BackgroundThe role of consent for research use of health information is contentious. Most discussion has focused on when project-specific consent may be waived but, recently, a broader range of consent options has been entertained, including broad opt-in for multiple studies with restrictions and notification with opt-out. We sought to elicit public values in this matter and to work toward an agreement about a common approach to consent for use of personal information for health research through deliberative public dialogues.MethodsWe conducted seven (...) day-long public dialogues, involving 98 participants across Canada. Immediately before and after each dialogue, participants completed a fixed-response questionnaire rating individuals' support for 3 approaches to consent in the abstract and their consent choices for 5 health research scenarios using personal information. They also rated how confident different safeguards made them feel that their information was being used responsibly.ResultsBroad opt-in consent for use of personal information garnered the greatest support in the abstract. When presented with specific research scenarios, no one approach to consent predominated. When profit was introduced into the scenarios, consent choices shifted toward greater control over use. Despite lively and constructive dialogues, and considerable shifting in opinion at the individual level, at the end of the day, there was no substantive aggregate movement in opinion. Personal controls were among the most commonly cited approaches to improving people's confidence in the responsible use of their information for research.ConclusionBecause no one approach to consent satisfied even a simple majority of dialogue participants and the importance placed on personal controls, a mechanism should be developed for documenting consent choice for different types of research, including ways for individuals to check who has accessed their medical record for purposes other than clinical care. This could be done, for example, through a web-based patient portal to their electronic health record. Researchers and policy makers should continue to engage the public to promote greater public understanding of the research process and to look for feasible alternatives to existing approaches to project-specific consent for observational research. (shrink)

The current study highlights individual differences in the joint articulation strategies used by novices practicing a hip-hop dance movement, the wave. Twelve young adults, all naive regarding hip-hop dance performance, practized the wave in 120 trials separated into four blocks with the order of internal or external attentional focus counterbalanced across subjects. Various kinematic analyses were analyzed to capture performance success while exploiting the observed individual differences in order to establish the reliability of the proposed performance indicators. An external focus (...) of attention marginally facilitated the smooth transfer of a wave motion across neighboring limb segments as characterized by a constant propagation speed combined with large wave amplitudes. Systematic correlations between the success indicators were found, exemplifying the various degrees of joint articulation that novices prove capable of during an initial practicing session to try and perform a novel complex motor task. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 273-297, September 2022.

Since their derivation, human embryonic stem (hES) cells have been used for a variety of applications including developmental biology, pathology, chemical biology, genomics, and proteomics. However, their most important potential application is the generation of cells and tissues, which can be used for cell‐based therapies. One of the main drawbacks of hES cell culture is that they are particularly sensitive to dissociation, which is required for passaging, expansion, cryopreservation, and other applications. Recently, it has been discovered that an inhibitor of (...) Rho kinase (ROCKi; Y‐27632) increases the survival rate of dissociated, single hES cells. This breakthrough has allowed new methods in hES cell culture to be developed, with the promise of increasing hES cell numbers into the realm of clinical relevance. In our studies demonstrating that ROCKi dramatically increases hES cell cryopreservation efficiency, we have observed that ROCKi treatment does not decrease hES cell's susceptibility to apoptosis. Rather, we hypothesize that ROCKi treatment desensitizes single hES cells to their environment reducing the odds that individual cells will undergo anoikis. (shrink)

Rather than advance novel strategies for achieving the objectives of conservation, Sandler suggests that we change the goals of conservation itself, emphasizing ecological processes through...

