Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Researchers are working to derive sperm from banked testicular tissue taken from pre-pubertal boys who face therapies or injuries that destroy sperm production. Success in deriving sperm from this tissue will help to preserve the option for these boys to have genetically related children later in life. For the twin moral reasons of preserving access and equity in regard to having such children, clinicians and researchers are justified in offering the option to the parents of all affected boys. However, some (...) parents may wish to decline the option to bank tissue from their boys because the technique may seem too unfamiliar or unusual, but over time people may become more comfortable with the technique as they have done with other novel assisted reproductive treatments. Other parents may wish to decline the option because of moral or religious reasons. A prominent natural law theory holds, for example, that the ARTs that would be involved in using sperm derived from banked tissue to produce a child are morally objectionable. Some parents might not want to bank tissue in order to shield their son from using ARTs they see as objectionable. Clinicians and researchers should respect parents who wish to decline banking tissue, but parents should ordinarily embrace choices that protect the possible interests their sons may have as adult men, including the wish to have genetically related children. (shrink)

The outline of modern macroeconomics took shape in Britain in the early nineteenth century thanks, in part, to David Ricardo, one of the most influential economists of the time. Britain was challenged by monetary inflation, industrial unemployment and the loss of jobs abroad. Ricardo pointed the way forward. As a financier and Member of Parliament, he was well versed in politics and commercial affairs. His expertise is shown by the practicality of his proposals, including the resumption of the gold standard, (...) which was essential given the destabilizing policy of the Bank of England. Ricardo's expertise appears also in his debate with T. R. Malthus about whether an industrial economy can suffer a prolonged depression. Say's Law of Markets and the Quantity Theory of Money figure prominently in his works, but not in an extreme form. He was instead a subtle theorist, recognizing the non-neutrality of money, trade depressions and unemployment. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and (...) socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

What limits ought there be on a state’s ability to create a homogeneous society, to increase or perpetuate non-diversity, or to create hierarchies within existing diversity? This article examines those questions with reference to the Lieberman Plan—which proposes to transfer populated territories from Israel to the Palestine in exchange for Jewish settlements on the West Bank— as an abstract exercise in demographic transformation by the state. First the article considers if the Lieberman plan would “work”: Would it create the alterations (...) it proposes, and would those changes achieve a stable, peaceful, perhaps even just settlement? It finds that though there is debate about the range of effect, there is little doubt that transfer would alter the state’s demography. It then turns to the international standards that might govern the transfer of territory and the denaturalization of citizens, to see how they would characterize such a plan. It finds that comparisons to ethnic cleansing are inapposite, and that norms protecting citizenship are considerably more complex than they first appear—even allowing ethnically targeted denaturalization in some cases. The article then analyzes the loyalty provisions of the Lieberman Plan, and notes that, contrary to the usual normative assumption that citizenship is tied to the state, the foundations of citizenship are actually a habitual or formative link to a given territory, which in turn creates a right to citizenship not in any particular state, but in the one that incidentally is sovereign over that territory. This interaction of citizenship and territory, when considered together with norms requiring equal protection for all citizens, suggests that the polity has an interest in defining its own territorial scope, and thereby its membership. The legal regime is ambiguous, and therefore deliberations about this question are in the realm of politics. The article demonstrates how transfer’s assimilation to existing norms suggests a novel interpretation of selfdetermination with far-reaching consequences for both sides of the conflict. Finally, the article notes that international law, though it polices excesses, is largely silent on the principal determinant of demography: the fact of state control over territory. (shrink)

Explicitly utopian novels are relatively uncommon in twentieth-century Scottish fiction, perhaps due to a prevailing conception of Scottish literature as inherently peripheral; for many critics and authors, Scotland is already a place outside the mainstream of political and historical narrative. Utopian themes and imagery, however, have frequently been used by Scottish writers to address the role of religious experience in contemporary life. In novels by Robin Jenkins, Neil M. Gunn, Alasdair Gray, and Iain M. Banks, the utopian form presents (...) the possibility of abandoning traditional religious practices in favor of direct discourse with the divine. Even as they appear to repudiate organized religion, these novels also demonstrate the continued relevance of God and myth. Whether in outright science fiction such as Banks’s Culture series and portions of Gray’s “Lanark,” classical utopias such as Gunn’s “The Green Isle of the Great Deep,” or ostensibly realist novels such as Jenkins’s “The Missionaries,” utopian imagery is used to examine what role the divine might have in a secular society. These Scottish utopias offer a place to discuss the relationships between individuals, communities, and nations and how these relationships are reconstituted in a modernity where God is known only as absence. (shrink)

