BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

SANTOS, J. T. (2012) Platão: a construção do conhecimento, Paulus, S. Paulo.

We provide an empirical investigation of leadership characteristics and social justice issues in the context of financial literacy service-learning. Using a unique dataset of student self-ratings, we find that students experience statistically significant increases in 8 of the 10 leadership dimensions and 7 of the 7 social justice issues examined in this study. Leadership dimensions include: persuasion, building community, “commitment to the growth of people,” stewardship, empathy, awareness, foresight, and listening. Interest in social justice issues include: dignity of the human (...) person, community and the common good, rights and responsibilities, option for the poor, dignity of work, solidarity, and care for God’s creation. The statistically significant increases in these dimensions following the completion of the service-learning suggest positive effects on students’ self-perception of leadership qualities and interests in social justice issues: business school students sense improvement in nurturing growth of employees and colleagues, commitment to serving the need of others, understanding and empathizing with others, ethics, ability to foresee the likely outcome of a situation, and listening intently to others. As a consequence of the financial literacy service-learning, we believe that business students become more prepared toward becoming ethical leaders and citizens with compassion to serve the world for the well-being of all people, rich and poor alike. (shrink)

Republicans understand freedom as the guaranteed protection against any arbitrary use of coercive power. This freedom is exercised within a political community, and the concept of arbitrariness is defined with reference to the actual ideas of its citizens about what is in their shared interests. According to many current defenders of the republican model, this form of freedom is understood in strictly negative terms representing an absence of domination. I argue that this assumption is misguided. First, it is internally inconsistent. (...) The central republican focal point of arbitrariness is a necessarily socially constructed ideal that only exists as the creation of the citizens themselves. Second, republican freedom operates in two distinct realms or spheres. There is freedom under a law that is required to uphold the collective good as reflected in society’s norms, and there is freedom within that very system of norms. The threats to freedom from within each sphere are different and must be addressed accordingly. The negative approach, however, conflates the two and emphasises only the dangers faced under the law. This exposes citizens – especially those from marginalised social groups – to domination in the second realm from oppressive social norms. Only by clearly recognising the nature of both kinds of threats can a comprehensive republican freedom be formulated. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is an integral component of good medical practice. Many researchers have investigated measures to improve the quality of informed consent, but it is not clear which techniques work best and why. To address this problem, we propose developing a core outcome set to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery in adult patients with capacity. Part of this process involves reviewing existing research that has reported what is important to patients and doctors in the (...) informed consent process. Methods This qualitative synthesis comprises four phases: identification of published papers and determining their relevance; appraisal of the quality of the papers; identification and summary of the key findings from each paper while determining the definitiveness of each finding against the primary data; comparison of key themes between papers such that findings are linked across studies. Results Searches of bibliographic databases returned 11,073 titles. Of these, 16 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1996 and 2016 and included a total of 367 patients and 74 health care providers. Thirteen studies collected data using in-depth interviews and constant comparison was the most common means of qualitative analysis. A total of 94 findings were extracted from the primary papers and divided into 17 categories and ultimately 6 synthesised findings related to: patient characteristics, knowledge, communication, the model patient, trust and decision making. Conclusions This qualitative meta-aggregation is the first to examine the issue of informed consent for surgery. It has revealed several outcomes deemed important to capture by patients and clinicians when evaluating the quality of a consent process. Some of these outcomes have not been examined previously in research comparing methods for informed consent. This review is an important step in the development of a COS to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery. Registration The study protocol was registered on the international prospective register for systematic reviews. (shrink)

The advent of moral pluralism in the post-modern age leads to a set of issues about how pluralistic societies can function. The questions of biomedical ethics frequently highlight the larger issues of moral pluralism and social cooperation. Reflection on these issues has focused on the decision making roles of the health care professionals, the patient, and the patient's family. One species of actor that has been neglected has been those institutions which are part of the public, secular realm and which (...) have a particular moral heritage. Keywords: approval, compromise, condemnation, integrity, toleration CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

After a period during which the theological categories of sin and forgiveness were ignored or trivialized, presently these notions are being rediscovered. What could their impact be on bioethics, either in the narrow sense of medical ethics, or in the more encompassing sense of the ethics of the life sciences? This essay begins with describing the processes of transcending and ethitization, which gave rise to the biblical notion of sin. It portrays the theological foundation of sin in terms of a (...) twofold refusal of proper relations to God and other humans. Through the practise of confession in the face of God (coram deo), sin is placed into a horizon of hope for forgiveness and reconciliation. The heuristic and hermeneutical significance of these categories results from their introducing a “surplus value,” which transcends biological and ethical considerations. This additional dimension is illustrated in view of care (cura) for the injured, and in view of individual as well as collective willingness to forgive. (shrink)

Steven Vogel’s Thinking like a Mall, which continues themes developed in his previous work Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, is clearly intended to provok...

