Fox and her colleagues (2007) present an important and foundational study concerning the character of current ethics consultation services (ECSs). Although we have some concerns regarding the gener...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesJake Beery, Neethi Pinto, Marcia King, Laura Wachsmuth, Alisha, Katie L. Gholson, T.S. Moran, Calvin R. Gross, Joanne Alfred, Cindy Bitter, Jenna Bennett, Nadia Khan, Clarice Douille, Kristen Carey Rock, Adrienne Feller Novick, Andrea Eisenberg, Japmehr Sandhu, Katherine Bakke, Heer Hendry, Karan K. Mirpuri, and Katerina V. Liong• Being the Difference• Grieving One More Time• Echoes of Grief: Tales from an Emergency Medicine and (...) Critical Care Nurse• Searching for Peace in Death• “I’d Love to go Off the Grid and Never Come Back”• “A Mother’s Love”• Tiny Person, Big Impact• Night Shift• Cracked Armor• Who Tells the Story• Navigating Hard Situations that Medical School Cannot Prepare You For• The Wish• Break• Five More Minutes• I Saw My Reflection• The Aftermath• Where the Journey Begins• Lessons Learned in Room 208• Joint and Grief Aches• My First Loss: Carrying His Legacy• Grieving the Loss of What Medicine Was Supposed to BeCopyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

"[R]easons for action must have their source in goals, desires, or intentions....[T]he possession of rationality is not sufficient to provide a source for relevant reasons,...certain desires, goals, or intentions are also necessary." ;So says Gilbert Harman. So say many other philosophers, from Aristotle to Hume to Harman and David Gauthier. To these many philosophers, this is a home truth, as obvious as the nose on your face. And yet as many philosophers---from the Stoics to Kant to Nagel and Korsgaard---reject this (...) view, and could not find it more obviously false. Any disagreement of this nature, which forces the disputants to find arguments for claims that seem to them self-evident and undeniable, is likely to generate a long, complicated and nasty war. Fortunately for the world, already subject to more fundamentalist clashes than one cares to count, this particular war stays mostly on paper and inside the walls of the academy, without any literal casualties. ;In this dissertation, I join the ranks of those who oppose Harman and his compatriots. I bring what I believe is a new strategy to the field of engagement. The strategy involves two stages. First, we are to undertake a thorough examination of what our opponents mean when they say that goals, desires, or intentions are the "source" of reasons; no one has ever satisfactorily cashed in this metaphor, and I propose to do so. The second stage follows naturally from the first, for in seeing what our opponents mean, we see a crucial weakness in their position: their troops are mercenary, and can be recruited to our side. The second stage is this recruitment. (shrink)

Put relationship-centered communication at the forefront of care Today, physicians face a hypercompetitive marketplace in which they must meet unique and complex patient needs as efficiently as possible. But in a culture prioritizing clinical outcomes above all, there can be a tendency to lose sight of one of the most critical aspects of providing effective care: the communication skills that build and foster physician-patient relationships. Studies have shown that good communication between doctors and patients and among all caregivers who interface (...) with patients directly results in better clinical outcomes, reduced costs, greater patient satisfaction, and lower rates of physician burnout. In Communication the Cleveland Clinic Way, Dr. Adrienne Boissy and her team tell the story of how Cleveland Clinic created and applied the R.E.D.E. to Communicate: Foundations of Healthcare program, making the world-renowned hospital system a leader in relationship-centered care. They provide a step-by-step guide for healthcare leaders and decision-makers to design, develop, and implement communication skills training in their own institutions. Learn how to: • Craft an effective, colleague-supported communication skills program to include veteran physicians, residents, and medical students • Leverage creative program design and data transparency to engage and facilitate staff physicians and advanced care providers • Identify common misperceptions and myths in healthcare communication and respond to them successfully • Cultivate a true sense of empathy—with patients and fellow caregivers alike—while maintaining professionalism In a field where difficult conversations and stressful relationships are commonplace, clinicians need a structured approach to enable them to deliver the best care possible. Communication the Cleveland Clinic Way is the blueprint for establishing a relationship-centered program that will improve patient experience, reinvigorate doctors’ passion for their work, and elevate any organization. (shrink)

