The Medical Innovation Bill continues its journey through Parliament. On 23 January 2015, it was debated for the final time in the House of Lords and with one final amendment, the House moved to support the Bill, which then moved to the House of Commons on 26 January. It will be debated again on 27 February 2015. The Bill’s purpose is to encourage responsible innovation in medical treatment. Although this goal is laudable, it is argued that the Bill is unnecessary (...) and has the potential to undermine the very cause it aims to advance. More useful for encouraging responsible innovation is the continued education of health-care professionals on how the law already supports practitioners who look to improve care through responsible innovation. (shrink)

"This volume on a provocative set of topics presents papers from the 1997 conference on Religion and Sexuality at Roehampton Institute London. The papers do not confine themselves to contemporary discussion of the topics concerned, but range widely in their discourse and discuss this relationship in social, theological and political contexts."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

According to an adequacy-for-purpose view, models should be assessed with respect to their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Such a view has been advocated by scientists and philosophers...

Concern for human vulnerability seems to be at the heart of bioethical inquiry, but the concept of vulnerability is under-theorized in the bioethical literature. The aim of this article is to show why bioethics needs an adequately theorized and nuanced conception of vulnerability. We first review approaches to vulnerability in research ethics and public health ethics, and show that the bioethical literature associates vulnerability with risk of harm and exploitation, and limited capacity for autonomy. We identify some of the challenges (...) emerging from this literature: in particular, how to reconcile universal human vulnerability with a context-sensitive analysis of specific kinds and sources of vulnerability; and how to reconcile obligations to protect vulnerable persons with obligations to respect autonomy. We then briefly survey some of the theoretical resources available within the philosophical literature to address these challenges, and to assist in understanding the conceptual connections between vulnerability and related concepts such as harm, exploitation, needs, and autonomy. We also sketch out a taxonomy of sources and kinds of vulnerability. Finally, we consider the implications for policy evaluation of making vulnerability an explicit and central focus of bioethics. Our investigation is in the form of a broad survey motivating a research agenda rather than a detailed analysis. (shrink)

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

Can computer simulation results be evidence for hypotheses about real-world systems and phenomena? If so, what sort of evidence? Can we gain genuinely new knowledge of the world via simulation? I argue that evidence from computer simulation is aptly characterized as higher-order evidence: it is evidence that other evidence regarding a hypothesis about the world has been collected. Insofar as particular epistemic agents do not have this other evidence, it is possible that they will gain genuinely new knowledge of the (...) world via simulation. I illustrate with examples inspired by uses of simulation in meteorology and astrophysics. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Weisberg’s weighted feature matching account of model-world similarity. A number of concerns are raised, including that Weisberg provides an account of what underlies scientific judgments of relative similarity, when what is desired is an account of the sorts of model-target similarities that are necessary or sufficient for achieving particular types of modeling goal. Other concerns relate to the details of the account, in particular to the content of feature sets, the nature of shared features and the (...) assumed independence of feature weightings. (shrink)

Surgery is an increasingly common and expensive mode of medical intervention. The ethical dimensions of the surgeon-patient relationship, including respect for personal autonomy and informed consent, are much discussed; but broader equity issues have not received the same attention. This paper extends the understanding of surgical ethics by considering the nature of evidence in surgery and its relationship to a just provision of healthcare for individuals and their populations.

This chapter identifies conditions under which robust predictive modeling results have special epistemic significance—related to truth, confidence, and security—and considers whether those conditions are met in the context of climate modeling today. The findings are disappointing. When today’s climate models agree that an interesting hypothesis about future climate change is true, it cannot be inferred, via the arguments considered here anyway, that the hypothesis is likely to be true, nor that confidence in the hypothesis should be significantly increased, nor that (...) a claim to have evidence for the hypothesis is now more secure. In some other modeling contexts, the prospects for such arguments are brighter. (shrink)

In general terms, one way of describing the world we live in is to say that it is made up of nature and society, and that human beings belong to both. This is the first volume to be published that addresses the historical contexts of the relations between these two characteristics of human nature. Individual essays and the general conclusions of the volume are important not only for our understanding of the evolution of knowledge of nature and of society, but (...) also for an awareness of the types of truth and perception produced in the process. (shrink)

