This interview with media anthropologist, Rebecca L. Stein, conducted by Noa Levin and Andrew Fisher in Spring 2023, takes her recent book Screenshots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (2021) as its starting point in order to explore issues of state violence and the militarization of social media in Israel/Palestine. This book marks the culmination of a decade-long research project into the camera dreams introduced by digital imaging technologies and the fraught histories of their disillusionment. Stein discusses (...) the way her research has critically conceptualized the recent history of hopes invested in the digital image in this geopolitical context, by the occupier as much as the occupied, and charts the failures and mistakes, obstructions and appropriations that characterize the conflicted visual cultures of Israel/Palestine. (shrink)

Research-oriented universities are known for prolific research activity that is often supported by students in faculty-guided research. To maintain ethical standards, universities require on-going training of both faculty and students to ensure Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). However, previous research has indicated RCR-based training is insufficient to address the ethical dilemmas that are prevalent within academic settings: navigating issues of authorship, modeling relationships between faculty and students, minimization of risk, and adequate informed consent. U.S. universities must explore ways to identify (...) and improve RCR concerns for current (faculty) and future researchers (students). This article reports the findings of a self-study (_N_ = 50) of research stakeholders (students and faculty) at a top tier research institution. First, we report on their perceived importance of applying RCR principles. Second, we explore relationships between stakeholder backgrounds (e.g., prior training, field, and position) and how they ranked the degree of ethical concerns in fictitious vignettes that presented different unethical issues university students could encounter when conducting research. Vignette rankings suggested concerns of inappropriate relationships, predatory authorship and IRB violations which were judged as most unethical, which was dissimilar to what sampled researchers reported in practice as the most important RCR elements to understand and adhere to for successful research. Regression models indicated there was no significant relationship between individuals’ vignette ethics scores and backgrounds, affirming previous literature suggesting that training can be ineffectual in shifting researcher judgments of ethical dilemmas. Recommendations for training are discussed. (shrink)

Adoption of technology in agriculture can significantly reorganize production and relationships amongst humans, animals, technology, and the natural environment. However, the adoption of agricultural technology is not homogenous, and diversity in integration leads to a diversity of outcomes and impacts. In this study, we examine the adoption of automated milking systems in small and midsize dairy farms in the US Midwest, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In contrast to technological determinism, we find significant variation amongst adopters in the implementation of AMS (...) and corresponding variation in outcomes. Adopters have significant discretion in determining the use of AMS, which leads to a diversity of possible outcomes for family and non-family labor, human–cow relationships, animal welfare, the environment, and financial resiliency. Adoption and implementation are shaped by both structural factors, such as debt load and labor market variation, and by farmers’ individual personality traits and values, such as a willingness to release control to technology. Rather than uniform adoption and impacts of technology, we highlight the importance of context, the co-constitution of technology and users, and the diversity of technology adoption and its associated impacts. (shrink)

Drawing on theoretical work on humans’ adaptive capacity, we propose that supervisors’ perception of top management’s high bottom-line mentality (BLM) has a dysfunctional effect on their ethical leadership practices. Specifically, we suggest that these perceptions hinder supervisors’ empathy, which eventuates in less ethical leadership practices. We also investigate, in a first-stage moderated mediation model, how supervisors high in trait mindfulness are resistant to the ill effects of perceptions of top management’s high BLM. Supervisors high (versus low) in this trait are (...) less likely to respond to perceptions of top management’s high BLM with reduced empathy that then hinders ethical leadership. Results from a multi-wave, multi-source sample of working adults from the Chinese high technology industry provide general support for our theoretical model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Realist ideology critique (RIC) is a strand of political realism recently developed in response to concerns that realism is biased toward the status quo. RIC aims to debunk an individual's belief that a social institution is legitimate by revealing that the belief is caused by that very same institution. Despite its growing prominence, RIC has received little critical attention. In this article, I buck this trend. First, I improve on contemporary accounts of RIC by clarifying its status and the role (...) of motivated reasoning. Second, I show that realist ideology critics face a dilemma: either their account makes deeply implausible epistemological assumptions, or they temper its epistemology at the expense of rendering it toothless. I argue for each horn in turn before revealing the dilemma to be a false one by making a novel distinction between varying strengths of RIC based on their underlying epistemological assumptions. I propose Moderate RIC as a solution: upon discovering that one reason for your belief that a social institution is legitimate is likely malignantly epistemically circular, the belief should undergo further epistemic testing. I respond to three potential objections and suggest that Moderate RIC would make a fruitful addition to political theorists' methodological toolkit. (shrink)