Meaning in philosophy, by K. Lehrer.--Meaning in linguistics, by A. Lehrer.--Theories of meaning, by W. Alston.--Of names, by J. S. Mill.--Of words, by J. Locke.--Of language, by G. Berkeley.--Signs and behavior situations, by C. Morris.--Meaning and verification, by M. Schlick.--Meaning and use, by R. Wells.--The meaning of a word, by J. Austin.--Meaning and speech acts, by J. R. Searle.--Meaning and linguistic analysis, by C. C. Fries.--The semantic compound of a linguistic description, by J. J. Katz.--Componential analysis and universal semantics, by (...) J. Lyons.--Bibliographical essay (p. 213-216). (shrink)

This note examines the decision of the Family Division of the High Court in N. v. N. (Jurisdiction: Pre-Nuptial Agreement) in which, in the context of Jewish divorce proceedings, the Court found that it had no jurisdiction to order a husband, by specific performance of a marriage agreement, to go through the procedure to obtain a ‘get’ (a hand-written bill of divorcement) allowing his wife to remarry. First, discussion of the case is contextualised broadly within the debate on the (de)merits (...) of employing legal means in order to redress social wrongs. Secondly, adopting a theoretical perspective upon the difficulties involved in using law to achieve social change, the note goes on to examine more specifically why women from minority cultures may choose to go to the law of the dominant culture in order to obtain relief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:720 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Julie R. Enszer “She Who Shouts Gets Heard!”: Counting and Accounting for Women Writers in Literary Grants and Norton Anthologies In 1979, the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (CCLM), a New York-based nonprofit that supported literary magazines through technical assistance and grant-making, announced a new program: CCLM editor fellowships.1 Editor fellowships came with a $5,000 grant. Members (...) of the literary community nominated editors to CCLM for the award. Adrienne Rich nominated Ellen Marie Bissert, editor of the feminist journal 13th Moon, and Mab Segrest, editor of Feminary: A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing the Lesbian Vision, for the editor fellowships. In 1979, the inaugural year of the prize, among the ten winners, not one was a woman. Bissert was one of three honorable mentions. Bissert rejected the distinction with a public letter to Maureen Owen, the only woman on the CCLM board of directors. Bissert deplored “the sexism inherent in the panelists’ decisions.”2 Several feminist publications reprinted Bissert’s letter while “the male small press gave it scant 1. The work of CCLM continues today, although now the organization is called the Council for Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Under the leadership of Jeffrey Lependorf, the nonprofit organization continues to be a vital advocate for small magazines and publishers. 2. Open letter from Ellen Marie Bissert to Maureen Owen, June 28, 1980, CCLM Editors’ Grant 1980 folder, box 6, 13th Moon records, New York Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division (hereafter, CCLM folder). Julie R. Enszer 721 coverage.”3 As a result of Bissert’s objections, CCLM released the application statistics: 225 people were nominated, forty (18%) were women, and fifteen (7%) were non-white men. Of the 124 people who completed the applications, twenty-three (19%) were women and eleven (9%) were nonwhite men. There were thirty-three semifinalists, five (15%) women and four (12%) non-white men. These numbers shocked and outraged Bissert and other feminists. Adrienne Rich wrote to Maureen Owen, “I am appalled by the blatant sexism evidenced in the Council’s decision to fund ten male editors.”4 The attention that Bissert brought to the grant process resulted in a special meeting of the CCLM board to “discuss the controversy” and the awards.5 The next year, the CCLM editor fellowships went to five journals run by women and five run by men; one of the winners of the $5,000 award in 1980 was the editorial collective of Conditions, a magazine of writing by women with an emphasis on writing by lesbians.6 In a letter to readers of Conditions, the three editors, Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, and Rima Shore, noted that the “feminist protest following the announcement of the 1979 awards no doubt had an impact on the decision-making process” and that the award “represents the only substantial payment we have received, or seem likely to receive, for our editorial work, and we were greatly encouraged by it.”7 Maureen Owen acknowledged the importance of Bissert’s protests saying it “strengthened my position on the board at CCLM and the position of women editors and writers in general. She who shouts, get heard!”8 In 1979, Bissert, Rich, and other feminists demonstrated the importance of shouting about the inclusion of women in systems of literary appraisal; they recognized the important economic consequences of grants for feminist publishers and feminist authors. Thirty years later, in 2009, Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts to promote “conversations regarding the critical reception 3. Open letter from Bissert to Owen. 4. Rich to Owen, August 7, 1979, CCLM folder. 5. Open letter from Bissert to Owen. 6. Press release, June 11, 1980, CCLM folder. 7. Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, and Rima Shore, Conditions 7, unnumbered front matter. 8. Postcard from Owen to Bissert, undated, CCLM folder. 722 Julie R. Enszer of women’s creative writing in our current culture.”9 Each February or March since 2010, VIDA releases “the count”: a compilation of the gender breakdown of prizes, reviews, and literary journals in the United States. VIDA’s numbers demonstrate bias toward men in... (shrink)

