In the Netherlands fertility doctors increasingly formulate protocols, which oblige patients to quit their unhealthy lifestyle before they are admitted to IVF procedures. We argue that moral arguments could justify parenting protocols that concern all future parents. In the first part we argue that want-to-be parents have moral responsibilities towards their future children to prevent them from harm by diminishing or eliminating risk factors before as well as during the pregnancy. This is because of the future children's potential to become (...) of a certain type, more specifically: a person that will be the want-to-be parents' child. Want-to-be parents intend to become pregnant and therefore have an additional moral reason to diminish the risks. Also, people who become pregnant unintentionally have the responsibility to prevent their children from harm, unless they become pregnant due to contraception failure. All people not wanting to become pregnant should use contraception methods carefully.In the second part of this paper we translate the want-to-be parents' responsibilities into practice. We distinguish four determinants of risk factors: modifiability, chance, severity and effort. We examine some evidence-based risk factors based on these variables and deduce levels of responsibility.In conclusion, formulating informal requirements for want-to-be parents is morally required and therefore also for want-to-be parents in need of medical assistance. The protocols developed by fertility doctors in the Netherlands could be seen as the precursor for a general, informal Parenting Protocol that could be developed on the basis of an extended and thoroughly debated risk-responsibility analysis. (shrink)

This essay summarizes key insights across the essays in the Hastings Center Report's special report “Time to Rebuild: Essays on Trust in Health Care and Science.” These insights concern trust and trustworthiness as distinct concepts, competence as a necessary but not sufficient input to trust, trust as a reciprocal good, trust as an interpersonal as well as structural phenomena, the ethical impermissibility of seeking to win trust without being trustworthy, building and borrowing trust as distinct strategies, and challenges to trustworthiness (...) posed by the contingent nature of science. Together, these insights stand to advance an area of research that we believe has been historically stymied by conceptual confusion and a long‐standing insistence on treating trust as a purely instrumental good. (shrink)

Restrictive visitation policies produce inequities in healthcare that have meaningful consequences for patients’ health and well-being. There is a surplus of existing literature exploring the consequences of reduced visitation in the setting of pediatric patients lacking decision-making capacity, but relatively little scholarship addressing visitation restriction for less vulnerable adults possessing capacity. Here, we present the case of a patient who suffered serious complications of childbirth, during the delivery of her healthy newborn, leading to prolonged hospitalization. During her treatment course, she (...) was subsequently denied visitation with her newborn, who had been discharged from the hospital, and this had detrimental effects on her recovery. Hospital policies restricting visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic were intended to reduce the risk of disease exposure for both patients and staff, despite conflicting evidence demonstrating this benefit. In contrast, they often have negative effects on patient stress, mood, and physical recovery. The sequelae of this US-based case study argue the need for more holistic hospital visitation policies, placing a specific lens on adult patients receiving a visitation from their newborn children. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance that real patients attach to their right to withdraw from an on-going feasibility randomised trial (RCT) evaluating types and timings of breast reconstruction (two parallel trials) following mastectomy for breast cancer. Our results show that, while some respondents appreciated that exercising the right to withdraw would defeat the scientific objective of the trial, some patients with a surgical preference consented only given the knowledge they could withdraw if they were not (...) allocated to their preferred treatment. (shrink)

The concepts of space are great inventions of the mind to help it comprehend the world. These notes provide an overview of this saga. The article covers the development of the current scientific and philosophical concepts of space through history, emphasizing the newest develop­ments and ideas. The various concepts will be introduced in a historical order, this provides a measure of understanding as to how the ideas on which the modern theory of space is based were developed.

Our aim in this article is to trace the evolution of the concepts of physical space in Western thought from the Greeks to the Newtonian philosophy of nature. Especially the article presents studies of ancient Greek theories of physical space and place, in particular those of the classical and Hellenistic period. These theories are explained primarily with reference to the general philosophical or methodological framework within which they took shape. Special attention is paid to the interrelations between various concepts of (...) space and with Greek spatial terminology. The arguments of this paper can be summarized as follows: first, the concept of space itself has taken the central position in philosophy of nature; second, the debate about the nature of space has developed several different theories; third, the concept of space has several issues to overcome. (shrink)

The article analyzes the theory of philosophy of nature presented by Piotr Chojnacki. This concept was an important component of the Leuven (neo)Thomism, developed also in the Polish Thomistic philosophical milieu, which since the beginning of the 20th century has been in crisis. I argue that the cause of this crisis was the eclectic nature of the Leuven Thomism as it was developed by Piotr Chojnacki. Although in contemporary philosophy eclecticism is being rehabilitated, due to the dominant scientism and naturalism, (...) the prospects for the development of the philosophy of nature inspired by the program of Leuven Thomism seem to be very limited. (shrink)

A work ethic is people's attitude to work—imprinted in a complex of moral values and norms, embodied in categories and examples of the culture, and expressed in human behavior, above all in the sphere of labor activity. In my understanding, a work ethic is a component part of the socioeconomic genotype of a society. A SEG is a kind of information mechanism of "social inheritance" that ensures the reproduction of the structure and principles of a particular social system's functioning, regulation, (...) and learning process. It comprises a system of values, a set of motivations, and a paradigm of economic management and administration, and in its manifest form it is reflected in the contours of the regulation and administration of socioeconomic processes, including legal, administrative, economic, and moral norms and incentives. A SEG itself is based on the system of social interests and on the particular society's culture. (shrink)

PAUL THAGARD’S DEMARCATION CRITERIA S u m m a r y In Paul Thagard’s article “Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience”, we might find some demarcation criteria which are best used in determining whether certain fields with a lot of practitioners can be claimed to be pseudoscientific. Theory T for the pseudoscience club is if T has long been less progressive than its competitors and faces many more unsolved problems; and, adherents to T do not try to develop the theory to (...) solve puzzles, do not attempt to evaluate T with respect to its alternatives, and are highly reserved and selective in seeking confirmation and falsification. Ten years later Thagard gave us new proposals. If T is a pseudoscience, then it is usually the case that (1) T is neither simple nor unified; the explanations, resources, (2) and predictions of T tend to be ad hoc, spurious, or ill-fitted to the rest of T; or, (3) adherents to T do not try to develop the theory to solve puzzles, do not attempt to evaluate T with respect to competitors, and (4) are highly reserved and selective in seeking confirmation and falsification. In this article, Paul Thagard’s criteria of demarcation are examined and evaluated from the point of view of the history of astrology. (shrink)