The name of the first author was incorrect in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

Craig Hanks and Aili Bresnahan are contributing editors only -- not main editors.

Despite some improvements in access to evidence-based medications for opioid use disorder, treatment rates remain low at under a quarter of those with need. High costs for brand name products in these medication markets have limited the volume of drugs purchased, particularly through public health insurance and grant programs. Brand firm anti-competitive practices around the leading buprenorphine product Suboxone — including product hops, citizen petitions and Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy abuses — helped to maintain high prices by extending brand (...) exclusivity periods and hindering generic drug entry. Remedies to address costly anti-competitive activities include adoption of the proposed CREATES Act and modernization of the Hatch-Waxman Act by the Congress, and implementation of substantive modifications to the Food and Drug Administration citizen petition filing procedures. Given the persistence of these abuses, prescriptive changes are favorable to the procedural and clarifying steps thus far favored by the federal government. Extrapolating from the 37% price declines attributable to generic entry for buprenorphine tablets in 2011, our calculations suggest that implementing these remedies to facilitate generic competition with Suboxone film would have resulted in savings of approximately $703 million overall and $203 million to Medicaid in 2017. (shrink)

The standard notion of autonomy in medical ethics does not require that autonomous choices not be irrational. The paper gives three examples of seemingly irrational patient choices and discusses how a rational autonomy analysis differs from the standard view. It then considers whether a switch to the rational autonomy view would lead to overriding more patient decisions but concludes that this should not be the case. Rather, a determination of whether individual patient decisions are autonomous is much less relevant than (...) usually considered in determining whether health care providers must abide by these decisions. Furthermore, respect for rational autonomy entails strong positive requirements of respect for the autonomy of the person as a rational decision maker. The rationality view of autonomy is conceptually stronger than the standard view, allows for a more nuanced understanding of the practical moral calculus involved in respecting patient autonomy, and promotes positive respect for patient autonomy. (shrink)

Opioid litigation continues a growing public health litigation trend in which governments seek to hold companies responsible for population harms related to their products. The litigation can serve to address gaps in regulatory and legislative policymaking and in market self-regulation pervasive in the prescription opioid domain. Moreover, prior opioid settlements have satisfied civil tort litigation objectives of obtaining compensation for injured parties, deterring harmful behavior, and holding certain opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies accountable for their actions. In this way, opioid (...) litigation represents progress over prior public health litigation campaigns involving tobacco, lead paint, and asbestos, which had more limited tort litigation effects. Although opioid litigation is not a comprehensive solution to the opioid crisis, it can complement other strategies and infuse much needed money, behavior changes, and public accountability for prescription opioid and related harms. (shrink)

. This paper follows the journey of two small fluid units throughout the nineteenth century in Anglo-American medicine and pharmacy, explaining how the non-uniform “drop” survived while the standardized minim became obsolete. I emphasize two roles these units needed to fulfill: that of a physical measuring device, and that of a rhetorical communication device. First, I discuss the challenges unique to measuring small amounts of fluid, outlining how the modern medicine dropper developed out of an effort to resolve problems with (...) the “minimometer,” which measured minims. Second, I explain how drops, utilized in “the open drop method” of administering general anesthesia, effectively communicated a gradual process and epistemically valuable heuristic to the audience of practitioners, whose attention to individual medical outcomes was important for verifying the proper dosage. The standardized minim was never able to achieve success as the drop’s intended replacement; the non-uniform drop better served the relevant epistemic goals within the practical contexts for which these units were designed. The surprising historical trajectory of drops should cause us to question the common equivocation of “standardization” with “progress” in the history and philosophy of measurement. This study also exemplifies how examining non-standard measurement practices can be instructive for better understanding the role and function of standardization within epistemology of measurement. (shrink)

