Numerous searches have failed to identify a single co-occurrence of total blindness and schizophrenia. Evidence that blindness causes loss of certain NMDA-receptor functions is balanced by reports of compensatory gains. Connections between visual and anterior cingulate NMDA-receptor systems may help to explain how blindness could protect against schizophrenia.

Knowledge of the ethical and legal basis of medicine is as essential to clinical practice as an understanding of basic medical sciences. In the UK, the General Medical Council requires that medical graduates behave according to ethical and legal principles and must know about and comply with the GMC’s ethical guidance and standards. We suggest that these standards can only be achieved when the teaching and learning of medical ethics, law and professionalism are fundamental to, and thoroughly integrated both vertically (...) and horizontally throughout, the curricula of all medical schools as a shared obligation of all teachers. The GMC also requires that each medical school provides adequate teaching time and resources to achieve the above. We reiterate that the adequate provision and coordination of teaching and learning of ethics and law requires at least one full-time senior academic in ethics and law with relevant professional and academic expertise. In this paper we set out an updated indicative core content of learning for medical ethics and law in UK medical schools and describe its origins and the consultative process by which it was achieved. (shrink)

Acceptance of elderly or marginal health individuals as kidney donors is debated, with practices varying between centres. Transplant recipients, live kidney donors and health-care professionals caring for patients with renal failure were surveyed regarding their views on live donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) of marginal health (diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, obesity, etc.) and elderly donors. Participants were recruited within a tertiary renal and transplant centre and invited to participate in focus groups and structured interviews. They also completed an anonymous questionnaire. Of 464 (...) participants who completed the questionnaire (36% health-care professionals and 64% patients), 49% and 64%, respectively, stated that marginal and elderly donors should be accepted for LDKT. In the structured interviews, emphasis was given to presenting to donor, recipient and their respective families a calculated risk regarding the effect that either a nephrectomy or transplant has on long-term quality of life. Participants stated that an independent third party in addition to the transplant team should discuss involved risks. Issues of ‘how desperate’ the recipient's situation is should also be considered. Health-care professionals stated that regardless of the strength of will of an individual to donate a kidney (despite age, health problems or personal risk), they should always have the right to say ‘no’ if performing a specific LDKT was against their professional and ethical values. About half of those surveyed considered that marginal health and elderly donors were acceptable for LDKT. Emphasis was given to the explanation to donors and recipients of the risks involved in such transplantation. (shrink)

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of thing. This edition (...) consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

Background/Aim: The law on consent has changed in Scotland with the introduction of the Adults with Incapacity Act 2000. This Act introduces the concept of proxy consent in Scotland. Many patients in intensive care are unable to participate in the decision making process because of their illness and its treatment. It is normal practice to provide relatives with information on the patient’s condition, treatment, and prognosis as a substitute for discussion directly with the patient. The relatives of intensive care patients (...) appeared to believe that they already had the right to consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. The authors’ aim was to assess the level of knowledge among relatives of intensive care patients of both the old and new law using a structured questionnaire.Methods: The next of kin of 100 consecutive patients completed a structured questionnaire. Each participant had the questions read to them and their answers recorded. Patients were not involved in the study.Results: Few were aware of the changes. Most thought that they previously could give consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. Only 13% have ever discussed the preferences for life sustaining treatment with the patient but 84% felt that they could accurately represent the patient’s wishes.Conclusions: There appeared to be a lack of public awareness of the impending changes. The effectiveness of the Act at improving the care of the mentally incapacitated adult will depend largely on how successful it is at encouraging communication and decision making in advance of incapacity occurring. (shrink)

Impartiality is primarily a feature of normative or evaluative deliberation – deliberation about what ought to be done or about something's goodness or badness. An initial description is this: such deliberation is impartial when it is not unduly influenced by the deliberator's own interests, preferences, or loyalties. Derivatively, impartiality can be attributed to actions that are guided by deliberation with this feature, or persons who characteristically deliberate or act in this way.

“Free riding,” used as a descriptive term, refers to taking a jointly produced benefit without contributing towards its production. Used as a term of criticism, it refers to the wrongful failure to contribute towards the joint production of benefits that one receives. On either usage, the central interest of moral philosophy in free riding is the same: to specify the conditions under which not contributing towards the joint production of benefits that one receives is wrong, and to explain why.

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of thing. This edition (...) consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

The debate about constructivism in physics has led to different kinds of questions that can be conventionally framed in two classes. One concerns the mathematics that is considered for the theoretical development of physics. The other is concerned with the experimental parts of physical theories. It is unnecessary to observe that the intersection between our two classes of problems is far from being empty. In this paper we will mainly deal with topics belonging to the second class. However, let us (...) briefly mention some important problems that have been debated in the framework of our first class. For instance, the following: to what extent do the undecidability and incompleteness results of classical mathematics affect fragments of physical theories, in such way as to have a “real physical meaning”? are the mathematical arguments that seem to be essential for physics justifiable in the framework of traditional mathematical constructivism?The first question has recently been investigated by Pitowski, Penrose, da Costa, Doria, Mundici, Svozil and others. As expected by most logicians, one can construct undecidable sentences whose physical meaning seems to be hardly questionable. This happens both in classical and in quantum mechanics. (shrink)