The literature of Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Ana Castillo, and Chimamanda Adichie teaches a risky, self-giving way of reading that brings home the dangers and the possibilities of suffering as an ethical good. Working the thought of feminist theologians and philosophers into an analysis of these women's writings, Cynthia R. Wallace crafts a literary ethics attentive to the paradoxes of critique and re-vision, universality and particularity, reading in suffering a redemptive or redeemable reality.

Mauchaussat gives a detailed, chronological, and dense picture of Lachelier's thought and its milieu. He studies with erudition the connections with thinkers of analogous tendencies: Maine de Biran, Ravaisson, Boutroux, and Brunschvicg, and, outside the French tradition, Lachelier's relations and debts to Kant.--A. R.

_History, the Human, and the World Between_ is a philosophical investigation of the human subject and its simultaneous implication in multiple and often contradictory ways of knowing. The eminent postcolonial theorist R. Radhakrishnan argues that human subjectivity is always constituted “between”: between subjective and objective, temporality and historicity, being and knowing, the ethical and the political, nature and culture, the one and the many, identity and difference, experience and system. In this major study, he suggests that a reconstituted phenomenology has (...) a crucial role to play in mediating between generic modes of knowledge production and an experiential return to life. Keenly appreciative of poststructuralist critiques of phenomenology, Radhakrishnan argues that there is still something profoundly vulnerable at stake in the practice of phenomenology. Radhakrishnan develops his rationale of the “between” through three linked essays where he locates the terms “world,” “history,” “human,” and “subject” between phenomenology and poststructuralism, and in the process sets forth a nuanced reading of the politics of a gendered postcolonial humanism. Critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, David Harvey, and Ranajit Guha, Radhakrishnan examines the relationship between systems of thought and their worldly situations. _History, the Human, and the World Between _is a powerful argument for a theoretical perspective that combines the existential urgency of phenomenology with the discursive rigor of poststructuralist practices. (shrink)

The Modern Library, which used for its 1941 monolingual edition of the combined Pensées and Provincial Letters the Trotter translation of the former work, has chosen for this bilingual edition of the Pensées the artful translation of H. F. Stewart. The work is divided by Stewart into a major Apology and chronologically arranged Adversaria which he considers to lie outside the scope of the original work. Stewart's scholarly introduction surveys both the incredibly confused situation of existing manuscripts and the evolution (...) of Pascal's thought. Stewart has arranged the material in accordance with Pascal's own plan, which was reconstructed by Filleau de la Chaise and by Pascal's nephew the abbé Périer. One could argue, as does Brunschvicg, whose own arrangement reveals a prime consideration of accessibility to the modern reader rather than historical accuracy, that the authority of Filleau de la Chaise and the abbé Périer is indeed questionable. For their reconstruction of the plan was made some eight years after Pascal had announced it in a lecture at Port Royal in 1658. Moreover, this initial arrangement could not take into account modifications made while writing during the last four years of the author's life. Stewart has nevertheless relied on both the Brunschvicg facsimile of the autographed manuscript and the Tourneur reading of the First Copy, and has consulted several editions of the Pensées. The result is certainly the best edition in English of this momentous work. Stewart's translation is superb, reproducing eloquently Pascal's paradoxical, contrapuntal phrases without losing any of his delightfully subtle wit.—C. M. R. (shrink)