Background Genetic databases are becoming increasingly common as a means of determining the relationship between lifestyle, environmental exposures and genetic diseases. These databases rely on large numbers of research subjects contributing their genetic material to successfully explore the genetic basis of disease. However, as all possible research questions that can be posed of the data are unknown, an unresolved ethical issue is the status of informed consent for future research uses of genetic material. Discussion In this paper, we discuss the (...) difficulties of an informed consent model for future ineffable uses of genetic data. We argue that variations on consent, such as presumed consent, blanket consent or constructed consent fail to meet the standards required by current informed consent doctrine and are distortions of the original concept. In this paper, we propose the concept of an authorization model whereby participants in genetic data banks are able to exercise a certain amount of control over future uses of genetic data. We argue this preserves the autonomy of individuals at the same time as allowing them to give permission and discretion to researchers for certain types of research. Summary The authorization model represents a step forward in the debate about informed consent in genetic databases. The move towards an authorization model would require changes in the regulatory and legislative environments. Additionally, empirical support of the utility and acceptability of authorization is required. (shrink)

Computer technology has become an integral part of daily life. From online banking and shopping to email and instant messaging, cyberspace is increasingly woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. The mouse, the monitor and keyboard are all a part of the interfacing devices that over time become extensions of our bodies as we “surf” through graphical user interfaces. Icons patterned together in a mosaic on our screens link to infinite possibilities. We can visit museums, chat with family and (...) friends around the world, not to mention shop to have virtually anything we want shipped to our door. What happens to notions of infinity and transcendence when they are conflated with cyberspatial matrices? Does cyberspatial disembodiment allow us to transcend ourselves or does it blind us from the notion that transcendence in a box is not transcendence at all? (shrink)

The further scholarship investigates life forms the less those forms can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. The further scholarship delves into texts the less they too can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. This similarity is not simply an analogy. Life forms cannot be said to differ in a rigorous way from texts. On many levels and for many reasons, deconstruction and ecology should talk to one another. It is interesting to (...) contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. (shrink)

Advanced biopreservation technologies using subzero approaches such as supercooling, partial freezing, and vitrification with reanimating techniques including nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming are rapidly emerging as technologies with potential to radically disrupt biomedicine, research, aquaculture, and conservation. These technologies could pause biological time and facilitate large-scale banking of biomedical products including organs, tissues, and cell therapies.

BackgroundPrivate umbilical cord blood banking is a for-profit industry in which parents pay to store blood for potential future use. Governments have noted the tendency for private banks to oversell the potential for cord blood use, especially in relation to speculative cell therapies not yet supported by clinical evidence. We assessed the regulatory landscape governing private cord bank marketing in Canada.Main bodyBecause the problematic marketing of private cord blood banking for future use often relates to speculative future cell therapies (...) that do not exist and are not being advertised for current clinical use, most private blood bank marketing seems to fall outside Health Canada’s regulatory scope. However, this problematic marketing is regulated by the Competition Bureau pursuant to the Competition Act. While representations relating to future hypothetical treatments may not always be subject to the legal requirement for claim substantiation, the law also prohibits individuals and companies from knowingly or recklessly making representations that are “false or misleading in a material respect.” A representation is materially false or misleading when it could “influence a consumer’s behavior or purchasing decisions,” and consumers are likely to be considered to be “credulous and inexperienced” for the purposes of assessing an advertisement’s general impression. Because all of the potential benefit of the banking is derived from the potential future use of the biological material for health interventions directed toward the customers and their relatives, and because we know the best available medical evidence indicates a very low probability of utility in this context, we can say with confidence that some private cord blood banking claims are materially misleading. Moreover, to the extent that medical professionals are involved in private bank interactions with customers or hold ownership stakes in private banks, they are subject to professional codes, standards of practice, and potentially fiduciary obligations that further prohibit misleading marketing.ConclusionsPrivate cord blood bank marketing that advertises hypothetical future treatments can be misleading and may influence consumer behaviour. This marketing may breach existing advertising law. Regulatory bodies should enforce the law in order to help prevent public health and personal financial harm. (shrink)

Research involving minors has been the subject of much ethical debate. The growing number of longitudinal, pediatric studies that involve genetic research present even more complex challenges to ensure appropriate protection of children and families as research participants. Long-term studies with a genetic component involve collection, retention and use of biological samples and personal information over many years. Cohort studies may be established to study specific conditions (e.g. autism, asthma) or may have a broad aim to research a range of (...) factors that influence the health and development of children. Studies are increasingly intended to serve as research platforms by providing access to data and biological samples to researchers over many years. (shrink)