Should monkeys be used in painful and often deadly infectious disease research that may save many human lives? This is the challenging question that Anne Barnhill, Steven Joffe, and Franklin G. Miller take on in their carefully argued and compelling article “The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates.” The authors offer a nuanced and even-handed position that takes philosophical worries about nonhuman primate moral status seriously and still appreciates the very real value of such research for human welfare. Overall, they (...) argue for an extension and revision of the recommendations regarding chimpanzee research offered by the Institute of Medicine in 2011; the practical upshot of their argument would allow for infection challenge research for promising interventions for Ebola and Marburg virus diseases but not for smallpox or the common cold. The IOM recommendations regarding chimpanzee research put in motion an exceptionalist policy for this great ape population. Barnhill and colleagues’ proposal would enlarge the scope of that exceptionalism to embrace NHPs other than great apes. But is such exceptionalism warranted? It is not obvious to me either that the more sophisticated capacities of a species as a whole give it greater ethical protections or that less intellectually or socially sophisticated animals ought to therefore receive less protection when it comes to painful experimental interventions. (shrink)

This essay explores three issues in respect for autonomy that pose unfinished business for the concept. By this, I mean that the dialogue over them is ongoing and essentially unresolved. These are: whether we ought to respect persons or their autonomous choices; the role of relational autonomy; and whether nonhuman animals can be autonomous. In attending to this particular set of unfinished business, I highlight some critical moral work left aside by the concept of respect for autonomy as understood in (...) Beauchamp and Childress’ Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Specifically, while significant pragmatic traction is gained by the authors’ focus on autonomous choice, carving such a focus out from the broader questions of moral respect and the autonomy of the person leaves aside a number of questions that we might have thought a view about respect for autonomy in biomedicine ought to answer. These include: How should physicians respond when autonomous patients make decisions that appear nonautonomous? What is the impact of the view that autonomy is “relational” for cross-cultural differences in how autonomy is respected? If chimpanzees can be autonomous, what does that mean for how they should be treated? (shrink)

An innovative examination of the ways in which dance and philosophy inform each other, Dance and Philosophy brings together authorities from a variety of disciplines to expand our understanding of dance and dance scholarship. Featuring an eclectic mix of materials from exposes to dance therapy sessions to demonstrations, Dance and Philosophy addresses centuries of scholarship, dance practice, the impacts of technological and social change, politics, cultural diversity and performance. Structured thematically to draw out the connection between different perspectives, this books (...) covers: - Philosophy practice and how it corresponds to dance - Movement, embodiment and temporality - Philosophy and dance traditions in everyday life - The intersection between dance and technology - Critical reflections on dance Offering important contributions to our understanding of dance as well as expanding the study of philosophy, this book is key to sparking new conversations concerning the philosophy of dance. (shrink)

Mr. C is a twenty‐two‐year‐old who was flown to a level‐1 trauma center after diving headfirst into shallow water. Prior to this accident, he was in excellent health. At the scene, he had been conscious but was paralyzed and had no sensation below his neck. The emergency medical services team immobilized Mr. C's neck with a cervical collar and intubated him for airway protection before transport. As Mr. C's medical care proceeds, he expresses a desire for extubation, although it was (...) not clear that he had the capacity to make this (or any other) decision. It also was unclear whether this desire reflected his authentic wishes to be allowed to die or stemmed from feelings of discomfort and agitation. Over a period of several days, Mr. C's sedation was lightened, and the psychiatry service conducted a formal decision‐making capacity assessment. Mr. C continues to express a desire to withdraw life‐sustaining medical treatment. However, the psychiatry service is concerned that Mr. C seems to lack adequate insight into what it would mean to die.What does it mean to respect Mr. C's autonomy? (shrink)

