This paper reports our analysis of the ELSI Virtual Forum: 30 Years of the Genome: Integrating and Applying ELSI Research, an online meeting of scholars focused on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics.

Without proper recognition of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racism that Asian Americans and other racial minorities in the United States are facing, we cannot successfully address structural b...

I Norge er ikke surrogati tillatt, og myndighetene fraråder norske statsborgere å benytte seg av surrogati i utlandet. I denne artikkelen fokuserer vi på kommersiell gestational surrogati og stiller spørsmålet: Bør man tillate at norske statsborgere benytter seg av surrogati i India? De etiske problemstillingene rundt surrogati er mange og sammensatte og blir spesielt utfordrende når tjenesten tilbys i et land med store kulturelle og økonomiske forskjeller både internt og i forhold til Norge. Vi baserer analysen og drøftingen av dette (...) etisk utfordrende spørsmålet på Beauchamps og Childress sin veletablerte metodiske tilnærming innen biomedisinsk etikk. Vi anvender de fire allmennmoralske prinsipper: respekt for autonomi, velgjørenhet, ikke-skade og rettferdighet på sakskomplekset for å synliggjøre spenningene involvert i dette etiske dilemmaet. Med full bevissthet om at det ikke finnes noen lettvinte og omkostningsfrie løsninger på dilemmaer generelt og dette spesielt, konkluderer vi med at interessene til de berørte parter, og spesielt surrogatmødrenes, kan bli bedre ivaretatt om surrogati tillates under omfattende reguleringer. Dersom man velger å gjøre praksisen illegal, vil man også miste mulighetene til å påvirke prosessen og sikre rettighetene til de involverte partene.Nøkkelord: surrogati, Norge–India, utnyttelse, autonomi, regulering av prosessenEnglish summary: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India?Surrogacy is not permitted in Norway, and the government strongly advises against Norwegian citizens travelling abroad to have children through the use of the surrogacy industry. In this article, we focus on commercial gestational surrogacy and debate the question: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India? The ethical concerns regarding surrogacy are complex and are especially challenging when the service is offered in a country with big cultural and economic differences both internal and in comparison to Norway. We base our analysis of this ethical, challenging question on Beauchamp’s and Childress’s well-established approach within biomedical ethics. We apply the four principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice to shed light on the conflicts of interests in this ethical dilemma. With full awareness that there are no simple and correct solutions to dilemmas in general and on this issue, especially, our conclusion is that the interests of the involved parties, and especially those of the surrogate mothers, might be better attended to if surrogacy is allowed with extensive regulations. If this practice is made illegal, the opportunity to influence the process and secure the rights of the involved parties is lost. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 157-172 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" Jazz: America's Classical Music? 1 Lee B. Brown I VIEWERS OF KEN BURNS'S third cultural epic "Jazz" probably fell into one of three categories. 2 Some found it gripping. Some found it grating. Some found it both at once.The series has unforgettable moments: spectacular jitterbug sequences; Jimmy Lunceford's horn men fanning their trumpet bells (...) with hat mutes in sync; the close-up of the whirring cross-hand drumming of Art Blakey; the bitter-sweet glance Billie Holiday and Lester Young exchange in their last filmed appearance together; the occasional marriage of visuals to music. One riveting three minutes comes when the talking heads tune out, a 78-rpm disk of Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" is set spinning, and the thrilling notes pour out on a carousel of visual imagery—finally freeze-framing on the face of the young genius himself.On the downside, the series is massively repetitious. As a result of Burns's decision to track two major figures—Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington—from cradle to grave, the same cuts of Armstrong appear again and again, no matter what the time frame. Some of the series' commentators are particularly annoying—the fiddler of Burns's Civil War series, Matt Glaser, for instance, with his fatuous theories [End Page 157] about Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. And the documentary's heavy load of social freight—by Wynton Marsalis, and his mentors Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch 3 —threatens to flatten the music.The series is designed as informative entertainment, not Jazz 101. But Burns pays a price here, as he did in his documentary about baseball, in which not even the basics of the game, let alone any of the subtleties, were explained. In "Jazz" we get no explanation of what Jelly Roll Morton did to transform ragtime into jazz. (The series could easily have pressed Morton himself into service. With no sacrifice of his considerable charm, Morton did explain it, beautifully, in his recorded Library of Congress interviews. 4) Although the swing era gets big billing, no attempt is made to explain how swing rhythm actually works, as contrasted with earlier practices. (I have watched swing drummer Panama Francis entertain a packed hall with a brief but riveting illustration of how it works.)As jazz history, the film also has problems. Some legendary figures are resurrected unconvincingly. When Marsalis tells us what the legendary trumpet player Buddy Bolden sounded like, the illustrative off-camera trumpet is Marsalis's, not Bolden's, who embedded not one note in a record groove. Further, we face the tiresomely obvious problem of omissions. We hear nothing of Albert Ayler, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra, Mildred Bailey, Benny Carter, Lennie Tristano, Erroll Garner, Eric Dolphy, Art Pepper, or Woody Herman. All we learn about Bill Evans—whose influence on jazz piano was huge—is that Miles Davis hired him even though he was white. Omissions are inevitable, of course. But there is a muted pattern to the exclusions. It was impossible for the series to avoid Benny Goodman, given his central role in the swing era. But white figures are too often either ignored or treated as alienated outsiders. We hear New York Times columnist Margo Jefferson opine that Bix Beiderbecke drank himself to death because he wasn't allowed to play with black musicians. In fact, many of the greatest players—white and black—never played with musicians of their own caliber.Most figures covered in the film are treated either with respect or with reverence. But things get nasty when matters turn to avant-gardists. Thus, Branford Marsalis—Wynton's talented brother—singles out the volcanic pianist Cecil Taylor for a particularly hostile attack. 5 Instead of explaining what Ornette Coleman meant by "free jazz," Albert Murray tells us that jazz is, by definition, free music—and by implication, that Coleman's concept must be fatuous. And Wynton has complained [End Page 158] elsewhere about a jazz avant-garde retreat into what he calls "a... (shrink)

