Medicine is in a very self-reflective mood. There is a revival of interest not only in medical ethics but also in medical history, the Hippocratic corpus, and various kinds of literature that indicate physicians are reexamining the foundations of medicine and what it is that gives meaning to medicine. That is, they are reexamining the physician's vocation, in the true sense of vocation as a calling. This interest has coincided with the concern of third parties such as accreditation agencies about (...) the professionalism of physicians. (shrink)

Two aspects of mothering—using drugs during pregnancy and giving up the rearing of one's children—are the focus of this analysis of 58 addicted Chicana mothers who spent their adolescent years in barrio gangs. From a traditional stance, such women were doubly deviant, since they violated gender-role prescriptions by joining a barrio gang and by becoming involved in heroin and street life. Half of these women added to this deviance by using heroin during pregnancy, and 40 percent relinquished at least one (...) of their children. This article explores what distinguishes these classically “bad mothers” from addicts who maintain some degree of conventionality in their mothering. We found that Mexican gender-role traditionalism is not the only influence on these women. Many came from cholo or underclass families with a tradition of street involvement. In addition, their involvement in gang and heroin worlds may influence their behavior as mothers. We found that women who used drugs during pregnancy were more likely than abstainers to be cholas and to reject traditional gender-role values. However, those who gave up their children were more likely than those who kept their children to be from traditional families. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on deviance and the underclass among Hispanic women. (shrink)

This article draws on ethnographic field data collected during an investigation of the informed consent process and AIDS clinical trials. It describes the involvement of care providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) during the enlistment, or recruitment, phase of the informed consent process. It shows that sometimes care providers are involved in the receipt, evaluation and distribution of information on clinical trials through their interactions with research professionals and patients. It suggests that the involvement of care providers has the potential (...) to influence the informed consent process. Some of the ethical and practice considerations of this are discussed. (shrink)

Segundo de uma série de três artigos que visam a analisar a utilização do discurso alegórico – em sua vertente alegórica e hermenêutica – em três obras de José Saramago: Memorial do convento, Manual de pintura e caligrafia e O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo. Neste segundo ensaio, enfocaremos a visão clássica sobre alegoria e metáfora, destacando as três qualidades básicas para a “boa mímeses” – a brevidade, a clareza e a verossimilhança – e os fines da alegoria retórica, os quais (...) eram determinados em função da maior ou da menor clareza existente entre sentido literal e figurado. Analisaremos ainda as diferenças estabelecidas pela Retórica clássica entre tota allegoria, permixta apertis allegoria e mala affectatio, considerando ainda como o Maneirismo e o Barroco, inverteram esses valores e de que modo o Memorial do Convento e o Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia, de José Saramago, resgatam a concepção barroca da alegoria construtiva ou retórica. (shrink)

Drawing on field data gathered from 1994 to 1996, this article considers tensions in the development of community networks and highlights the decisions that shape particular types of networks. Four key decision points include interface choice, content, interaction, and outreach. Discourse about decision making is often dichotomized around civic and consumer social currents. Civic currents demand text-only interfaces, exclusively non- profit content, full electronic interaction capabilities for everyone, and deep outreach efforts. In contrast, consumer currents push graphical interfaces, the inclusion (...) of profit-making content, limited interaction options, and meso to shallow outreach. While considering the influences of these currents, the article problematizes the dichotomy and considers more specific social influences on decision making. It also suggests specific network decisions that may contribute to greater communications equity. (shrink)

An exploration of the limitations of the language of "mental health" in the light of suicide epidemics at universities, and a sketch of the existentialist understanding of death as alternative.

This paper reviews the characteristics of anorexia nervosa described in the DSM-III-R , relates them to normative gender roles and adolescent development, and critiques those roles on feminist grounds. Two apparently contradictory explanations for the irrational pursuit of thinness are considered: a) the anorexic thus attempts to conform to a socially defined feminine ideal; b) the anorexic thus attempts to avoid the appearance and consequences of mature womanhood. I propose that both explanations are applicable, together emplifying the ambiguity that Simone (...) de Beauvoir considers characteristic of female experience. Because both explanations suggest a gender identity disorder, I question the fact that the DSM-III-R fails to indicate this linkage. I argue further that therapeutic considerations require efforts to alter the socialization factors that are implicative in anorexia nervosa. Keywords: anorexia nervosa, diagnoses, feminism, philosophy of biology, psychiatry CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In A Passage to India, E.M. Forster examines the duality of three main characters, Mrs. Moore, Aziz, and Fielding and thereby demonstrates their relative stability in the primordial chaos of India. Unlike Adela who falls apart after her experience in the cave, these characters draw on the power of the imagination in a grappling struggle to remain morally centered when facing the darkness within. Forster suggests that turning to the East (where the Marabar caves represent darkness and destabilization) contrasts with (...) returning to the West (where imaginative form represents order and light). In Mrs. Moore, Aziz, and Fielding, Forster examines the manner in which one might embrace a centered life committed to empathy for others by way of facing one’s own otherness. As these characters immerse themselves in India’s primordial formlessness and acknowledge their shadows, they embrace imaginative form rather than fall apart, and in doing so they serve as models of mythmakers and relative stability. (shrink)

Graeme Earl's paper on computer graphic modeling in archaeology raises many themes of interest for the philosopher of science, although, as is to be expected of complex social and technical disciplinary practices, these philosophical issues are not to be easily separated or neatly labeled. On the one hand, the modeling practices and concerns of the archaeologists dispute (or even disrupt) the philosophers' traditional notions, while the formers' reective commentaries offer sophisticated analyses that go beyond the latters' traditional reflections on models. (...) On the other hand, the paper raises new questions about how human and social scientists—as humans with social lives—engage with models in their different .. (shrink)

This paper examines contemporary developments in legal philosophy and in ethics with a view to a possibile reunification of moral philosophy on Kantian principles. With regard to legal philosophy, it notes the difficulty of an empiricist account of natural rights and relates it to the problem of obligation to apply with juridical laws. It then considers Kant's solution to problems regarding the concepts of obligation and of a right encountered by his predecessors in the natural rights tradition, whom he would (...) classify as empiricists. Turning form "The Droctrine of Right" to "The Doctrine of Virtue," it evaluates the assertion that Kant, as distinguished from "virtue ethics," has an "ethics of rules" modelled on law rather than an "ethics of character." Der Beitrag befaßt sich mit gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen im Bereich von Rechtsphilosophie und Ethik mit dem Ziel einer möglichen Wiedervereinigung der Moralphilosophie nach kantischen Prinzipien. In bezug auf die Rechtsphilosophie betont er die Schwierigkeit eines empiristischen Verständnisses von Naturrechten und bezieht diese Schwierigkeit auf das Problem der Verbindlichkeit juridischer Gesetze. Dann wird Kants Lösung der Probleme untersucht, die sich mit den Begriffen "Verbindlichkeit" und "ein Recht" für diejenigen seiner Vorgänger in der Naturrechtstradition ergeben, die Kant als Empiristen bezeichnen würde. Von der "Rechtslehre" zur "Tugendlehre" übergehend wird schließlich die Behauptung geprüft, derzufolge Kant, im Unterschied zur "Tugendethik-Lehre" , eher eine "Ethik der Regeln" vertritt, die sich auf Gesetze stützt, als eine "Ethik des Charakters". (shrink)