Brock Macdonald1, Evi Vakiani2, Rhonda K Yantiss3, Jun Lee4, Robert S Brown Jr5, Samuel H Sigal61Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 3Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, New York Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 4Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 5Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, (...) New York, NY, 6Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA: The use of sirolimus as an alternative to calcineurin inhibitors for posttransplant immunosuppression is associated with a variety of inflammatory conditions. In this report, we describe the case of a 34-year-old man who developed abnormal liver tests 6 years after live-donor kidney transplantation and 5 years after initiation of sirolimus-based immunosuppression. Elevated aminotransferase levels persisted after withdrawal of potentially hepatotoxic medications, and serologic evaluation for viral hepatitis, autoimmune disease, and genetic disorders was unrevealing. Liver biopsy revealed prominent hepatocellular injury associated with a mixed inflammatory infiltrate and liver tests normalized within 2 weeks of discontinuation of sirolimus. In this report, we review previous reports of sirolimus hepatotoxicity and propose a unifying hypothesis for the various inflammatory conditions that have been attributed to sirolimus.Keywords: sirolimus, immunosuppression, transplant, inflammatory conditions, hepatotoxicity. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive discussion of complexity as it arises in physical, chemical, and biological systems, as well as in mathematical models of nature. Common features of these apparently unrelated fields are emphasised and incorporated into a uniform mathematical description, with the support of a large number of detailed examples and illustrations. The quantitative study of complexity is a rapidly developing subject with special impact in the fields of physics, mathematics, information science, and biology. Because of the variety of the (...) approaches, no comprehensive discussion has previously been attempted. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics (nonlinear dynamics, fluid dynamics, solid-state, cellular automata, stochastic processes, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics), mathematics (dynamical systems, ergodic and probability theory), information and computer science (coding, information theory and algorithmic complexity), electrical engineering and theoretical biology. (shrink)

First published in 1981, this collection of essays was taken from Peters' larger work, Psychology and Ethical Development in order to provide a more focused volume on moral education for students. Peters' background in both psychology and philosophy makes the work distinctive, which is evident from the first two essays alone: 'Freud's theory of Moral Development in Relation to that of Piaget' and 'Moral Education and the Psychology of Character'. He also displays balance in his acceptance that reason and feeling (...) are both of great importance where the subject of moral education is concerned. Although written some time ago, the book discusses issues which are still of considerable interest and importance today. (shrink)

Avant-propos.--Les principes de la morale positiviste et la conscience contemporaine, par G. Belot.--La morale de Renouvier, par A. Darlu.--La morale de Bastiat, par Ch. Gide.--La morale de Proudhon, par M. Bernès.--Karl Marx, par A. Landry.--Les idées morales de Vinet, par J.-E. Roberty.--La morale et la politique de Renan, par R. Allier.--Frédéric Nietzsche, par H. Lichtenberger.--Maurice Mæterlinck, par L. Brunschvicg.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s recent restrictive recommendations on sex selection have highlighted the need for consideration of the plausibility of ethical arguments against sex selection. In this paper, the author suggests a parental virtues approach to some questions of reproductive ethics as a superior alternative to an exclusively harm focused approach such as the procreative liberty framework. The author formulates a virtue ethics argument against sex selection based on the idea that acceptance is a character trait of the (...) good parent. It is concluded that, because the argument presented posits a wrong in the sex selecting agent’s action that is not a harm, the argument could not function as a justification of the HFEA’s restrictive position in light of their explicit commitment to procreative liberty; it does, however, suggest that ethical approaches focused exclusively on harm fail to capture all the relevant moral considerations and thus that we should look beyond such approaches. (shrink)

In this article, we critically scrutinize the principle of proportionality when used in the context of security and government surveillance. We argue that McMahan’s distinction from just warfare between narrow proportionality and wide proportionality can generally apply to the context of surveillance. We argue that narrow proportionality applies more or less directly to cases in which the surveilled is liable and that the wide proportionality principle applies to cases characterized by ‘collateral intrusion’. We argue, however, that a more demanding criterion (...) than the lesser-evil justification that wide proportionality frequently entails is necessary in cases characterized by intentional intrusion upon non-liable individuals. The distinction between foreseeing and intending intrusion into the lives of individuals who are not liable has not previously been specifically addressed in discussions concerning surveillance ethics. This specification is thus increasingly important due to the general growing tendency for adherence to the precautionary principle and policies aimed at anticipating criminal acts before they are committed. Preventive surveillance of non-liable actors is considered an important instrument for obtaining this aim and thus calls for moral scrutiny in terms of permissibility and proportionality. We suggest the concept ‘wide proportionality +’ which applies to cases of intentional intrusion of non-liable individuals. (shrink)