The increasing complexity of human subjects research and its oversight has prompted researchers, as well as institutional review boards, to have a forum in which to discuss challenging or novel ethical issues not fully addressed by regulations. Research ethics consultation services provide such a forum. In this article, we rely on the experiences of a national Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative that collected more than 350 research ethics consultations in a repository and published 18 challenging cases with accompanying ethical commentaries to (...) highlight four contexts in which REC can be a valuable resource. REC assists: 1) investigators before and after the regulatory review; 2) investigators, IRBs, and other research administrators facing challenging and novel ethical issues; 3) IRBs and investigators with the increasing challenges of informed consent and risk/benefit analysis; and 4) in providing flexible and collaborative assistance to overcome study hurdles, mediate conflicts within a team, or directly engage with research participants. Institutions that have established, or plan to establish, REC services should work to raise the visibility of their service and engage in open communication with existing clinical ethics consult services as well as the IRB. While the IRB system remains the foundation for the ethical review of research, REC can be a valuable service for investigators, regulators, and research participants aligned with the goal of supporting ethical research. (shrink)

_Etter revisjonen av bioteknologiloven i mai 2020, ble eggdonasjon på norsk et faktum. I kjølvannet av «bioteknologiforliket» – en koalisjon mellom Ap, Frp og SV som sikret stortingsflertall for endringene i loven – skulle kompensasjonsstørrelsen fastsettes for kvinner som ønsker å donere bort egg. Det ble av den grunn holdt en høring om retningslinjene for donasjon av egg, herunder alternativer for hvor mye donor bør kompenseres økonomisk. I denne artikkelen har jeg analysert høringsutkastet, høringssvarene og de endelige retningslinjene for kompensasjon (...) av eggdonasjon. Hensikten med studien var å undersøke de ulike argumentene i den norske debatten om økonomisk kompensasjon for donasjon av egg. Tre gjennomgående temaer ble identifisert i høringsdokumentene: motivasjonens form og innhold, rettferdighet og donorbutikk. Et sentralt funn i høringen var en gjennomgående bekymring for økonomisk motivert donasjon. Samtidig var det bred enighet om at eggdonasjoner skulle være altruistiske. Altruisme ble forstått som et fravær av økonomisk motivasjon hos donoren, men uten at andre ikke-altruistiske motiver ble problematisert eller at forutsetningene for altruisme ble videre diskutert. Analysen viste også hvordan lignende argumenter ble vinklet ulikt for å kunne understøtte både en høyere og lavere kompensasjon. For eksempel endte en vektlegging av kvinners rettigheter i noen høringssvar opp som et forsvar for det høyeste forslaget til kompensasjon, mens i andre høringssvar ble den brukt som argument for et forbud mot enhver kompensasjon. Samlet sett gir denne studien innblikk i mangfoldet av argumenter som er blitt brukt i den norske debatten om økonomisk kompensasjon for eggdonasjon, og den viser viktigheten av å definere begrepene som brukes – som altruisme, frivillighet og økonomisk motivasjon – for å få bedre frem både enighetene og uenighetene mellom partene i debatten._ _Nøkkelord:_ altruisme, bioteknologi, eggcelledonasjon, godtgjørelse, motivasjon _English abstract_ After the revision of the Biotechnology Act in May 2020, egg donation in Norwegian became a fact. In the wake of the "biotechnology agreement" – a coalition between Ap, Frp and SV that secured a parliamentary majority for the changes in the law – the amount of compensation was to be determined for women who wish to donate eggs. A hearing was therefore held on the guidelines for egg donation, including options for how much the donor should be financially compensated. In this article, I have analyzed the consultation draft, the consultation responses and the final guidelines for compensation for egg donation. The purpose of the study was to examine the various arguments in the Norwegian debate about financial compensation for egg donation. Three consistent themes were identified in the