Ongoing evaluation of a clinical ethics consultation service (ECS) allows for continuous quality improvement, a process-based, data-driven approach for improving the quality of a service. Evaluations by stakeholders involved in a consultation can provide realtime feedback about what is working well and what might need to be improved. Although numerous authors have previously presented data from research studies on the effectiveness of clinical ethics consultation, few ECSs routinely send evaluations as an ongoing component of their everyday clinical activities. The primary (...) purpose of this article is to equip and encourage others to engage in ongoing evaluation of their own ECS. Toward that end, the following resources are shared: (1) the survey tool used to gather the evaluation data, (2) the procedure used to elicit and collate responses, and (3) how the resulting data are used to support continuous quality improvement and justify the continued financial support of the ECS to hospital administration. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

By analyzing descriptions of illusory and nonillusory figures, Richer called into question the common assumption that illusory and nonillusory perceptions were experientially the same and differed only in terms of their accuracy. The present study attempted to replicate Richer's work with a focus on identifying within the subjects' descriptions any orienting attitudes corresponding to these two forms of perception. Nineteen student volunteers were asked to describe two illusory figures and a nonillusory control of similar complexity. The descriptions revealed consistent differences (...) between the two forms. However, the Hering and Zollner figures were not always described in illusory terms, and surprisingly, several subjects described the control as if it were illusory. Further, perceptual accuracy was not guaranteed by nonillusory experience. Subjects described the figures from within one of three different orienting attitudes-atomizing, representational, and geometrical-organizing. The latter attitude appeared necessary for the phenomena of illusory perception and experience. Though the present findings confirmed Richer's distinction between illusory and nonillusory experience, they also indicate the need for further differentiation- illusory perception versus illusory experience. Finally, the findings also supported Luria's and Segall, Campbell, and Herskovits's position on the importance of particular cultural and educational experiences and codes in relation to perceptual illusions. (shrink)

Most hospitals and nursing homes have individuals who engage in ethics consultation, and most do so with very little, if any, training. The goal of this article is not to advance the scholarly literature on training clinical ethics consultants, but instead to provide a road map for individuals doing ethics consultation who would like more training. In this way, I hope to advance the field in some small way, by educating, empowering, and encouraging small- to medium-sized hospitals to train the (...) members of their ethics committee who engage in ethics consultation. (shrink)

This book review essay discusses Principles of Animal Research Ethics (2020), by Tom L. Beauchamp and David DeGrazia.

Biodefense and emerging infectious disease animal research aims to avoid or ameliorate human disease, suffering, and death arising, or potentially arising, from natural outbreaks or intentional deployment of some of the world’s most dreaded pathogens. Top priority research goals include finding vaccines to prevent, diagnostic tools to detect, and medicines for smallpox, plague, ebola, anthrax, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers, among many other pathogens (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID] priority pathogens). To this end, increased funding for conducting (...) research, developing research facilities, and purchasing (stockpiling) developed vaccines, diagnostic tools, and therapeutics .. (shrink)

Phase 1 healthy volunteer clinical trials—which financially compensate subjects in tests of drug toxicity levels and side effects—appear to place pressure on each joint of the moral framework justifying research. In this article, we review concerns about phase 1 trials as they have been framed in the bioethics literature, including undue inducement and coercion, unjust exploitation, and worries about compromised data validity. We then revisit these concerns in light of the lived experiences of serial participants who are income-dependent on phase (...) 1 trials. We show how participant experiences shift attention from discrete exchanges, behaviors, and events in the research enterprise to the ongoing and dynamic patterns of serial participation in which individual decision-making is embedded in collective social and economic conditions and shaped by institutional policies. We argue in particular for the ethical significance of structurally diminished voluntariness, routine powerlessness in setting the terms of exchange, and incentive structures that may promote pharmaceutical interests but encourage phase 1 healthy volunteers to skirt important rules. (shrink)