The recent pop culture iconography of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) label has attracted more devoted (white) fans than a 90s boy band. In philosophy, this trend is evidenced by the growing number of white feminists who extend their work in gender analogically to questions of race and identity. The trend is further evidenced by the unchecked use of the CRT label to describe (1) any work dealing with postcolonial authors like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon or (2) the (...) role postcolonial themes like power, discourse, and the unconscious play in the social constructionist era. While this misnomer may seem practically insignificant, the artifice formerly known as CRT in philosophy—more adequately labeled “critical theories of race”— has been axiomatically driven by the political ideals of integration and by a revisionist commentary that seeks to expand traditional philosophical ideas, such as reason, history, and humanity, which were previously closed off by racial borders, to people of color. This “revision in the name of inclusion,” however, is not without its consequences. In order to incorporate the experiences of those who suffer under the weight of modernity and are marred by the burdens of racism into the narration of Continental and American philosophy, the theoretical perspectives in Critical Race Theory that deny the legitimacy of philosophy’s diversity agenda must necessarily be excluded.In particular, this recent move to recognize the study of race as a category of philosophical relevance has resulted in the outright denial of the nationalist and revolutionary fervor contained in the intellectual history specific to the Critical Race Theory movement started by the works of Derrick Bell.2 Instead, this new movement favors narratives that inculcate the ideals of a post-racial humanity and racial amelioration between compassionate (Black and white) philosophical thinkers dedicated to solving America’s race problem. (shrink)

Derrick Darby’s Rights, Race, and Recognition and Ronald R. Sundstrom’s The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice are two recent efforts to answer the challenges that race and racism pose to liberal theory. Darby draws upon civil rights and abolitionist discourse to advance an “externalist” account of political rights, while Sundstrom explores the strains placed upon liberalism by recent demographic trends. In this review essay, I provide a brief account of their overall arguments, and offer some (...) further critical considerations. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a psychologically informed critique of and alternative to approaches to teaching issues of race and racial justice that are based on the recognition of white privilege. White privilege pedagogy, I argue, faces serious limitations avoided by a pedagogy grounded in “interest convergence.” Advanced by critical race theorist Derrick Bell, the theory of interest convergence holds that racial progress is most likely when the interests of whites converge with the interests of oppressed racial groups. Applying (...) this insight to pedagogical practice, I argue that it has the potential to overcome white resistance to acknowledging and addressing racial injustice, in the classroom and in the broader public sphere. After making this case in general terms, I illustrate it concretely by describing an interest convergence-based approach to teaching affirmative action. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will explore how COVID-19 has made us collectively vulnerable to illness and death, although marginalized and minority communities have been particularly hard hit. In stark fashion, the pandemic has shown us that as a discipline, bioethics can no longer engage in business as usual but instead needs to be reimagined. We explore two conceptions that will help explore how this collective vulnerability has occurred with COVID-19, and how the change that occurs often is not sustainable or (...) truly “ethical”. The first is Rawl’s “veil of ignorance” and the second is Derrick Bell’sBell, Derrick “interest convergence” theory, which posits that at some points in a movement, things are only good because the party with power has an agenda that aligns or “converges” with the non-dominant group, but not because there is actual moral agreement. Although these theories are largely descriptive, Heckler and Mackey’s novel theory on interest cognizance suggests that there are normative ways in which a movement becomes sustainable because there is not just superficial “buy-in” but actual moral agreement. From that analysis, we posit a path forward for bioethics that goes beyond traditional principles and incorporates novel considerations such as connectivity. Given global warming and other looming catastrophes, including possible future pandemics, such a reimagining is necessary in order to move forward in the face of extreme global vulnerability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY: A REVIEW DISCUSSION [I]t seems to me that Schema 18 [preparatory draft for the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] needs to rest on a deeper realization of the urgent problems posed by technology.... (The Constitution on Mass Media seems to have been totally innocent of any such awareness.) For one thing, the whole massive complex of technology, which reaches (...) into every aspect of social life today, implies a huge organization of which no one is really in control, and which dictates its own solutions irrespective of human needs or even reason.... I am not