Children, because of age-related reasons, are a vulnerable population, and protecting their health is a social, scientific and emotional priority. The increased susceptibility of children and fetuses to environmental agents has been widely discussed by the scientific community. Children may experience different levels of chemical exposure than adults, and their sensitivity to chemical toxicities may be increased or decreased in comparison with adults. Such considerations also apply to unborn and newborn children. Therefore, research on children is necessary in both clinical (...) and environmental fields, to provide age-specific relevant data regarding the efficacy and safety of medical treatments, and regarding the assessment of risk from unintended environmental exposure. In this context, the stakeholders are many, including children and their parents, physicians and public health researchers, and the society as a whole, with its ethical, regulatory, administrative and political components. The important ethical issues are information of participants and consent to participate. Follow-up and protection of data should be discussed in the context of biobanks, where children obtain individual rights when they become adults. It is important to realise that there are highly variable practices within European countries, which may have, in the past, led to differences in practical aspects of research in children. A number of recommendations are provided for research with children and environmental health. Environmental research with children should be scientifically justified, with sound research questions and valid study protocols of sufficient statistical power, ensuring the autonomy of the child and his/her family at the time of the study and later in life, if data and samples are used for follow-up studies. When children are enrolled, we recommend a consent dyad, including parental informed consent and the child’s assent and/or informed consent from older minors. For evaluation of the studies including children, a paediatrician should always be involved in the research ethics committee. (shrink)

Children, because of age-related reasons, are a vulnerable population, and protecting their health is a social, scientific and emotional priority. The increased susceptibility of children and fetuses to environmental agents has been widely discussed by the scientific community. Children may experience different levels of chemical exposure than adults, and their sensitivity to chemical toxicities may be increased or decreased in comparison with adults. Such considerations also apply to unborn and newborn children. Therefore, research on children is necessary in both clinical (...) and environmental fields, to provide age-specific relevant data regarding the efficacy and safety of medical treatments, and regarding the assessment of risk from unintended environmental exposure. In this context, the stakeholders are many, including children and their parents, physicians and public health researchers, and the society as a whole, with its ethical, regulatory, administrative and political components. The important ethical issues are information of participants and consent to participate. Follow-up and protection of data should be discussed in the context of biobanks, where children obtain individual rights when they become adults. It is important to realise that there are highly variable practices within European countries, which may have, in the past, led to differences in practical aspects of research in children. A number of recommendations are provided for research with children and environmental health. Environmental research with children should be scientifically justified, with sound research questions and valid study protocols of sufficient statistical power, ensuring the autonomy of the child and his/her family at the time of the study and later in life, if data and samples are used for follow-up studies. When children are enrolled, we recommend a consent dyad, including parental informed consent and the child’s assent and/or informed consent from older minors. For evaluation of the studies including children, a paediatrician should always be involved in the research ethics committee. (shrink)

Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities. Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and (...) upholds that there is no reason to exclude social or economic entities. (shrink)

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

Argument-places play an important role in our dealing with relations. However, that does not mean that argument-places should be taken as primitive entities. It is possible to give an account of ‘real’ relations in which argument-places play no role. But if argument-places are not basic, then what can we say about their identity? Can they, for example, be reconstructed in set theory with appropriate urelements? In this article, we show that for some relations, argument-places cannot be modeled in aneutralway in (...) V[A], the cumulative hierarchy with basic ingredients of the relation as urelements. We argue that a natural way to conceive of argument-places is to identify them with abstract, structureless points of a derivative structure exemplified by positional frames. In case the relation has symmetry, these points may be indiscernible. (shrink)

Abstract. We argue that all human beings have a special type of dignity which is the basis for (1) the obligation all of us have not to kill them, (2) the obligation to take their well-being into account when we act, and (3) even the obligation to treat them as we would have them treat us, and indeed, that all human beings are equal in fundamental dignity. We give reasons to oppose the position that only some human beings, because of (...) their possession of certain characteristics in addition to their humanity (for example, an immediately exercisable capacity for self-consciousness, or for rational deliberation), have full moral worth. What distinguishes human beings from other animals, what makes human beings persons rather than things, is their rational nature, and human beings are rational creatures by virtue of possessing natural capacities for conceptual thought, deliberation, and free choice, that is, the natural capacity to shape their own lives. (shrink)

The question asked in this article is: what is a parasite?. Defining a parasite requires defining its host at the same time. A difficult question therefore arises about host-parasite relationships. The object of general parasitology is in fact to study the relationship between a host and its parasite. The initial question what is a parasite? has to be reformulated within a conceptual framework, that of relationship. This article is an attempt to transpose into parasitology some concepts which have been profitable (...) in the fields of physics and chemistry. The studies of R. Thom about the individual are also used. Concepts like that of field and principles like that of minimization are probably operational on a high level of organization. The description of host-parasite relationships could benefit from these concepts. (shrink)

"A third of the papers in this volume originated at the 1987 Spindel Conference ... at Memphis State University"--Pref.

We investigate the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (often assumed to reflect corporate voluntarism) and government (often assumed to reflect coercion). We distinguish two broad perspectives on the CSR and government relationship: thedichotomous(i.e., government and CSR are / should be independent of one another) and therelated(i.e., government and CSR are / should be interconnected). Using typologies of CSR public policy and of CSR and the law, we present an integrated framework for corporate discretion for engagement with public policy for (...) CSR. We make four related contributions. First, we explain the dichotomous and the related perspectives with reference to their various assumptions and analyses. Second, we demonstrate that public policy for CSR and corporate discretion coexist and interact. Specifically, we show, third, that public policy for CSR can inform and stimulate corporate discretion and, fourth, that corporations have discretion for CSR, particularly as to how corporations engage with such policy. (shrink)

Pursuing a line of progression articulated by Prof. Quine, Dr. Pasch (Experience and the Analytic) argues that the analytic-synthetic distinction rests on mere convention. Further, that the use of this distinction by present day empiricists--especially the rational reconstructionists--has caused empiricism to take a departure from traditional empiricism. I observe, in opposition, 1) the natural language firmament is itself an amorphous construct, 2) the natural language might be the language of experience but not of empiricism, 3) the ideal language is tied (...) to experience by primitives for what perceptually appears, and 4) if one claims the primitives must be tested in scientific inquiry, a case should be made for this philosophical position. (shrink)

The article consider the concept of religious pluralism by M. Mendelssohn and some aspects of his theory of knowledge and linguistic theory, lying in the foundation of the pluralism concept. The article shows that Mendelssohn expressed views that are far ahead of his time. His theory of knowledge repeats some lines of Hume's philosophy, which he praised highly, what was not characteristic of the German Enlightenment as a whole. By virtue of this, Mendelssohn can be considered as Kant's predecessor in (...) a positive assessment of Hume. Some of Mendelssohns ideas are further developed in phenomenology. The author argues that Mendelssohns views on the interaction of religions, although they have a number of features that make this thinker related to other thinkers of the Enlightenment, also have a fundamental difference with them. As a result, his religious pluralism concept is close to the modern understanding of religious pluralism. The author also attempts to reveal the reasons why Mendelssohn, despite his great significance for both German philosophy and Jewish culture, was almost forgotten for a long time. (shrink)