Lyme disease is one of the most controversial illnesses in the history of medicine. In 2006 the Connecticut Attorney General launched an antitrust investigation into the Lyme guidelines development process of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). In a recent settlement with IDSA, the Attorney General noted important commercial conflicts of interest and suppression of scientific evidence that had tainted the guidelines process. This paper explores two broad ethical themes that influenced the IDSA investigation. The first is the growing (...) problem of conflicts of interest among guidelines developers, and the second is the increasing centralisation of medical decisions by insurance companies, which use treatment guidelines as a means of controlling the practices of individual doctors and denying treatment for patients. The implications of the first-ever antitrust investigation of medical guidelines and the proposed model to remediate the tainted IDSA guidelines process are also discussed. (shrink)

Prevalence of contract cheating and outsourcing through organised methods has received interest in research studies aiming to determine the most suitable strategies to reduce the problem. Few studies have presented an international approach or tested which variables could be correlated with contract cheating. As a result, strategies to reduce contract cheating may be founded on data from other countries, or demographics/situations which may not align to variables most strongly connected to engagement in outsourcing. This paper presents the results of a (...) series of statistical analyses aimed at testing which variables were found to be predictors of students’ self-reported formal outsourcing behaviours. The data are derived from an international research study conducted in 22 languages, with higher education students (from Europe, the Americas and Australasia. Analyses found that country and discipline of study as well as the rate at which respondents n = 7806) believed other students to be cheating, were positively correlated to their cheating behaviours. Demographic variables did not show strong statistical significance to predicting contract cheating. (shrink)

In this paper we use the contemporary example of trans youth panics to introduce the notion of hermeneutical backlash, in which defenders of an established, unjust hermeneutical regime actively work to undermine and discredit hermeneutical liberation. We argue that the strategies and tropes of the trans youth panic illustrate a general propaganda vulnerability of epistemic liberation movements, and so are troubling for reasons that go beyond their application to trans youth. This exploration of a few specific cases of hermeneutical liberation (...) and hermeneutical backlash calls attention to the need for further theoretical work on the dynamics of struggles for hermeneutical justice. (shrink)

In this paper a formalized logic of propositions, PA1, is presented. It is proven consistent and its relationships to traditional logic, to PM ([15]), to subjunctive (including contrary-to-fact) implication and to the “paradoxes” of material and strict implication are developed. Apart from any intrinsic merit it possesses, its chief significance lies in demonstrating the feasibility of a general logic containing theprinciple of subjunctive contrariety, i.e., the principle that ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be true’ and ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be false’ are incompatible.

It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy (...) between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

Scholarly work in the area of the wisdom movement and its literature has opened up, in the last half-century, new vistas in Old Testament religion and theology. The research has progressed on such different fronts and intensified so rapidly that a survey charting its movement and achievement is necessary to appreciate the achievement and sense its implications.

Met illustratie van citaten uit vele auteurs wordt een poging ondernomen om het begrip 'civil society' te definiëren. De voorkeur van Barber gaat uit naar een civil socity, dat als een derde kracht tussen regering en markt opereert, met als basis een sterk democratisch gehalte.

To controlforceaccurately under a wide range of behavioral conditions, the central nervous system would either require a detailed, continuously updated representation of the state of each muscle (and the load against which each is acting) or else force feedback with sufficient gain to cope with variations in the properties of the muscles and loads. The evidence for force feedback with adequate gain or for an appropriate central representation is not sufficient to conclude that force is the major controlled variable in (...) normal limb movements.Morton's hypothesis, thatlengthis controlled by a follow-up servo, has a number of difficulties related to the delays, gains, variability, and specificity in feedback pathways comprising potential servo loops. However, experimental evidence is consistent with these pathways providing servo assistance for some movements produced by coactivation of α- and static γ-motoneurons. Dynamic γ-motoneurons may provide an additional input for adaptive control of different types of movements.The idea that feedback is used to compensate for changes in musclestiffnesshas received experimental support under static postural conditions. However, reflexes tend to increase rather than decrease the range of variation in muscle stiffness during some cyclic movements. Theoretical problems associated with the regulation of stiffness are also discussed. The possibilities of separate control systems forvelocityorviscosityare considered, but the evidence is either negative or lacking. I conclude that different physical variables can be controlled depending on the type of limb movement required. The concept of stiffness regulation is also useful under some conditions, but should probably be extended to the regulation of the visco-elastic properties (i.e., the mechanical impedance) of a muscle or joint. (shrink)

Changes being introduced to deregulate the Dutch health care system after decades of extensive state control are to be welcomed, and will in future require consumers to be ‘well‐informed, cost‐conscious and assertive patients, who are aware of their responsibility for their own health.’ R.B. Kool MD, PhD and E.J.J.M. Kimman PhD are attached to the Department of Business Ethics in the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics at The Free University, P.O. Box 7161, 10107 MC Amsterdam.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., is renowned for his just rule and long frontier wars. But his lasting fame rests on his Meditations, a bedside book of reflections and self-admonitions written during his last years, that provide unique insights into the mind of an ancient ruler and contain many passages of pungent epigram and poetic imagery. This study is designed to make the Meditations more accessible to the modern reader. Rutherford carefully explains the historical and philosophical (...) background, charts the main themes and tendencies of Marcus's thought, and relates stylistic detail to the intellectual and moral outlook of the author. His goal is to define Marcus's aims, attitudes, and styles more precisely and restore his work to the position it held in the past, that of a spiritual classic which can be read and enjoyed by people who are not professional scholars. (shrink)