The problem of the peculiarcharacter of chemical laws and theories is a central topic in philosophy of chemistry. Oneof the most characteristic and, at the sametime, most puzzling examples in discussions onchemical laws and theories is Mendeleev''speriodic law. This law seems to be essentiallydifferent in its nature from the exact laws ofclassical physics, the latter being usuallyregarded as a paradigm of science byphilosophers. In this paper the main argumentsconcerning the peculiar character of chemicallaws and theories are examined. The laws ofchemistry (...) are natural laws to the same extentas are the laws of physics. The law discoveredby Mendeleev is a normal law of nature. It isnot a law of physics, nevertheless, it is exactin the same philosophical sense as are the lawsof physics. The periodic system of chemicalelements was established by constructing anidealized system of idealized elements. Thefundamental idealization substantiated byexperimental chemistry was the chemicalelement as a place in the periodicsystem. (shrink)

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social–technical environment. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage (...) and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. These bots, scripts, tools, plugins, and dashboards make Wikipedia more efficient for those who know how to work with them, but like all organizational culture, newcomers must learn them if they want to fully participate. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I present thick descriptions of how governance and gatekeeping practices are articulated through and in alignment with these automated infrastructures. Over the past 15 years, Wikipedian veterans and administrators have made specific decisions to support administrative and editorial workflows with automation in particular ways and not others. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning—most principally arguing that scholarship and practice must go beyond trying to “open up the black box” of such systems and also examine sociocultural processes like newcomer socialization. (shrink)

Against the background of a recent exchange between Cristina Lafont and Hubert Dreyfus, I argue that Heidegger's method of ?formal indication? is at the heart of his attempt in Sein und Zeit to answer ?the ontological question of the being of the ?sum?? (SZ, p. 46). This method works reflexively, by picking out certain essential features of one's first-person singular being at the outset of its investigation that are implicit in the question ?what is it to be the entity I (...) am?? On the basis of these features, various further a priori, ontological structures (care and temporality) that constitute one as a first-person singular entity then become accessible. Formal indication is thus formal in two senses: it officially designates or signals certain first-person singular phenomena as the topic of investigation, and it picks out features which define the ontological form of the entity in question. It is thereby the method by which a legitimately transcendental account of our being may be begun to be generated by each of us from out of our factical, immanent existence. (shrink)

The dominance of capitalism, through the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, is maintained as an illusion through the use of four main strategies. In order to obtain the consent of the population, mass schooling tends to produce graduates who accept this illusion because they are vulnerable to these strategies and cannot imagine a post-capitalist world. However, through education, people can better appreciate the problematic reality of unbridled capitalism, such as the degradation of the global ecosystem. It is argued here that programs (...) which are designed to address these problems, such as Education for Sustainable Development, are dependent upon citizens developing a critical consciousness. This consciousness is firstly able to confront the four strategies maintaining capitalism’s dominance. It is argued that an education which engages with spiritual ideals and values regarding how a good life is understood in an aspirational sense, enables people to engage with the dominance of capitalism and to envision other possibilities for society in which capitalism is harnessed to serve the greater public good. This requires education’s ontology – as the character of students – to critically read the world, imagine possibilities which can constitute a good life, and are courageous to enact the social actions required to make these ideals a reality. This is made possible by an education which returns to the spiritual roots of ideals. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

ABSTRACT The Scottish judge and ‘eccentric’ philosopher James Burnett, Lord Monboddo’s (1714–1799) significance within Enlightenment thought is usually seen as stemming from his Origin and Progress of Language (6 vols., 1773–1792). The OPL was a major contribution to the Enlightenment’s debate over the philosophy of language, and established Monboddo’s reputation as an innovative and influential, yet controversial and credulous proto-anthropologist. In the following I explore Monboddo’s Egyptomania and the role it plays in his account of the origins and development of (...) religion within his larger ‘History of Man’. Monboddo’s idiosyncratic and untimely fusion of conjectural history, Buffon-inspired natural history, Christian theology, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and credulous interest in Egyptology, especially in Antient Metaphysics (6 vols., 1779–1799), make him extremely difficult to place within the Scottish Enlightenment. I want to bring Monboddo back into our conversation about the Scottish Enlightenment, shed light in the process on his highly idiosyncratic combination of enlightened and unenlightened thought and, using Monboddo’s example, emphasize some interesting if unexpected aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment’s application of the ‘science of human nature’ to the study of religion. For Monboddo, human civilization and religious knowledge owes their existence to Egyptian daemon-kings. (shrink)

