The vital status of patients who are a part of controlled donation after circulatory death (cDCD) is widely debated in bioethical literature. Opponents to currently applied cDCD protocols argue that they violate the dead donor rule, while proponents of the protocols advocate compatibility. In this article, we argue that both parties often misinterpret the moral implications of the dead donor rule. The rule as such does not require an assessment of a donor’s vital status, we contend, but rather an assessment (...) of whether procurement of organs in cDCD cause the death of the donor or not. We then argue that commonly practiced cDCD protocols do not violate the dead donor rule, since the donation does not trigger or cause the death of the donors. (shrink)

The introduction of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD) protocols is by some regarded as controversial and ethically troublesome. One of the main concerns that opponents have about introducing NRP in cDCDD protocols is that reestablishing circulation will negate the determination of death by circulatory criteria, potentially resuscitating the donor. In this article, I argue that this is not the case. If we take a closer look at the concept of death underlying the (...) circulatory criterion for determination of death, we find that the purpose of the criterion is to show whether the organism as a whole has died. I argue that this purpose is fulfilled by the circulatory criterion in cDCDD protocols, and that applying NRP does not negate the determination of death or resuscitate the donor. (shrink)

What is death: a process or a specific declaration? Is it a biological continuum of events or a decision based on medical, ethical, and legal criteria? In our view, it is both, and there are philos...

In this paper, we introduce the Societal Readiness Thinking Tool to aid researchers and innovators in developing research projects with greater responsiveness to societal values, needs, and expectations. The need for societally-focused approaches to research and innovation—complementary to Technology Readiness frameworks—is presented. Insights from responsible research and innovation concepts and practice, organized across critical stages of project-life cycles are discussed with reference to the development of the SR Thinking Tool. The tool is designed to complement not only shortfalls in TR (...) approaches, but also improve upon other efforts to integrate RRI, sustainability, and design thinking in research and innovation cycles. Operationalization and early-stage user tests of the Tool are reported, along with discussion of potential future iterations and applications. (shrink)

The unfolding of string theory has led to a successive refinement and generalization of our understanding of geometry and topology. A brief overview of these developments is given.

Does normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) resurrect the dead? That was the question I asked in one of the target articles published in the special issue of The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB)...

The determination of the past and the future of a physical system are complementary aims of measurements. An optimal determination of the past of a system can be achieved by an informationally complete set of physical quantities. Such a set is always strongly noncommutative. An optimal determination of the future of a physical system can be obtained by a Boolean complete set of quantities. The two aims can be reconciled to a reasonable degree with using unsharp measurements.

The quantum theory of sequential measurements is worked out and is employed to provide an operational analysis of basic measurement theoretical notions such as coexistence, correlations, repeatability, and ideality. The problem of the operational definition of continuous observables is briefly revisited, with a special emphasis on the localization observable. Finally, a brief overview is given of possible applications of the theory to various fields and problems in quantum physics.

Uncertainty relations and complementarity of canonically conjugate position and momentum observables in quantum theory are discussed with respect to some general coupling properties of a function and its Fourier transform. The question of joint localization of a particle on bounded position and momentum value sets and the relevance of this question to the interpretation of position-momentum uncertainty relations is surveyed. In particular, it is argued that the Heisenberg interpretation of the uncertainty relations can consistently be carried through in a natural (...) extension of the usual Hilbert space frame of the quantum theory. (shrink)

The role of completely positive mappings in quantum dynamics and measurement theory is reanalyzed in light of the possibility of a generalized dynamics.

MacDougall has argued that Rawls’s liberal social theory suggests that parents who hold certain religious convictions can legitimately refuse blood transfusion on their children’s behalf. This paper argues that this is wrong for at least five reasons. First, MacDougall neglects the possibility that true freedom of conscience entails the right to choose one’s own religion rather than have it dictated by one’s parents. Second, he conveniently ignores the fact that children in such situations are much more likely to die than (...) to survive without blood. Third, he relies on an ambiguous understanding of what is "rational" and treats children as mere extensions of their parents. Fourth, he neglects the fact that those in the original position would seek to protect themselves from persecution and enslavement and thus would not allow groups of children to be killed because of their parents’ beliefs. Finally, Rawls makes it clear that we should choose for children as we would choose for ourselves in the original position, with no particular conception of the good (such as that held by Jehovah’s Witnesses). (shrink)

L'axe principal de ce texte du philosophe polonais Emil Lask (1875-1915) est la critique de la philosophie de la valeur et la théorie de la connaissance. Son exposé est l'une des révisions du kantisme les plus radicales du début du XXe siècle.

Insurance coverage of abortion varies widely across the United States and is an extensively debated issue. Medicaid coverage of abortion is particularly relevant because the majority of abortion patients are poor or low‐income and are thus often covered by Medicaid. Since the Hyde Amendment was first passed in 1976, federal Medicaid funds have been banned from covering the costs of elective abortion. Although states are allowed to use their own funds to cover abortions for their Medicaid recipients, only 17 states (...) currently do so. Of these 17 states, only five cover abortion costs voluntarily; the others do so pursuant to court order. The medical literature includes few ethical analyses of the Hyde Amendment’s ban on Medicaid funding of elective abortions. To fill this gap, we perform an ethical analysis of federal policy to fund elective abortions using a consequentialist approach focused on consequences for pregnant women and their children. (shrink)

The redundant-signals paradigm (RSP) is designed to investigate response behavior in perceptual tasks in which response-relevant targets are defined by either one or two features, or modalities. The common finding is that responses are speeded for redundantly compared to singly defined targets. This redundant-signals effect (RSE) can be accounted for by race models if the response times do not violate the race model inequality (RMI). When there are violations of the RMI, race models are effectively excluded as a viable account (...) of the RSE. The common alternative is provided by co-activation accounts, which assume that redundant target signals are integrated at some processing stage. However, ‘co-activation’ has mostly been only indirectly inferred and the accounts have only rarely been explicitly modeled; if they were modeled, the RSE has typically been assumed to have a decisional locus. Yet, there are also indications in the literature that the RSE might originate, at least in part, at a non-decisional or motor stage. In the present study, using a distribution analysis of sequential-sampling models (ex-Wald and Ratcliff Diffusion model), the locus of the RSE was investigated for two bimodal (audio-visual) detection tasks that strongly violated the RMI, indicative of substantial co-activation. Three model variants assuming different loci of the RSE were fitted to the quantile reaction time proportions: a decision, a non-decision, and a combined variant both to vincentized group as well as individual data. The results suggest that for the two bimodal detection tasks, co-activation has a shared decisional and non-decisional locus. These findings point to the possibility that the mechanisms underlying the RSE depend on the specifics (task, stimulus, conditions, etc.) of the experimental paradigm. (shrink)

The standard model of the quantum theory of measurement is based on an interaction Hamiltonian in which the observable to be measured is multiplied by some observable of a probe system. This simple Ansatz has proved extremely fruitful in the development of the foundations of quantum mechanics. While the ensuing type of models has often been argued to be rather artificial, recent advances in quantum optics have demonstrated their principal and practical feasibility. A brief historical review of the standard model (...) together with an outline of its virtues and limitations are presented as an illustration of the mutual inspiration that has always taken place between foundational and experimental research in quantum physics. (shrink)