In the fourteenth century William of Occam in the course of his attack on the medieval scholastic philosophy enunciated his famous “razor”: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. This is the classic claim for the description of nature in terms of the minimum possible number of fundamental concepts. It was presumably so recognized by Newton in the third book of his “Principia” in 1687 when he wrote: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are (...) both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”. (shrink)

In their 2008 paper, Persson and Savulescu suggest that for moral bioenhancement (MBE) to be effective at eliminating the danger of ‘ultimate harm’ the intervention would need to be compulsory. This is because those most in need of MBE would be least likely to undergo the intervention voluntarily. By drawing on concepts and theories from epidemiology, this paper will suggest that MBE may not need to be universal and compulsory to be effective at significantly improving the collective moral standing of (...) a human populace and reducing the threat of ultimate harm. It will identify similarities between the mechanisms that allow biological contagions (such as a virus) and behaviours (such as those concerned with ethical and unethical actions) to develop, spread, and be reinforced within a population. It will then go onto suggest that, just as with the epidemiological principle of herd immunity, if enough people underwent MBE to reach a minimum threshold then the incidence and spread of immoral behaviours could be significantly reduced, even in those who have not received MBE. (shrink)

E.R. Dodds’ 1959 edition of Plato’s Gorgias is a conventional treatment of this dialogue, aimed at audiences interested in close study of the text. Dodds himself regretted this outcome. He felt he had lost sight of an earlier goal, formulated at a time of political turmoil on the eve of WorldWar II, of using the Gorgias to bring out ‘both the resemblance and the difference between Plato’s situation and that of the intellectual today’. The present paper attempts to reconstruct that (...) goal, as it survives residually in his edition, surfaces in his The Greeks and the Irrational, and appears in some writings from the 1930s, particularly in unpublished lectures. Dodds did frequently juxtapose ancient and modern conceptions of the intellectual, and in a way that cast Plato in a positive light, as someone politically engaged and self-critical, and acutely sensitive, as Dodds himself was, to the political implications of social psychology. (shrink)

James Bohman’s account of what might be involved in thinking about ‘democracy across borders,’ and specifically of what might be involved in thinking about a potential shift from dêmos to dêmoi, compels both affirmation and resistance. His account is both elegant and sharply focussed: positive attributes that nevertheless affirm a very particular understanding of elegance, and a precise focus that manages to evade many considerations that might be considered important by people seeking to think about democracies and their futures in (...) many different situations. (Published: 5 February 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 21-36. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i1.4851. (shrink)

If we are aware of what indicates life, which everyone may be supposed to know, though perhaps no one can say that he truly and clearly understands what constitutes it, we at once arrive at the discrimination of death. It is the cessation of the phenomena with which we are so especially familiar—the phenomena of life. [J. G. SMITH, Principles of Forensic Medicine (London, 1821)].

The idea that bureaucracy is a «rational» and «depoliticized» instrument in the conduct of public affairs, has recently come under severe criticism. Assuming the inevitable trend towards «politicization», modern bureaucracies can possibly be classified info four different categories, i.e. : «De-politicized», «Semi-politicized», «Committed» and «Fully-politicized». Such a classification is based on the operationalization of certain indices on four different dimensions viz. a) Degree of Bureaucracy's Influence in Decision-making; b) Degree of its Involvement in Political Activities; c) Degree of Political Interference (...) in its Work and d) its Image in the Public. The extent of «politicization» of any bureaucratic system and its actual deviation from the defined categories will, however, depend upon the available pattern of the characteristic indices in that particular society. Notwithstanding certain difficulties in the operationalization of such indices, the model should be helpful in providing a framework for a comparative analysis and measurement of «politicization» of bureaucracies in different political systems. (shrink)

A tight control of intracellular [Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document}] is essential for the survival and normal function of cells. In this study we investigate key mechanistic steps by which calcium is regulated and calcium oscillations could occur using in silico modeling of membrane transporters. To do so we give a deterministic description of intracellular Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document} dynamics using nonlinear dynamics in order to understand Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document} signaling. We first present the ordinary differential equations system for cell calcium kinetics and make a preliminary work on Sobol indices. We then describe and analyze complex transporters action. Besides, we analyze the whole system. We finally perform numerical simulations and compare our results to real data. (shrink)

One area in which the moral philosopher might say something useful for the thinking of economists is that of welfare economics – not by improving formalizations or criticizing proofs as to conditions necessary or sufficient for an optimum situation, much less by suggesting what particular state of society would be optimal. Rather, he can do this by pointing out some distinctions, by suggesting how some terms used by economists can profitably be defined, and by questioning some assumptions which seem to (...) lie behind the thinking of some economists. The following discussion is aimed along these lines. The main goal of the argument will be to produce helpful definitions of “increase the welfare of an individual” and “increase social welfare.”. (shrink)

The question of whether or not children may be used as subjects in non-therapeutic research projects has generated a great deal of debate and received answers varying from 'no, never' to 'yes, if societal interests are served'. It has been claimed that a Kantian, deontological ethics would necessarily rule out such research, since valid consent would be impossible. The present paper gives a deontological argument for allowing children to be subjects in certain types of research.