Cost conversations are essential to informed consent because patients have a right to information that they think is relevant, and patients overwhelmingly report that cost information is relevant to their medical decisions. Providers have an ethical responsibility to provide necessary information for informed consent, and therefore must discuss costs. The Shared Decision Making model is ideal for enabling this exchange of information, and decision aids are also helpful. Although barriers exist, many useful tools can help providers fulfill this obligation, and (...) encouraging progress is being made to improve cost transparency from insurers and facilities. (shrink)

This paper is an extended exploration of Mead's phrase the emergence of the novel. I describe and characterize emergent systems-complex dynamical systems that display behavior that cannot be predicted from a full and complete description of the component units of the system. Emergence has become an influential concept in contemporary cognitive science [A. Clark Being there, Cambridge: MIT Press], complexity theory [W. Bechtel & R.C. Richardson Discovering complexity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], artificial life [R.A. Brooks & P. Maes Artificial (...) life IV, Cambridge: MIT Press; C.G. Langton Artificial life III, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; C.G. Langton et al. Artificial life II, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley), and robotics [S. Forrest Emergent computation, Cambridge: MIT Press]. I propose that novelty is a necessary property of emergent systems, and I'll explore a specific kind of emergent system: an improvisational theater ensemble. This is an example of emergence in a small social group, which I call collaborative emergence to emphasize several important contrasts with other complex systems that manifest emergence, such as connectionist networks and Alife simulations. (shrink)

Apart from the predictable end-of-the-century tendency to look backwards in time, it is not surprising that much commentary on contemporary American politics has taken on a reflective tone as we approach the end of the 20th century. Unresolved issues of race, class, and culture continue to raise fundamental questions about the legitimacy and functioning of modern liberalism. This is as true today as it was at the beginning of the century when the capitalist social order took on its characteristically modern (...) form in America. Thus, one finds increasing numbers of contemporary academics and activists struggling to understand from whence we have come so as to provide insight and guidance for the future. (shrink)

Char et al. describe an interesting and useful approach in their paper, “Identifying ethical considerations for machine learning healthcare applications.” Their proposed framework, which see...

Clinical biobanks processing data of participants in the European Union fall under the scope of the General Data Protection Regulation, which among others includes requirements for consent. These requirements are further specified by the Article 29 Working Party —an EU advisory body currently known as the European Data Protection Board. Unfortunately, their guidance is cause for some confusion. While the GDPR allows participants to give broad consent for research when specific research purposes are still unknown, the WP29 guidelines suggest that (...) additional consent for specific uses should be obtained in addition to broad consent when this becomes applicable. This discrepancy elicits the question whether clinical biobanks can fail the requirement of consent if they obtain broad consent, but not a specific consent for each biomedical study. We analysed this discrepancy within the framework of contextual integrity, in order to describe the context-relative informational norms that govern information flows in clinical biobanks. However, our analysis demonstrates that there is no uniform set of norms that can be applied to all clinical biobanks. As such, neither the GDPR nor the WP29 guidance can act as a “one size fits all” approach to all clinical biobanks. Rather, differences between clinical biobanks—especially regarding the scientific aims and patient populations—make the case for context-relative norms that determine the appropriate type of consent. (shrink)

1 Here’s a way to think about poverty. People who live in poverty do so because they have few opportunities to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In fact the gap between rich and poor has increased in recent times due to the more wholesale adoption of capitalist practices around the world. The institutions of business and government conspire to give the poor a Hobson’s choice of minimal wage McJobs or unemployment. Neglect of both urban ghettoes and the rural poor (...) has been systematic, if not conscious. The very idea of capitalism reinforces the notion that some are meant to be poor and some are meant to be rich. Such a system must be overridden at times by government to help the poor cope with their lot. The only solution is a massive redistribution of income and a system of capitalism that is severely restrained. All of this is at best highly unlikely. Even if there were such a redistribution policy we could not count on government to execute it fairly. (shrink)