consultation documents: the form and content of the motivation, justice and donor shop. A key finding in the consultation was a consistent concern about financially motivated donation. At the same time, there was broad agreement that egg donations should be altruistic. Altruism was understood as an absence of financial motivation on the part of the donor, but without other non-altruistic motives being problematized or the prerequisites for altruism being further discussed. The analysis also showed how similar arguments were angled differently in order to support both higher and lower compensation. For example, an emphasis on women's rights in some consultation responses ended up as a defense for the highest proposal for compensation, while in other consultation responses it was used as an argument for a ban on any compensation. Overall, this study provides an insight into the diversity of arguments that have been used in the Norwegian debate on financial compensation for egg donation, and it shows the importance of defining the terms used _–_ such as altruism, volunteering and financial motivation _–_ in order to better bring out both the agreements and the disagreements between the parties in the debate. _Keywords:_ altruism, biotechnology, egg cell donation, remuneration, motivation. (shrink)

Searle has recently used two adaptations of his Chinese room argument in an attack on connectionism. I show that these new forms of the argument are fallacious. First I give an exposition of and rebuttal to the original Chinese room argument, and then a brief introduction to the essentials of connectionism.

We show that in a dilute gas the wave function’s spreading is limited by scattering off other particles. This shows that quantum mechanics can be consistent with the kinetic theory of gases.

Stephen Law’s evil-god challenge is the argument that since an evil god is just as likely as the God of theism, there is no reason to believe that theism is true over believing there is a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnimalevolent. There have been several attempts to answer the challenge, but recently John Collins has defended the evil-god challenge and also extended the argument past Law’s original formulation. In this article, I defend the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas (...) against the evil-god challenge. In particular, I explain how Aquinas’s theodicy involving God’s goodness and Aquinas’s privation view of evil avoid the challenge. (shrink)

Background In Canadian jurisdictions without specific legislation pertaining to research consent, the onus is placed on researchers to determine whether a child is capable of independently consenting to participate in a research study. Little, however, is known about how child health researchers are approaching consent and capacity assessment in practice. The aim of this study was to explore and describe researchers' current practices. Methods The study used a qualitative descriptive design consisting of 14 face-to-face interviews with child health researchers and (...) research assistants in Southern Ontario. Transcribed interviews were analysed for common themes. Results Procedures for assessing capacity varied considerably from the use of age cutoffs to in-depth engagement with each child. Three key issues emerged from the accounts: (1) requirements that consent be provided by a single person thwarted researchers' abilities to support family decision-making; (2) little practical distinction was made between assessing if a child was capable, versus determining if study information had been adequately explained by the researcher; and (3) participants' perceived that review boards' requirements may conflict with what they considered ethical consent practices. Conclusion The results suggest that researchers' consent and capacity knowledge and skills vary considerably. Perceived discrepancies between ethical practice and ethics boards' requirements suggest the need for dialogue, education and possibly ethics board reforms. Furthermore we propose, where appropriate, a ‘family decision-making’ model that allows parents and their children to consent together, thereby shifting the focus from separate assent and consent procedures to approaches that appropriately engage the child and family. (shrink)

