calculi for proof and discovery, the author proceeds to an examination of Leibniz’s early theories of matter and motion, to the phenomenalistic turn in his theory of substance and (...) his subsequent de-emphasis of logical determinism, and finally to his doctrines of harmony and optimization. Specific attention is given to Leibniz’s understanding of Descartes and his successors, Malebranche and Spinoza, and the English philosophers Newton, Cudworth, and Locke. Wilson analyzes Leibniz’s complex response to the new mechanical philosophy, his discontent with the foundations on which it rested, and his return to the past to locate the resources for reconstructing it. She argues that the continuum-problem is the key to an understanding not only of Leibniz’s monadology but also of his views on the substantiality of the self and the impossibility of external causal influence. A final chapter considers the problem of Leibniz-reception in the post-Kantian era, and the difficulty of coming to terms with a metaphysics that is not only philosophically "critical" but, at the same time, “compensatory.” Originally published in 2050. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article considers the role of the adult epithelial stem cell, with particular reference to the intestinal epithelial stem cell. Although the potential of adult stem cells has been revealed in a number of recent publications, the organization and control of the stem cell hierarchy in epithelial tissues is still not fully understood. The intestinal epithelium is an excellent model in which to study such hierarchies, having a distinctive polarity and high rate of cell proliferation and migration. Studies on the (...) small intestinal crypt provide insight into the characteristics of the stem cells in normal and regenerating circumstances and demonstrate why a thorough understanding of these cells is an essential pre‐requisite for stem cell based therapeutic approaches. BioEssays 24:91–98, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 4 Seiten: 549-573.