: Offering an introduction to both John Dewey's philosophy of education and the 4-H Youth Development Program, this paper draws clear connections between these two topics. Concepts explored include Dewey's principles of continuity and interaction, and contagion with respect to learning. Roles of educational leaders (including teachers) are investigated in the context of a discussion about the structuring of opportunities for students to develop habits of meaningful and life-long learning. Specific examples are described in depth to demonstrate, from a Deweyan (...) perspective, the educational process and value of 4-H participation. Brief comments are made about the place of 4-H in the U.S. system of public education. (shrink)

Imprisonment may sometimes be a justified form of punishment. Yet the U.S. carceral system suffers from appalling problems of justice—in who is put into prisons, in how imprisoned people are treated, and in downstream personal and community health impacts. Medical personnel working in prisons and jails take on risky work for highly vulnerable and underserved patients. They are to be lauded for their professional commitments. Yet at the same time, prison care undercuts the ability of medical personnel to uphold their (...) own professional standards and sometimes fails in even basic health protection. Doctors in prisons are stuck between their commitment to vulnerable patients and complicity in a system that requires their participation to uphold its constitutionality. Medical ethics is frayed in prisons, and the problem deserves our attention. (shrink)

Mr. Galanas, an eighty‐six‐year‐old man, intentionally shot himself in the chest and abdomen. Surprisingly, the bullet damaged only his distal pancreas and part of his colon, requiring a diverting colostomy to prevent leakage of bowel fluids into his abdomen. After being admitted, he lies intubated in the intensive care unit awaiting surgery to repair his colon. He is responsive but does not demonstrate clear decision‐making capacity. He grudgingly accepts pain medications but refuses antibiotics and antidepressants. He has a living will (...) that gives his wife durable power of attorney and also explicitly states a desire to refuse all medical interventions if he is permanently unconscious or in an end‐stage condition. Mrs. Galanas reports frequent conversations in which her husband said he would not want to be sustained on life support. She also says that he often mentioned he would not want an ostomy bag—a likely, albeit temporary, outcome of the proposed surgery. His physicians are nervous about withholding medical interventions when Mr. Galanas's injury is the result of a suicide attempt and his prognosis is good. Should the care team surgically repair his injured colon, regardless of the patient's capacity, his advance directive, and his wife's statement that he would not want surgery or other life‐sustaining treatment? (shrink)

Human beings with diminished decision-making capacities are usually thought to require greater protections from the potential harms of research than fully autonomous persons. Animal subjects of research receive lesser protections than any human beings regardless of decision-making capacity. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely animals’ lack of some characteristic human capacities that is commonly invoked to justify using them for human purposes. In other words, for humans lesser capacities correspond to greater protections but for animals the opposite is true. Without explicit (...) justification, it is not clear why or whether this should be the case. Ethics regulations guiding human subject research include principles such as respect for persons—and related duties—that are required as a matter of justice while regulations guiding animal subject research attend only to highly circumscribed considerations of welfare. Further, the regulations guiding research on animals discount any consideration of animal welfare relative to comparable human welfare. This paper explores two of the most promising justifications for these differences␣between the two sets of regulations. The first potential justification points to lesser moral status for animals on the basis of their lesser capacities. The second potential justification relies on a claim about the permissibility of moral partiality as␣found in common morality. While neither potential justification is sufficient to justify the regulatory difference as it stands, there is possible common ground between supporters of some regulatory difference and those rejecting the current difference. (shrink)

In the United States at present, the death penalty is a possible sentence in 31 out of 50 states, as well as within the military and for federal cases. In the U.S., numbers of executions are declin...

