Some are concerned about the possibility that offering money for research participation can constitute coercion or undue influence capable of distorting the judgment of potential research subjects and compromising the voluntariness of their informed consent. The author recognizes that more often than not there are multiple influences leading to decisions, including decisions about research participation. The concept of undue influence is explored, as well as the question of whether or not there is something uniquely distorting about money as opposed to (...) a chance for treatment or medical care. An amount of money that is not excessive and is calculated on the basis of time or contribution may, rather than constitute an undue inducement, be an indication of respect for the time and contribution that research subjects make. (shrink)

Paul O'Grady clearly distinguishes five main kinds: relativism about truth, relativism about logic, ontological relativism, epistemological relativism, and, finally, relativism about rationality. In each case he shows what makes a position relativist and how it differs from a sceptical or pluralist position. He ends by presenting a thoroughly integrated position that rejects some forms while defending others. The book includes discussion of recent work by Putnam, Devitt, Searle, Priest, and Quine and offers a succinct survey of contemporary debates. This (...) lively discussion of the issue will be welcome reading for all those involved in philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Controversy persists over the ethics of compensating research participants and providing posttrial benefits to communities in developing countries. Little is known about residents' views on these subjects. In this study, interviews about compensation and posttrial benefits from a hypothetical HIV vaccine trial were conducted in Uganda’s Rakai District. Most respondents said researchers owed the community posttrial benefits and research compensation, but opinions differed as to what these should be. Debates about posttrial benefits and compensation rarely include residents' views like these, (...) but future ones should. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 5-7.

Does the biography of a philosopher have any relevance to assessing their philosophy? After considering and rejecting three distinct treatments of this question, a different answer is articulated here. Distinguishing between the content and approach of a philosophical text, this article argues that biography is relevant to assessing the approach of the text in three ways: in its socio-historical context, its philosophical context, and its personal context in the life of the philosopher. Such a strategy offers new ways of comparing (...) very different texts and assessing them in terms of the aims of the philosopher writing them. (shrink)

Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)

Dr. Henry Beecher, a renowned Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist, sent shock waves through the medical research community and the lay press when he described 22 examples of “unethical or questionably ethical studies” by reputable researchers at major institutions in his now well-known 1966 New England Journal of Medicine article. Beecher concluded this exposé by noting: “The ethical approach to experimentation in man has several components: two are more important than the others, the first being informed consent.... Secondly, there is the (...) more reliable safeguard provided by the presence of an intelligent, informed, conscientious, compassionate, responsible investigator”. Beecher’s... (shrink)

This concise book brings behavioral insights to the wide array of topics commonly taught in the required professional responsibility course, including admission to the practice of law, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, representing entities, prosecutorial and criminal defense ethics, litigation and negotiation ethics, legal billing, and managerial and subordinate responsibilities. Behavioral legal ethics relies on empirical research to explore how lawyers actually make ethical decisions in context, rather than how they predict they would decide an ethical dilemma. This approach complements the (...) law of lawyering by seeking to understand how various psychological factors and situational pressures explain and influence decision-making and resulting ethical (or unethical) action. Each chapter explores findings from behavioral science that pertain to ethical decision-making such as motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, fast thinking, the fundamental attribution error, wrongful obedience, conformity, moral disengagement, and much more. In addition, each chapter contains relevant case studies and reflection questions to deepen and cement students' understanding of the role of behavioral legal ethics in professional responsibility. Finally, the book offers ideas for individual attorneys and legal organizations to improve ethical decision-making."--Publisher's webpage. (shrink)

Lynch and colleagues describe positive and cautionary lessons learned from recent extraordinary research efforts to develop COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics and consider whether some of th...

In their target article, Morain and colleagues (2019) tackle the long-standing and thorny issue of whether and when it might be ethical for a physician-investigator to obtain research consent from...

The late twentieth century has provided both reasons and occasions for reassessing just war theory as an organizing framework for the moral analysis of war. Books by G. Scott Davis, James T. Johnson, and John Kelsay, together with essays by Jeffrey Stout, Charles Butterworth, David Little, Bruce Lawrence, Courtney Campbell, and Tamara Sonn, signal a remarkable shift in war studies as they enlarge the cultural lens through which the interests and forces at play in political violence are identified and evaluated. (...) In his review of the contribution made by these texts, the author focuses on the cohesion of just war theory, the asymmetry between Christian and Islamic attitudes toward holy war, and the need to develop just war theory into a tool adequate to assist in the moral evaluation of violent conflicts within, not just between, nation-states. (shrink)

Nursing and bioethics have a lot in common because they share concerns about life and death, illness and health, the rights of individuals and communities, ethical patient care, health care delivery, and public health. Nurses and bioethicists contribute to ethical practice, ethics scholarship, and health policy‐making in a variety of ways. Some nurses have bioethics education or experience, some bioethicists study or collaborate closely with nurses, and some of us proudly identify as both bioethicists and as nurses. Despite certain shared (...) and interwoven aims, bioethicists and nurses often accomplish their goals in dissimilar ways, have diverse educational and training trajectories as well as distinct roles and responsibilities, and are viewed differently within health care organizations. Yet the work of bioethics and nursing can be, and in my view should more often be, synergistic. That synergism may be especially critical in the arena of health policy and ethics. Nurses can bring extraordinary insights and real‐world experiences to the policy table but are not always considered essential contributors. (shrink)

