Transplantation research on samples and organs from deceased donors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is under threat. The key problems relate to difficulties encountered in gaining consent for research projects, as distinct from consent to donation for clinical transplantation. They are due partly to the terms of the Human Tissue Act 2004 (the 2004 Act), and partly to its interpretation by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA). They include excessive interaction with donor representatives regarding ‘informed consent’ to research projects, uncertainty (...) as to the scope and duration of a donor's ‘authority’ over an organ, and restrictions caused by the apparent need for licensing of transplantation research under the 2004 Act, combined with lack of certainty, or guidance, as to the distinction between ‘research’, which requires a licence, and ‘service development’, which does not. In our view this confusion hinders and deters Specialist Nurses for Organ Donation in approaching donor representatives and discussing possible research projects with them. It has also, as we have reported elsewhere, led to abandonment of research projects for fear of liability, despite both Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval and donor consent. Such problems do not seem to occur under the transplant laws of most other comparable jurisdictions. The Transplantation Ethics Symposium, ‘The ethics of organ retrieval: goals, rights and responsibilities’, hosted by the MRC Centre for Transplantation at King's College London in December 2010, revealed that many senior clinicians and researchers, administrators, and lawyers are both unclear and in disagreement concerning the effects of the 2004 Act and the extent to which it is adhered to or ignored in practice. In this paper we examine the difficulties encountered and suggest solutions based on a less restrictive interpretation of the 2004 Act, or, more probably, a regulatory change under its authority. We propose that, in the long term, a law which includes consent for REC-approved research within the general consent for organ donation and transplantation seems preferable to the present system, both ethically and in practical terms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While Joseph Hooker was considering his upcoming presentation on the geographical distribution of species, he asked Charles Darwin for help with some references. During the ensuing exchange of correspondence, Darwin seems to have contradicted himself, regarding his being aware of Leopold von Buch’s observation that distributed varieties become species, prior to writing On the Origin of Species. Literalists and conspiracists have interpreted this apparent self-contradiction as a sign of duplicity and fraud. However, when the correspondence and Hooker’s address are (...) analysed in context, there is a more compelling explanation. Simply that, in response to direct questioning by Hooker, Darwin conflated the two names of Von Baer and Von Buch, and made an honest mistake. (shrink)

The European Clinical Trials Directive (EU 2001; 2001/20/EC) was introduced to improve the efficiency of commercial and academic clinical trials. Concerns have been raised by interested organizations and institutions regarding the potential for negative impact of the Directive on non-commercial European clinical research. Interested researchers within the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) were surveyed to determine whether researcher experiences confirmed this view. Following a pilot study, an internet-based questionnaire was distributed to individuals in key research positions in (...) the European haemopoietic SCT community. Seventy-one usable questionnaires were returned from participants in different EU member states. The results indicate that the perceived impact of the European Clinical Trials Directive has been negative, at least in the research areas of interest to the EBMT. (shrink)

We give in this paper a sufficient condition, cast in semantic terms, for Hallden-completeness in normal modal logics, a modal logic being said to be Hallden-complete (or Ήallden-reasonable') just in case for any disjunctive formula provable in the logic, where the disjuncts have no propositional variables in common, one or other of those disjuncts is provable in the logic.

. The management of ethics within organisations typically occurs within a problem-solving frame of reference. This often results in a reactive, problem-based and externally induced approach to managing ethics. Although basing ethics management interventions on dealing with and preventing current and possible future unethical behaviour are often effective in that it ensures compliance with rules and regulations, the approach is not necessarily conducive to the creation of sustained ethical cultures. Nor does the approach afford (mainly internal) stakeholders the opportunity to (...) be co-designers of the organisations ethical future. The aim of this paper is to present Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for developing a shared meaning of ethics within an organisation with a view to embrace and entrench ethics, thereby creating a foundation for the development of an ethical cul- ture over time. A descriptive case study based on an application of AI is used to illustrate the utility of AI as a way of thinking and doing to precede and complement problem-based ethics management systems and interventions. (shrink)

This work presents an hydrodynamical model of heat stroke, which is a physiopathological state of stress, due to an exposure of animals to an ambient temperature of approximatively 40°C during two hours. The evolution of body temperature during this stress process is characterised by three phases. A first phase of increase is followed by a plateau which occurs before a second phase of increase which can be lethal. The model is based on the analogy of a boat progressively caught in (...) a whirlpool. The evolution of the degree of freedom lost by the boat is mathematically analysed and this study leads to the same three phases. The theoretical curves calculated during this study are well in agreement with the experimental curves obtained with animals. This analogy is compared to a previous one which has been made during another experiment with animals constrained by chemical intoxications. It seems that stress can be considered as a vital vorticity and that hydrodynamic models are powerful tools in understanding this physiopathological state. (shrink)

The formation of particles of elemental tin in association with the nucleation of the precipitate phase θ′ in an Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn alloy has been investigated by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. Analysis of lattice images has demonstrated that these tin particles associated with θ′ platelets formed during short-term ageing (typically 3 min at 200 degrees Celcius) exhibit a crystallographic form that is distinctly different from that previously reported in such ternary alloys and also from that observed in (...) the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn. Those tin particles that could be clearly identified as β-Sn phase shared a crystallographic relationship of the form (001)Sn‖(001)Al‖(001)θ′, [110]Sn‖[100]Al‖[100]θ′ with the α-Al and θ′ phases with which they were simultaneously in contact. The observations imply that, while tin may assist nucleation of platelets of θ′, the formation of θ′ equally influences the crystallography of β--Sn that forms in association with θ′. Following prolonged ageing (typically 50 h at 200°C), the β-Sn particles in contact with θ′ plates had coarsened and diminished in number, and most now exhibited an orientation relationship with α-Al matrix similar to that observed in the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn (i.e. (100)Sn‖(111)Al, [010]Sn‖[112]Al) and to that previously observed in the later stages of ageing of the ternary alloy Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn. (shrink)