Forty-two essays by authors from five continents and many disciplines provide a synthetic account of the history of the social sciences-including behavioral and economic sciences since the late eighteenth century. The authors emphasize the cultural and intellectual preconditions of social science, and its contested but important role in the history of the modern world. While there are many historical books on particular disciplines, there are very few about the social sciences generally, and none that deal with so much of the (...) world over so long a timespan. (shrink)

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which “sprawl” impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report “a ludicrous sham” and argued that the CDC should stick to (...) “fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones.”In retrospect, it is probably unfortunate that this report was funded by an organization called “Sprawl Watch.” “Spraw” is a word that has no clear meaning but is applied to a huge range of issues involving suburban development. (shrink)

The most remarkable thing about the U.S. Supreme Court's 1998 decision in Bragdon v. Abbott was that it was necessary at all. Seventeen years into the epidemic of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, the Supreme Court, by a mere 5-4 majority, finally affirmed what most public health officials, health providers, and lawyers working with people with human immunodeficiency virus believed all along: that individuals with HIV infection are entitled to the protections of antidiscrimination law, and that health care providers must respond (...) to a patient's infection based on reason and science, not fear and prejudice. For individuals with HIV, and for those with other disabilities, the Court's ruling was a critical victory. But the very fact that the issues had to be decided by the Supreme Court and that only five justices joined the majority, shows the fragility of legal rights pertaining to HIV as well as the wide gulf between the perspectives of public health and those of public law. (shrink)

On affirme couramment que les trente-quatre homélies sur les Hébreux correspondent aux dernières années de Jean Chrysostome à Constantinople. Les AA. reprennent dans un premier temps les arguments des spécialistes depuis Henry Savile. En second lieu, ils s'arrêtent sur la thèse d'Opelt qui préfère Antioche plutôt que Constantinople comme lieu de provenance. Ces trente-quatre homélies constituent une partie importante de l'oeuvre de prédication de Jean Chrysostome et ne semblent pas appartenir à la série des dernières prédications assurées par ce dernier.

Placebo-controlled surgical trials can provide important information about the efficacy of surgical interventions. However, they are ethically contentious as placebo surgery entails the risk of harms to recipients, such as pain, scarring or anaesthetic misadventure. This has led to claims that placebo-controlled surgical trials are inherently unethical. On the other hand, without placebo-controlled surgical trials, it may be impossible to know whether an apparent benefit from surgery is due to the intervention itself or to the placebo effect.

The ability to answer questions about a text is the strongest possible demonstration of text comprehension. The question‐answering problems that arise in a story‐understanding system are discussed. Some solutions are described and illustrated by a computer program, which reads stories, and answers questions.

The movie, The terminal, is used to illustrate Mac Intyre's description of virtue ethics. The terminal is a mythical tale about a traveler, Viktor Navorski, who is stranded by circumstances in a New York airport. Viktor is a person who, without a strict reliance on duty or rules, has developed the disposition to act well despite variation in his circumstances. His character is revealed in contrast to that of three other characters: a cleaner, a flight attendant and the airport manager. (...) Stories like this one may be a good way to open dialogue among clinicians about being virtuous as a practitioner. Such dialogue may make striving to be virtuous an acceptable goal for practitioners and less like an idealistic, pseudo-goal for those aiming for sainthood. (shrink)

How do we determine whether an action is right or wrong? Until recently, philosophers assumed that this question could be answered by means of a theory of morality, which set forth clearly established rules for moral behaviour. More recently, however, a number of philosophers have challenged a theory of morality in this sense. Porter is sympathetic to their criticisms but questions whether they go far enough in offering a positive alternative to a modern view of the moral act. She (...) argues that the work of Aquinas offers an alternative account of moral rationality, in terms of which moral reasoning is understood as dialectical rather than deductive, and questions are resolved in a wider context of ethical thought. Aquinas's account of the moral virtues and prudence is seen to offer unexpected insights into the relationship between moral rules and the practice of the virtues, thus contributing to our own moral reflection. (shrink)