The late twentieth century has provided both reasons and occasions for reassessing just war theory as an organizing framework for the moral analysis of war. Books by G. Scott Davis, James T. Johnson, and John Kelsay, together with essays by Jeffrey Stout, Charles Butterworth, David Little, Bruce Lawrence, Courtney Campbell, and Tamara Sonn, signal a remarkable shift in war studies as they enlarge the cultural lens through which the interests and forces at play in political violence are identified and evaluated. (...) In his review of the contribution made by these texts, the author focuses on the cohesion of just war theory, the asymmetry between Christian and Islamic attitudes toward holy war, and the need to develop just war theory into a tool adequate to assist in the moral evaluation of violent conflicts within, not just between, nation-states. (shrink)

abstractBackground: Evidence shows both a tendency for research participants to conflate research and clinical care and a limited public understanding of research. Conflation of research and care by participants is often referred to as the therapeutic misconception. Despite this evidence, few studies have explicitly asked participants, and especially minors, to explain what they think research is and how they think it differs from regular medical care. Methods: As part of a longer semistructured interview evaluating assent and parental permission for research, (...) adolescent research participants (n = 177), including adolescents with illnesses and healthy volunteers, and their parents (n = 177) were asked to describe medical research in their own words and say whether and how they thought being in medical research was different from seeing a regular doctor. Qualitative responses were coded and themes were identified through an iterative process. Results: When asked to describe medical research, the majority described research in terms of its goals of helping to advance science, develop treatments and medicines, and help others; fewer described research as having the goal of helping particular research participants, and fewer still in terms of the methods used in research. The majority of teen and parent respondents said being in research is different than seeing a regular doctor and explained this by describing different goals, different or more procedures, differences in the engagement of the doctors/researchers, and differences in logistics. Conclusions: Adolescents participating in clinical research and their parents generally describe medical research in terms of its goals of advancing science and finding new medicines and treatments, sometimes in combination with helping the enrolled individuals. The majority perceive a difference between research and regular medical care and described these differences in various ways. Further exploration is warranted about how such perceived differences matter to participants and how this understanding could be used to enhance informed consent and the overall research experience. (shrink)

In this set of contributions to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal celebrating the significant work and contributions of LeRoy Walters, we aim to bring new perspectives to topics that Dr. Walters helped to pioneer and continue his tradition of bringing moral insights and arguments to bear on the development of practical public and professional policies. Dr. Walters is well known for his invaluable service as member and chair of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee at the National Institutes of Health. (...) He also made major contributions to a variety of other committees responsible for the oversight of research and science, and to the development and implementation of influential... (shrink)

Different types of consent are used to obtain human biospecimens for future research. This variation has resulted in confusion regarding what research is permitted, inadvertent constraints on future research, and research proceeding without consent. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center's Department of Bioethics held a workshop to consider the ethical acceptability of addressing these concerns by using broad consent for future research on stored biospecimens. Multiple bioethics scholars, who have written on these issues, discussed the reasons for consent, the (...) range of consent strategies, and gaps in our understanding, and concluded with a proposal for broad initial consent coupled with oversight and, when feasible, ongoing provision of information to donors. This article describes areas of agreement and areas that need more research and dialogue. Given recent proposed changes to the Common Rule, and new guidance regarding storing and sharing data and samples, this is an important and tim.. (shrink)

I focus on two challenges that processing-based theories of language must confront: the need to explain why language has the particular properties that it does, and the need to explain why processing pressures are manifested in the particular way that they are. I discuss these matters with reference to two illustrative phenomena: proximity effects in word order and a constraint on contraction.

Chaucer's best-known poem, The Canterbury Tales, is justly celebrated for its richness and variety, both literary - the Tales include fabliaux, romances, sermons, hagiographies, fantasies, satires, treatises, fables and exempla - and thematic, with its explorations of courtly love and scatology, piety and impiety, chivalry and pacifism, fidelity and adultery. Students new to Chaucer will find in this Companion a lively introduction to the poem's diversity, depth, and wonder. Readers returning to the Tales will appreciate the chapters' fresh engagement with (...) the individual tales and their often complicated critical histories, inflected in recent decades by critical approaches attentive to issues of gender, sexuality, class, and language. (shrink)

The cerebral distinctness of the linguistic and mathematical faculties does not entail their functional independence. Approaches to language that posit a common foundation for the two make claims about design features, not location, and are thus not affected by the finding that one ability can be spared by a neurological accident that compromises the other.

This book offers eleven different philosophical approaches to issues concerning the basis of value, the nature of the good life, and human destiny; important matters in this recession. The essayists featured are professors at Trinity College Dublin.