Les concepts de la physique ont été élaborés jusqu'ici par ajustement de la théorie à l'expérience. Désormais l'exploration de la matière nécessite une approche plus fine, où les concepts soient chargés de sens. Ici, les auteurs proposent de fonder la physique sur la "symbiose" entre une logique nouvelle et des principes métaphysiques qui structurent le concept de réalité. Les entités connues de la physique se déduisent directement de ces fondements, d'autres se révèlent et leur détection constitue un nouveau défi pour (...) les expérimentateurs. La microphysique y est dominée par la présence constitutive de non-ordre. Les phénomènes quantiques et l'espace-temps s'en trouvent réinterprétés. Diverses questions très actuelles sont examinées: matière noire, fusion froide, atomes hypercondensés, monopôles magnétiques... Cet ouvrage constitue un bouleversement épistémologique majeur car il fournit un modèle de pensée efficace dont les structures s'appliquent à tous les domaines de la science. (shrink)

Despite their status as high-income food producing nations, children and their caregivers, both in the United States (U.S.) and Australia can experience food insecurity. Nutrition researchers formed a joint U.S.-Australia collaboration to help advance food security for households with young children aged 0–5 years. This study investigated food insecurity from the perspective of caregivers, especially their perceptions of the impact of food insecurity on their own childhood, their current life, and for the children in their care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted (...) from July to September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were recruited in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. (_n_ = 19) and Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (_n_ = 22), during periods of stay-at-home public health orders. These two case study sites enabled an exploration of some universal, and some context-specific, social, economic, and health conditions that buffer, or exacerbate, food insecurity for families in these neo-liberal political settings. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted and established six themes:_growing up poor_, _lessons learned_,_ feeding a family amidst a pandemic_,_ caregiver coping strategies_, _food security in the early years_ and _protecting (young) children_. Perspectives on local anti-hunger strategies were organized to outline participant’s preferred solutions. Household food insecurity is conceptualized in public policy in the U.S. and Australia as a short-term crisis for people, justifying austere, time-limited and patchwork solutions. A narrative of caregivers’ lived experience of food insecurity suggests that it is inter-generational, and exacerbated by a food system shock (i.e., COVID-19). These findings from two varying cities and nations offer a different conceptualization of the timespan and nature of the phenomenon of food insecurity, challenging a dominant policy narrative and highlighting the inadequacy of current so-called solutions. (shrink)

The most important events of the immediately preceding period--1945-1954--were attempts at general readings of Descartes' thought by Jean Laporte, Fernand Alquié, and Martial Guéroult. In Le Rationalisme de Descartes Laporte struck sharply at stereotype by insisting that Descartes was not a rationalist. Deftly exploiting such issues as the soul-body union, the knowledge of the infinite and the faith-reason relationship, he draws the conclusion that "... if it were necessary to characterize Descartes' philosophy by one name, the name which would fit (...) it best, all paradox aside, would be empiricism, radical and integral empiricism." The readings of both Alquié and Gueroult are carefully attuned to the development in Descartes' thought. In La Découverte Métaphysique de l'Homme chez Descartes, the former maintains that this development is dominated by the progressive discovery of the meaning of man. Guéroult takes a remark from the Discourse on Method as key to the unfolding of Descartes' thought. The "long chains of reasons, so simple and easy, which geome- tricians use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations..." are the central inspiration of Descartes selon l'Ordre des Raisons. Cartesianism, it is maintained, developed primarily by deductive movement along these chains. (shrink)

The word τερθρεία, which L. and S.8 derived from τερατεία and translated ‘the use of claptraps’, is perhaps best known from its occurrence in Isocrates , but the new edition has spread the net more widely, citing Philo, Philodemus, Proclus, Galen, Dion. Hal., and giving its meaning as ‘the use of extreme subtlety, hair-splitting, formal pedantry’. This agrees better with the gloss / κενοσπονδία attributed to Orus of Miletus in Et. Mag. 753. 4. Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Plutarch each use τερθρεύομαι (...) once. In the Helen Isocrates, condemning the futile ingenuity of the Sophists in writing encomia on such unworthy objects as salt and humble-bees, holds that such tours de force are immoral, as tending to deceive, representing a literary form of the vice περιεργία. Τερθρεία, then, should take its place, as a recognized term for the idle over-elaboration of a banausic theme, in the vocabulary of Greek literary criticism. It does not, however, appear in Rhys Roberts's ‘Glossary of Greek Rhetoric’ appended to his edition of D.H.'s On Literary Composition. No doubt this is because τερθρεία does not occur in this or any other of D.H.'s Scripta Rhetorica. But D.H. himself uses the word in Antiq. Rom. . Similarly J. F. Lockwood does not discuss the term in his lists in C.Q. xxxi and xxxii, where he collects words which are used metaphorically by D.H. in literary criticism. The metaphor in τερθρεία is certainly not obvious; but the literary sense must have involved some transference of meaning, for it is not to be expected that the word τερθρεία sprang, in full panoply of critical significance, from the brain of the Muse of Rhetoric; and it is part of the purpose of this paper to point the way to an explanation, or at least to set forth some known facts about the word and its possible congeners. (shrink)