Norman Daniels's new book, Just Health, brings together his decades of work on the problem of justice and health. It improves on earlier writings by discussing how we can meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all and by attending to the implications of the socioeconomic determinants of health. In this article I return to the core idea around which the entire theory is built: that the principle of equality of opportunity grounds a societal obligation to meet health (...) needs. I point, first, that nowhere does Daniels say just what version of that principle he accepts. I then proceed to construct a principle on his behalf, based on a faithful reading of Just Health. Once we actually nail down the principle, I argue, we will find that there are two problems: it is implausible in itself, and it fails to ground a societal obligation to meet health needs. (shrink)

In this paper, I address some puzzles about Frege’s conception of how we “grasp” thoughts. I focus on an enigmatic passage that appears near the end of Frege’s great essay “The Thought.” In this passage Frege refers to a “non-sensible something” without which “everyone would remain shut up in his inner world.” I consider and criticize Wolfgang Malzkorn’s interpretation of the passage. According to Malzkorn, Frege’s view is that ideas [Vorstellungen] are the means by which we grasp thoughts. My counter-proposal (...) is that language enables us to grasp thoughts (ideas are merely their baggage or “trappings,” as Frege puts it). One significant consequence of my interpretation is that it helps challenge the standard reading of Frege according to which he is a metaphysical platonist about thoughts. My interpretation thus provides support for the deflationary, anti-ontological reading spelled out by readers like Thomas Ricketts and Wolfgang Carl. As Ricketts puts it, Frege’s distinction between the objective and the subjective, rather than being an ontological doctrine, “lodges in the contrast between asserting something and giving vent to a feeling.”. (shrink)

Frank Wilderson: I introduce a semiotic configuration. The point is, at important levels of abstraction, people who are positioned as Black—which is very different from saying people who think of themselves as Black. One of the basic premises of Afropessimism, which makes it resonate with psychoanalysis or Marxism, is that where one is positioned in a paradigm might not be where one thinks one is or where one desires to be. When I teach undergraduates, I say: “Look, I used to (...) study neorealism. In these neorealist films, we have these people who are bona fide fascists, and then you have those people in the Communist Party, so they could not agree on much. They don’t see themselves as having much of a connection. But in a Gramscian sense, they are both positioned as the host of capitalist parasites. Both groups rely on the wage. So, they are both workers.” One of the big points with respect to the narratological question is that I, as a Black person, trained at Columbia University in creative writing, trained at UC Berkeley in critical theory, love narrative, but narrative does not love me. In other words, it is impossible for me to be “emplotted” as a speaking subject. I can only be “emplotted” as an object of narrative. But I am always struggling to attain that love of humanity; and if I were to attain it, the Human would not have a foil against which to know itself. So, what I am saying is that in a book like Red, White & Black, I am just being very categorically clear about the divisions. In Afropessimism, I am actually talking about the desire of a sentient being who cannot be allowed into an arena where people are recognized and incorporated, in Lacanian terms, as “contemporaries” of human beings. So, there is all this back and forth. I don’t think this speaking subject in Afropessimism ever achieves anything in particular. It is always struggling toward being a subject that can actually travel on a narrative arc and yet ultimately is an object that can never travel from dispossession to redemptive recovery. (shrink)

The results of the development of the database of implants and plasma deposition plants in MS SQL Server 2012 are presented. The design of the infological model, the data design, the physical design, the architecture of the software and hardware complex are given. Possibilities of plasma spraying of implants with biocompatible elements are investigated. The system of classification of implants according to the type of application and manufacturing materials has been developed, implants have been classified according to the geometric-topological dimensions (...) of the components. A scheme of plasma spraying of metal and ceramic surfaces of parts and assemblies using a robotic complex is described. (shrink)