Analyses of Kafka’s The Trial often read the text as an existentialist work, arguing that the novel metaphorizes the absurdity of a modern world where God no longer exists. However, I agree with Slavoj Žižek, who posits that such a modernist reading ignores what is most vital in Kafka’s text—that the absence of God is “always already filled by an inert, obscene, revolting presence”. I argue that this “revolting presence” for Josef K is the presence of the Court; The Trial (...) describes the subject within a society organized by the symbolic order, the big Other, the symbolic network of rules regulating our lives and structuring our reality. For this reason, I read The Trial as pointing the way toward critical postmodernism. But a strictly postmodernist reading of The Trial cannot work without the Lacanian intervention of the split subject. Readings of The Trial based solely on the framework of Foucault’s power/knowledge theory, without a consideration of Lacanian subject formation, are incomplete. Foucault posits that individuals only become subjects via discourse, becoming subjects either through interpellation or via relationship to power. This begs the question, how does an individual become the desiring subject? How does a defendant such as Josef K. come to accept the power of the Court? I answer these questions by applying a necessary psychoanalytic intervention to Foucauldian readings of The Trial, interpreting the text as the narration of Josef K.’s unconscious experience as a split subject in relation to the big Other. (shrink)

From the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Harry F. Harlow's primate laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison undertook a series of studies on infant rhesus macaque monkeys that gained the attention of both animal welfare advocates and the scientific community.1 Establishing one of the first primate research laboratories in 1932, Harlow began his career as a primate researcher by studying primate learning capabilities and shredding previous assumptions within psychology that primates were restricted to the conditioned learning of a rat. (...) As his need for subjects in particular age ranges and easily susceptible to study grew in the 1950s, he again broke research ground by establishing a captive breeding... (shrink)

Background: Nonhuman animals are regularly enhanced genomically with CRISPR and other gene editing tools as scientists aim at better models for biomedical research, more tractable agricultural animals, or animals that are otherwise well suited to a defined purpose. This study investigated how genome editors and policymakers perceived ethical or policy benefits and drawbacks for animal enhancement and how perceived benefits and drawbacks are alike, or differ from, those for human genome editing. Methods: We identified scientists through relevant literature searches as (...) well as conference presentations. Policymakers were identified through rosters of genome editing oversight groups (e.g., International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, World Health Organization) or efforts aimed at influencing policy (e.g., deliberative democracy groups). Interviews covered participants’ views on ethical differences between interventions affecting somatic or germline cells and distinctions between using gene editing for disease treatment, prevention, and enhancement purposes. Results: Of the 92 participants interviewed, 81 were genome editing scientists, and 33 were policymakers, with 22 interviewees being both scientists and policymakers. Multiple areas were identified in which the ethical implications of genomic enhancements for nonhuman animals differ from those for human animals including with respect to experiential welfare; germline edits; environmental sustainability; and justice. Conclusions: Overall, respondents viewed that animal enhancement is unburdened by the ethical complexities of human enhancement. These views may be related to participant perceptions of animals’ lesser moral status and because germline editing in animals is common practice. (shrink)

While bioethics as a field has concerned itself with methodological issues since the early years, there has been no systematic examination of how ethics is incorporated into research on the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project. Yet ELSI research may bear a particular burden of investigating and substantiating its methods given public funding, an explicitly cross-disciplinary approach, and the perceived significance of adequate responsiveness to advances in genomics. We undertook a qualitative content analysis of a sample (...) of ELSI publications appearing between 2003 and 2008 with the aim of better understanding the methods, aims, and approaches to ethics that ELSI researchers employ. We found that the aims of ethics within ELSI are largely prescriptive and address multiple groups. We also found that the bioethics methods used in the ELSI literature are both diverse between publications and multiple within publications, but are usually not themselves discussed or employed as suggested by bioethics method proponents. Ethics in ELSI is also sometimes undistinguished from related inquiries. (shrink)