When a minor research participant reaches the age of majority or the level of maturity necessary to be granted legal decision-making capacity, reconsent can be required for ongoing participation in research or use of health information and banked biological materials. Despite potential logistical concerns with implementation and ethical questions about the trade-offs between maximising respect for participant agency and facilitating research that may generate benefits, reconsent is the approach most consistent with both law and research ethics.Canadian common law consent requirements (...) are expansive and likely compel reconsent on obtaining capacity. Common law doctrine recognises that children are entitled to decision-making authority that reflects their evolving intelligence and understanding. Health consent legislation varies by province but generally either compels reconsent on obtaining capacity or delegates the ability to determine reconsent to research ethics boards. These boards largely rely on the Canada’s national ethics policy, the Tri-Council Policy Statement, which states that, with few exceptions, reconsent for continued participation is required when minors gain capacity that would allow them to consent to the research in which they participate. A strict interpretation of this policy could require researchers to perform frequent capacity assessments, potentially presenting feasibility concerns. In addition, Canadian policy and law are generally consistent with the core principles of key international ethical standards from the United Nations and elsewhere.In sum, reconsent of paediatric participants upon obtaining capacity should be explicit and informed in Canada, and should not be presumed from continued participation alone. (shrink)

Kit Fine’s arguments in Essence and Modality are widely accepted as being a decisive blow against modal essentialism. A selection of replies exist that have done little to counter the general view that modally construed essence is out of touch with what we really mean when we make essentialist claims. I argue that Fine’s arguments fail to strike a decisive blow, and I suggest a new interpretation of the debate that shows why Fine’s arguments fall short of achieving their goal.

Critics of industrial animal agriculture have argued that its practices are cruel, inhumane, or otherwise degrading to animals. These arguments sometimes form the basis of a larger case for the complete abolition of animal agriculture, while others argue for more modest welfare-based reforms that allow for certain types of industrial farming. This paper defends industrial farming against the charge of cruelty. As upsetting as certain practices may seem, I argue that they need not be construed as cruel or inhumane. Any (...) link between industrial farming and cruelty or inhumanity is contingent on certain cultural, behavioral, and psychological facts that are person-dependent. For many people working in animal agriculture, these facts do not obtain. To be sure, industrial animal agriculture has real moral hazards that must be carefully avoided, but all that this shows is that working with animals is not for everyone. (shrink)

This article outlines and develops the concept of ‘ethics work’ in social work practice. It takes as its starting point a situated account of ethics as embedded in everyday practice: ‘everyday ethics’. This is contrasted with ‘textbook ethics’, which focuses on outlining general ethical principles, presenting ethical dilemmas and offering normative ethical frameworks (including decision-making models). ‘Ethics work’ is a more descriptive account of ethics that refers to the effort people put into seeing ethically salient aspects of situations, developing themselves (...) as good practitioners, working out the right course of action and justifying who they are and what they have done. After identifying seven features of ethics work, including work on framing, roles, emotion, identity, reason, relationships and performance, each element is illustrated with reference to two case examples from social work practice. It is argued that the concept of ethics work, with its focus on the practitioners as moral agents in context, is an important antidote to the rules-based managerialism of much contemporary practice. (shrink)

According to Gamper, one function of science is to determine how the world is. Science, Gamper continues, rests on a set of basic assumptions, and the gap between basic assumptions and science should be filled by ontological frameworks that accommodates the modal properties of such assumptions. Different frameworks may surely suggest different modal properties. Thus, in so far as we use different basic assumptions, we can have different ontologies with different modal properties. Ontologies affect, in turn, science, which, however, has (...) the power to falsify the ontological frameworks. The aim of this article is to show a possible trouble of Gamper's proposal, here considered as applied to the geographical debate. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to demonstrate that in the Monologion Saint Anselm affirms the priority of the via negativa over the via positiva.More precisely, I shall argue that in that text Anselm defends a distinctive thesis with three components. There is, to begin with,a semantic component, according to which, all of our words for God—including those purporting to tell us what God is—fall utterlyshort of their mark. A consequence of this is that none of our speech is capable of (...) describing the reality that is God. There is, inaddition, an epistemic component according to which there is no way for us to understand what God is; we can only know what Godis not. In consequence, we have no way of directly grasping God or of comprehending God’s being. Finally there is a metaphysicalcomponent according to which what God is in himself is an infinite and ineffable mystery. A consequence of this would be that Godturns out to have nothing at all in common with his creatures. (shrink)