The changing world of health care finance has led to a paradigm shift in health care with health care being viewed more and more as a commodity. Many have argued that such a paradigm shift is incompatible with the very nature of medicine and health care. But such arguments raise more questions than they answer. There are important assumptions about basic concepts of health care and markets that frame such arguments.

The present article has three sections. The first one discusses the relationship of the theological theory of transubstantiation to that of transignification and transfinalization , ideas that were introduced just before the time of Vatican II by northern European theologians. The second section develops a holistic view of the nature of matter. Our present scientific knowledge seems to require that we abandon the Aristotelian theory of hylomorphism in favor of a theory in which real beings of a certain level ‘sublate’ (...) real but subordinate beings of lower levels. For example, a human being is a substance that includes within itself many smaller substances. When he was in the flesh, the physical body of Christ included within itself a vast number of interconnected atoms and molecules. The third section discusses ideas of Teilhard de Chardin about the relationship of Christ to matter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hereditary Eloquence Among the Torquati: Catullus 61.209–18S. J. HarrisonTorquatus volo parvulus matris e gremio suae porrigens teneras manus dulce rideat ad patrem semihiante labello.sit suo similis patri Manlio et facile omnibus noscitetur ab insciis et pudicitiam suae matris indicet ore. 1At the close of Catullus’ lyric epithalamium for a Manlius Torquatus, the speaker of the poem wishes for children from the marriage, a standard epithalamial topic in this position; (...) the wish for features in the final prayers of the wedding-speech according to Menander Rhetor (II.411.16, 20–21 Spengel). One interpretational problem here is that lines 215–18 seem to say the same thing twice—a double wish that the son of the marriage be easily recognisable through his physical features as the true offspring of his father. This problem can be solved by a closer consideration of the text and of the identity of the Manlius Torquatus involved.There seems to be general agreement that the most likely candidate for the bridegroom of Catullus’ poem is L. Manlius Torquatus, praetor in 50 or 49 B.C. and killed in the civil war in 47. 2 Cicero knew and admired this Torquatus, making him the Epicurean spokesman in the De Finibus, and giving him a fulsome notice in the Brutus (265). It is clear from the latter that this Torquatus was a leading public speaker of his time: Cicero speaks of his divina memoria, summa verborum et gravitas et elegantia. My contention is that this detail of Torquatus’ eloquence makes sense of Catullus 61.209–18. [End Page 285]The shape of the sentence seems to be as follows: the general idea that the son will resemble his father is put first (sit suo similis patri / Manlio), and then subdivided into two particular elements balanced and linked by et... et. In the usual interpretation, those two elements are identical—Manlius’ son will be easily recognised as his by all through family physical resemblance (ore). This seems unsatisfactory, given the apparent care taken to balance and differentiate them. But if we translate ore not as ‘face’ but as ‘mouth’, i.e., eloquence, a new and appropriate point emerges which is different from that of physical resemblance: as the son of a noted orator, it will be through his hereditary talent for public speaking as well as by his looks that the future Torquatus will be proved his father’s true child. Os is found elsewhere in poetry in this pregnant sense of ‘eloquence’: we may compare Ovid, Pont. 3.5.7 iuvenis patrii non degener oris (a similar context of hereditary eloquence, addressing Cotta Maximus, son of the great orator Messalla Corvinus), Silius, Punica 11.65 cunctis praecellens Virrius ore (the rhetorical skills of a Capuan delegate), and TLL 9.2.1081.54ff.It is interesting to note from two famous poems of Horace that Catullus’ prophecy about the eloquence of Torquatus’ son may have been fulfilled. It has been suggested that the Manlius Torquatus addressed by Horace in Epistles 1.5 and Odes 4.7 is a son of the consul of 65, 3 and therefore perhaps contemporary with or somewhat older than Horace, born in 65 himself. However, it is equally possible that he is a son of Catullus’ bridegroom, the praetor of 50 or 49, and therefore younger than the poet. 4 We should imagine a son of the praetor Torquatus being born in the mid-50s, the approximate date of Catullus 61; this would seem appropriate for the Torquatus addressed in Epistles 1.5, a rising advocate who looks to be in mid-career around 20 B.C., and for the addressee of Odes 4.7, fittingly addressed in around 13 B.C. with thoughts on mortality now he has reached forty and middle age in Horatian terms (cf. Odes 2.4.22–24). Horace’s Torquatus is clearly a prominent orator: the [End Page 286] epistle urges him to leave the law-courts, where he is in demand as an advocate, and come to a party at Horace’s house, while Odes 4.7 refers specifically to his facundia (23). This eloquent Torquatus could be following his father... (shrink)

There is, in the Ramsey Archive at the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh, a note, written in 1929, in Ramsey's hand and mostly in German, consisting of twenty paragraphs the contents...

