Following promulgation of the Nuremberg code in 1947, the ethics of research on human subjects has been a challenging and often contentious topic of debate. Escalation in the use of research participants in low-income countries over recent decades , has intensified the debate on the ethics of international research and led to increasing attention both to exploitation of vulnerable subjects and to considerations of how the 10:90 gap in health and medical research could be narrowed. In 2000, prompted by the (...) discussions over several years that led to the US NIH launching a capacity building programme on research ethics for members of research ethics committees in developing countries, we advanced a ‘new look’ for the ethics of international research.1 Since then progress has been made on several fronts.First, our ideas—considered somewhat radical and impractical at the time—have been provocatively addressed by scholars who have either contested them or advanced similar conceptions of what obligations international researchers have to research participants and communities in low income countries before, during and after clinical trials. Second, those researchers who have been sympathetic to our ideas have either endeavoured to put these into practice or have investigated the feasibility of doing so. Third, the intractability of the 10/90 gap and the escalation of interest in global health have sensitised many to the need to amplify the uptake of these ideas in practice.Here, we briefly review the conceptual and practical developments in international research ethics. While much conceptual progress has been made (and the concepts are now appearing …. (shrink)

In 1931 the mathematical logician Kurt Godel published a revolutionary paper that challenged certain basic assumptions underpinning mathematics and logic. A colleague of Albert Einstein, his theorem proved that mathematics was partly based on propositions not provable within the mathematical system and had radical implications that have echoed throughout many fields. A gripping combination of science and accessibility, Godel’s Proof by Nagel and Newman is for both mathematicians and the idly curious, offering those with a taste for logic and philosophy (...) the chance to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The treatment decisions of competent adults, especially treatment refusals, are generally respected. In the case of minors something turns on their age, and older minors ought increasingly to make their own decisions. On the other hand, parents decide on behalf of infants and young children. Their right to do so can best be justified in terms of the importance of preserving intimate family relationships, rather than in terms of the child's best interests, although the child's best interests will most often (...) follow from this arrangement. Nevertheless, there are and ought to be legal, ethical, and financial constraints on parental decision making. (shrink)

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

In this response to Jeff Pflug’s review of my dissertation Michael Polanyi’s Integrative Philosophy, I note that Pflug focused on my discussion of possible extension of Polanyi’s epistemology; he has also taken my statements on scientific truth out of context. In addition, he ignored the four major elements of the dissertation, thereby not giving the reader a “map” to the meaning and the rationale of the work – an intellectual biography of Polanyi.

Human-eyelid conditioning was the principal source of information on Pavlovian conditioning, especially human, in the 1950s and 1960s, but it suffered a sharp decline in productivity, beginning in the late 1960s. The present article treats the decline as a case study with potential implications concerning the survival contingencies of research specialties. We make use of questionnaire data from eyelid-conditioning researchers and examine a variety of publication, topic-of-investigation, and institutional data to identify the major factors in the decline of human-eyelid conditioning.

Die Wissenschaftspsychologie wird als ein Gebiet interdisziplinärer Forschungen an der Grenze zwischen Psychologie und allgemeiner Theorie und Geschichte der Wissenschaft erörtert und ihr Verhältnis zu den anderen Richtungen der Wissenschaftsforschung, insbesondere zur Logik der Wissenschaftsentwicklung und zur Wissenschaftssoziologie dargestellt. Dabei heben die Autoren hervor, daß die Ausarbeitung jeder dieser Disziplinen eine Umgestaltung ihrer Ausgangsbegriffe und -methoden voraussetzt, was der Natur der Wissenschaft als spezifischen Systems und als besonderer sich historisch entwickelnder Tätigkeitsform entspricht. Als Grundprobleme werden u.a. behandelt: Kreativität, Motivation und (...) Schaffensdynamik des Wissenschaftlers, das Verhältnis von Persönlichkeit und Kollektiv in der modernen Wissenschaft und das Funktionieren "kleiner Gruppen". (shrink)

This volume collects together some of Leibniz's most important texts including the Discourse on Metaphysics, the New System, and the Monadology. Also included are critical reactions to the works by some of Leibniz's contemporaries: Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Bayle, and Simon Foucher, together with Leibniz's responses. The texts are supplemented by a substantial editorial introduction, summaries of each of the texts, extensive endnotes, and full bibliography, making this an invaluable introduction to Leibniz's philosophy.

This set reprints volumes that were orginally published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. in 1953. Landmark volumes at the time of their original publication, these titles do not merely expound the theoretical constructions of Russian philosophers, but also relate these constructions to the general conditions of Russian life. Volume One examines the historical conditions of the development of philosophy in Russia and explores the general features of Russian philosophy. It also surveys the principal works on the history of Russian (...) philosophy. Volume Two includes biographies and examination of the themes of the following philosophers; Vladimir Solovyov, V.D. Kudryavtsev, N.F. Fyodorov and Later Hegelians such as Chicherin, Debolski and Bakunin. This volume also provides analysis of various schools of thought in Russian philosophy in the twentieth century, for example; Neo-Leibzianism, Modern Positivism and New-Marxism to name but a few. (shrink)

The blinkered debate on organ donation neglects the widening gap between the developed and developing worldsThe current debate about organ donation and the associated advocacy for selling kidneys, while laudable for its concern about increasing the ability to save the lives of some people with chronic renal failure, is characterised by four features that locate the reasoning process within a narrow and inadequate framework. Firstly, the focus on saving lives is myopic, with the lives of the most privileged in the (...) world receiving most attention. Secondly, the debate is firmly set within a value system in which market values dominate. Thirdly, health is considered from a highly individualistic perspective with little understanding of the importance of social solidarity in health. Finally, a constricted moral vocabulary is used to discuss the ethics of organ sales.MYOPIC CONCERN FOR SAVING LIVESMany articles making pleas for more organs begin by describing the number of people waiting for donated organs, the number of donors who could give organs but are not doing so, and how many lives could be saved if more organs could be made available. Great concern is expressed about a few thousand …. (shrink)

Few residency training programmes explicitly require substantive exposure to issues in medical ethics and fewer still have a formal curriculum in this area. Traditional undergraduate medical ethics courses teach preclinical students to identify ethical issues and analyse them at a theoretical level. Residency training, however, is the ideal time to establish the critical behavioural link which makes ethics truly useful in clinical medicine. The General Internal Medicine Residency Training Program at Rhode Island Hospital has developed an integrated, three-year curriculum with (...) the goals of helping residents to perceive ethical issues in clinical practice, to utilise basic philosophical principles in resolving ethical dilemmas and to communicate these issues clearly and sensitively to patients. The curriculum has been well received by residents and has had a hospital-wide impact. We believe that training residents in medical ethics and communication skills is an effective approach to developing physicians' humane qualities. (shrink)