of course saying that technology is "bad," and that progress is something to be feared. But I am saying that behind the cloak of specious myths about technology and progress, there seems to be at work a vast uncontrolled power which is leading man where he does not want to go... and in which the Church... ought to be somewhat more aware of the intervention of the "principalities and powers" of which St. Paul speaks. -Thomas Merton, Letter to Bernard Haring (December ~6, 1964) l WHEN A DRAFT of the United States Roman Catholic bishops' proposed pastoral letter on human values was circulated to philos·ophy teachers at Catholic colleges in 1975, one respondent took the occasion to suggest that what was needed was not another geneml restatement of " human values " or a piecemeal analysis of specific issues (unemployment, artificial contraception, abortion, nuclear weapons, etc.) but something intermediate-work toward the development of an ethics of technology.2 Unbeknown i The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, selected and edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985), pp. 383-384. 2 The pastoral subsequently appeared as To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Reflection on the Moral Life (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, November 1976). 146 TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY 147 to himself, he had voiced a concern similar to that expressed by Thomas Merton a decade earlier. With the publication another decade later of Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technology,3 the proceedings of a workshop for Catholic bishops by the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center (then in St. Louis, now in Boston) there is evidence that this need is being increasingly recognized. Working from cmss-disciplinary analyses of two commonly un-associaited issues-nuclear energy and reproductive technologies (i.e., the ostensibly positive correlates 0£ nuclear weapons and artificial contraception)-Technological Powers and the Person seeks to formulaite general guidelines for the engagement with modern technology. Two specific technologies are rightly seen as related aspects of a global phenomenon, and philosophical anthropology is properly proposed as the foundation for ethical principles. Although aspects of this assessment may well be criticized, the general approach-a.s well as this particular workshop and the form of its final proceedingsdeserve commendation. 'Vhat follows, then, are some comments on format and substantive content aimed at furthering such a project. 1. The workshop itself (which was held in Dallas, Texas) was opened on the evening of January 31, 1983, with a keynote address by Christopher Derrick, a Catholic layman from England who has written on moral and religious issues of cuLture s Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P., Donald G. McCarthy, Edward J. Bayer, S.T.D., Michael P. McDonough, S.T.D., and Larry D. Lossing, eds., Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technologies (St. Louis, MO: Pope John Center, 1983). Pp. xiii, 500. This is the third in a series. Previous proceedings are New Technologies of Birth and Death (196 pages, from a 1980 workshop) and Human Sexuality and Personhood (254 pages, from a 1981 workshop), both published by the Pope John Center; as the titles and pages alone indicate, neither has the scope of the present volume. 148 CARL MITCHAl\1 and eoology.4 Together with a general overview of the workshop by the senior editor, Derrick's address constitutes part ooo of the proceedings. His fundamental question concerns whether there might not be an "inordinate attachment to temporal good... (shrink)

_The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill_ took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of the (...) volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the _Works_ are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

"This volume offers a new translation of the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius' commentary on the chapters concerning place and time in Aristotle's Physics, Book Four. Written after the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonist school in A.D. 529, the commentary clarifies the structure and meaning of Aristotle's arguments and provides a rich account of 800 years of interpretation." "Surprisingly, in the first five chapters of Book Four Aristotle shows place as two-dimensional: one's place is the two-dimensional inner surface of one's surroundings. He (...) also suggests that the upward motion of air and fire and the downward motion of earth and water are partly explained by the natural places to which they tend. Place thus has power (dunamis) of its own. In his last five chapters, Aristotle argues that if time did not entail change its passage would be undetectable, and that time, by definition countable, requires the existence of conscious beings to do the counting. Among the many relevant views that Simplicius records are those of Galen, who attacks this claim, and of Eudemus, who rebuts the Pythagorean theory that history will repeat itself exactly. J. O. Urmson's translation serves as a companion to his earlier translation of the Corollaries on Place and Time, in which Simplicius sets forth his own views as distinct from those of Aristotle." "A major sourcebook for the interpretation of Aristotle, this volume will be welcomed by scholars and students in the fields of classics, ancient philosophy, ancient history, and medieval studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)