This article concerns the morality of establishing regulated kidney markets in an effort to reduce the chronic shortage of kidneys for transplant. The article tries to rebut the view, recently defended by James Taylor, that if we hold autonomy to be intrinsically valuable, then we should be in favor of such markets. The article then argues that, under current conditions, the buying and selling of organs in regulated markets would sometimes violate two Kantian principles that are seen as moral constraints. (...) One principle forbids expressing disrespect for the dignity of humanity; the other forbids treating others merely as means. In light of the moral danger posed by regulated markets, the article advocates an alternative way of diminishing the current organ shortage, namely opt-out systems of cadaveric organ donation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Who or What is the Preembryo?S.J. Richard A. McCormick (bio)IntroductionAlthough widely used by scientists, the term "preembryo" has raised some suspicions. Histopathologist Michael Jarmulowicz (1990), for example, asserts that the term was adopted by the American Fertility Society (AFS) and the Voluntary Licensing Authority (VLA) in Britain "as an exercise of linguistic engineering to make human embryo research more palatable to the general public."I cannot speak for the VLA, (...) but I can clarify that this was not the motive of the AFS. As a member of the AFS ethics committee that discussed and adopted this terminology, I know that our discussion was not tied to embryo research or moral issues. The term "preembryo" was adopted because the earliest stages of mammalian development primarily involve establishment of the nonembryonic trophoblast, rather than the formation of the embryo. As Clifford Grobstein (1988, p. 61), a distinguished basic scientist who also sat on the AFS committee notes:The scientific rationale for the term preembryo... is its greater accuracy in characterizing the initial phase of mammalian and human development.... The status implications of such a change in terminology were not at issue in the discussion.This is not to say that the moral status of the preembryo is not a concern worthy of independent consideration. It is an important question with significant practical implications, especially in the context of in vitro fertilization. At stake are issues such as: (1) what may be done to preembryos before transfer; (2) whether all preembryos must be transferred; and (3) what may be done to preembryos that are not transferred (Ethics Committee of the American Fertility Society (AFS) 1986, p. 29S). Furthermore, emergency treatment of rape cases may also depend on such a determination. [End Page 1]Cryopreservation, which entails freezing unused preembryos for possible later use, is one example of a procedure that raises issues associated with the moral status of the preembryo. Cryopreservation decreases the number of stimulated egg recovery cycles a woman must undergo and increases flexibility in transfer protocols. But thawing of the preembryos is not a completely benign process; significant numbers of the preembryos die in the process and injury cannot be excluded.In addition, down the road a year or so lies preimplantation genetic diagnosis, now being tested in several centers of reproductive research. This would involve the removal of one or more cells from a preembryo developing in vitro. The DNA from these cells would be studied and then only genetically normal preembryos would be transferred. With the growth in knowledge about single gene defects and the rapid advance of amplification technology, which allows gene visualization, it is not difficult to imagine scientists embarking on a variety of micromanipulations of the preembryo for the sake of gaining knowledge.Not all research with gametes involves preembryos, but clearly some experiments and procedures await resolution of the moral status of the preembryo. I contend in this paper that the moral status—and specifically the controversial issue of personhood—is related to attainment of developmental individuality (being the source of one individual). This contrasts with the view that holds that personhood occurs earlier, at the point of genetic uniqueness. I believe that an embryo that has developed to the point where it can be one individual and one individual only, differs in moral status from a preembryo that has not, even if in many cases we may choose to treat them similarly.The Scientific UnderpinningsTwo things must be kept in mind—and in a sense, in tension—in turning to science for help in assessing the status of the preembryo. First, science is not competent to decide the question of personhood or ensoulment. As the Catholic document, Declaration on Procured Abortion, which I will return to later, notes: "It is a philosophical problem" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) 1974, p. 10, endnote 19). On the other hand, another Catholic document, Donum vitae(CDF 1987), notes that the conclusions of science provide a "valuable indication" for reason's deliberations about personhood. We might say that if science cannot decide the question of personhood, neither can it be decided without science.For my review of embryological science... (shrink)

Problem: Mitterer's critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. Solution: In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical constructivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis for deriving far-reaching (...) epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to constructivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer's basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. Benefits: The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. (shrink)

Cora Diamond has recently criticised as mere legend the interpretation of a quip of Ramsey's, contained in the epigraph below, which takes him to be objecting to or rejecting Wittgenstein's Tractarian distinction between saying and showing. Whilst I agree with Diamond's discussion of the legend, I argue that her interpretation of the quip has little evidential support, and runs foul of a criticism sometimes made against intuitionism. Rather than seeing Ramsey as making a claim about the nature of propositions, as (...) Diamond does, we should understand him as making a claim about the grammar of the logical connectives. Such a view coheres with the extant evidence of the nature of Wittgenstein's and Ramsey's 1929 philosophical encounters. It is also compatible with attributing to Ramsey a recognition of Wittgenstein's distinction and with denying that criticising it is the lesson of the quip. (shrink)