In the few years since the advent of ‘Big Data’ research, social media analytics has begun to accumulate studies drawing on social media as a resource and tool for research work. Yet, there has been relatively little attention paid to the development of methodologies for handling this kind of data. The few works that exist in this area often reflect upon the implications of ‘grand’ social science methodological concepts for new social media research. By contrast, we advance an abductively oriented (...) methodological suite designed to explore the construction of phenomena played out through social media. To do this, we use a software tool – Chorus – to illustrate a visual analytic approach to data. Informed by visual analytic principles, we posit a two-by-two methodological model of social media analytics, combining two data collection strategies with two analytic modes. We go on to demonstrate each of these four approaches ‘in action’, to help clarify how and why they might be used to address various research questions. (shrink)

The distinction between the modeling of information and the modeling of data in the creation of automated systems has historically been important because the development tools available to programmers have been wedded to machine oriented data types and processes. However, advances in software engineering, particularly the move toward data abstraction in software design, allow activities reasonably described as information modeling to be performed in the software creation process. An examination of the evolution of programming languages and development of general programming (...) paradigms, including object-oriented design and implementation, suggests that while data modeling will necessarily continue to be a programmer's concern, more and more of the programming process itself is coming to be characterized by information modeling activities. (shrink)

The duality of computer programs is characterized, on the one hand, by their physical implementations on physical devices, and, on the other, by the conceptual implementations in programmers’ minds of the objects making up the computational processes they conceive. We contend that central to programmers’ conceptual implementations are (i) the concept of type, at both the programming and the design level, and (ii) metaphors created to facilitate these implementations.

Traditional conventionalism about modality claims that a proposition is necessarily true iff it is true by convention. In the wake of the widespread repudiation of truth-byconvention, traditional conventionalism has fallen out of favour. However, a family of theories of modality have arisen that, whilst abandoning truth-by-convention, retain the spirit of traditional conventionalism. These ‘neo-conventionalist’ theories surpass their forebears and don’t fall victim to the criticisms inherited through truth-by-convention. However, not all criticisms levelled at traditional conventionalism target truth-by-convention. Any conventional theory (...) of modality must face the contingency problem. This claims that the contingency of our linguistic conventions jeopardises the necessity of the necessities they determine. I present the contingency problem as relevant to both the traditional conventionalist and the neo-conventionalist. I examine a response from Einheuser that builds upon a response from Wright. I show that the Einheuser response does more to accommodate the conventionalist’s modal beliefs, but that it does not fully satisfy some further conditions that ought to be laid upon such a response. I then suggest how the response can be revised so as to satisfy these conditions. The resulting model of conventionalism is compatible with the validity of S4, and suitably in the spirit of conventionalism. (shrink)

John Milbank's The Future of Love is a compilation of essays written over the last twenty-five years from which a nuanced political theology takes shape. As a collection of essays, it is impossible to find here a single unitary voice, but nor is that the point. The point, I believe, is to give a sample of Milbank's tripartite method of critique, which incorporates literature, theology, and philosophy. From this sample a string of interwoven arguments emerge: the need to prioritize excellence (...) over efficiency in all walks of life; that this demands a hierarchy of values; that a hierarchy of values…. (shrink)

This commentary examines the implications of the Depue & Collins model for the etiology and treatment of depression, specifically, whether it can account for findings concerning neurobiological, behavioral, and phenomenological facets of depression. Drawing upon the construct of self-regulation, I explore the fit of the model to current knowledge about depression, conceptualized as a dysfunction within a hypothetical brain/behavior system for maximizing positive outcomes.

A look at the dynamical concept of space and space-generating processes to be found in Kant, J.F. Herbart and the mathematician Bernhard Riemann's philosophical writings.

In the face of climate change, moral motivation is central: why should individuals feel compelled to act to combat this problem? Justice-based responses miss two morally salient issues: that the key ethical relationship is between us and the environment, and there is something in it for us to act to aid our environment. In support of this thesis there are two seemingly disparate sources: Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si and the early Marx’s account of human essence as species-being. Francis argues (...) we must see nature as an “other” with whom we have a relationship, rather than dominating nature. Marx considers how we currently interact with “others,” and the harms these interactions cause to us. In both contexts, we harm our environment by not acting to meet its needs, and harm ourselves by making it less likely to develop ourselves as more fully human persons. It is the avoidance of these harms that can motivate us to act against climate change. (shrink)