My aim is to develop a feminist theory of value—an axiology—which unites two notions that seem to have little in common for a theorizing whose ultimate goal is justice-driven emancipatory action, namely, the ecological and the aesthetic. In this union lies the potential for a critical feminist political praxis capable of appreciating not only the value of human life, but those relationships upon which human and nonhuman life depend. A vital component of this praxis is, I argue, the potential for (...) an aesthetic experience whose value is exemplified in those actions that tend to foster respect for biodiversity and ecological stability. (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have come under attack for writings and speech that affront sensitivities. At such times, academic freedom and tenure are invoked to forestall efforts to censure and terminate jobs. We review the history and controversy surrounding academic freedom and tenure, and explore their meaning across different fields, at different institutions, and at different ranks. In a multifactoral experimental survey, 1,004 randomly selected faculty members from top-ranked institutions were asked how colleagues would typically respond when confronted with dilemmas concerning (...) teaching, research, and wrong-doing. Full professors were perceived as being more likely to insist on having the academic freedom to teach unpopular courses, research controversial topics, and whistle-blow wrong-doing than were lower-ranked professors (even associate professors with tenure). Everyone thought that others were more likely to exercise academic freedom than they themselves were, and that promotion to full professor was a better predictor of who would exercise academic freedom than was the awarding of tenure. Few differences emerged related either to gender or type of institution, and behavioral scientists' beliefs were similar to scholars from other fields. In addition, no support was found for glib celebrations of tenure's sanctification of broadly defined academic freedoms. These findings challenge the assumption that tenure can be justified on the basis of fostering academic freedom, suggesting the need for a re-examination of the philosophical foundation and practical implications of tenure in today's academy. (Published Online February 8 2007) Key Words: academia; academic freedom; ethical issues; faculty beliefs; professoriate; promotion; scientific misconduct; tenure; whistle-blowing. (shrink)

There was a strong consensus in the commentaries that animals' performances in metacognition paradigms indicate high-level decisional processes that cannot be explained associatively. Our response summarizes this consensus and the support for the idea that these performances demonstrate animal metacognition. We amplify the idea that there is an adaptive advantage favoring animals who can – in an immediate moment of difficulty or uncertainty – construct a decisional assemblage that lets them find an appropriate behavioral solution. A working consciousness would serve (...) this function well. This explains why animals may have the functional equivalent of human declarative consciousness. However, like other commentators who were friendly to this equivalence, we approach carefully the stronger claims that animals' metacognitive performances imply full-blown self-awareness or phenomenal consciousness. We discuss the commentators' interesting ideas for future research, as well as their intriguing ideas about the evolution and development of metacognition and its relation to theory of mind. We also discuss residual confusions about existing research and remaining methodological issues. (shrink)

We regard cooperation as generally good, and yet this does not imply that it is morally good. The scholastic conception of nature offers the kind of distinction between levels of normative appraisal that we need, and suggests a fruitful way of thinking about the moral significance of our naturally sociable nature.

In Curanderismo and other traditional medicine systems, illnesses are understood to have somatic and emotional components and symptoms may be elicited by disruptions in interpersonal relationships between community members. An aspect of ritual interventions involves returning interpersonal relationships to balance and restoring harmonious interactions between members of the community. Important are shared understandings of the meaning of the symptoms, the mode of transmission of the illness, and the resolution that occurs through the process of the healer’s ritual interventions. In this (...) essay, I present a narrative description of the illness, La Envidia, which is associated with the expression of the emotion, envy. The narrative was shared with me by a person who is a migrant from an Afromestizo community of the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Atlanta, Georgia. The illness, La Envidia, is discussed and interpreted framed by perspectives including Participation Mystique and blurred psychological boundaries, traditional indigenous conceptualizations of illness, shamanism and symbolization processes, shared meaning, traditional Yoruba informed African conceptualizations of illness and healing practices, and somatic and embodied ritual experiences. (shrink)