BackgroundApproximately 7% of the general population is affected by an orphan disease, which, in the United States, is defined as affecting fewer than 1 in 1500 people. Disease awareness is often low and time-to-diagnosis delayed. Different legislations worldwide have created incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for orphan diseases. A journalistic article in Bloomberg Businessweek has claimed that pharmaceutical companies have tried marketing orphan drugs by placing a specific disease into the popular television series “House, M.D.” which features diagnostic (...) journeys and was produced between 2004 and 2012. This study aimed to describe the presentation of orphan diseases in the television series “House, M.D.”, to test in an exploratory fashion the hypothesis that treatable orphan conditions are overrepresented in “House, M.D.” and to discuss whether such marketing practices may or may not be ethical.MethodsA list of all medical cases depicted in the television series “House, M.D.” was obtained and classified as orphan or non-orphan according to the Orphanet database. The ratios of orphan diseases among all diseases, such with an orphan drug designation and such with an orphan drug approval by the FDA were then compared with conservative approximations of real world conditions (chi-squared tests for equality of proportions). STROBE criteria were respected.ResultsOut of a total of n = 181 different medical diagnoses, n = 42 (23.2%) were orphan diseases. The difference in percentages in between “House, M.D.” and reality was not statistically significant for orphan diseases overall (p = 0.96), yet was statistically significantly higher for both orphan diseases with one or more orphan drug designations (p = 0.0192) and such with one or more approved orphan drugs (p < 0.0001).ConclusionsOrphan diseases with a designated and/or approved orphan drug were overrepresented in the television series “House, M.D.” with statistical significance while orphan diseases overall were not. This may be explained by (so far) undocumented efforts of pharmaceutical companies to place their orphan drugs in the television series, as described in the article in Bloomberg Businessweek. Further research is needed into marketing practices in popular and emerging media formats. (shrink)

This essay, one of the last that Frankena wrote, provides a scrupulously detailed exploration of the various possible meanings of one of Sidgwick's most famous footnotes in the Methods Long intrigued by what Sidgwick had in mind when he said that he would explain how it came about that for moderns it is not tautologous to claim that one's own good is one's only reasonable ultimate end, Frankena uses this note as a point of departure for a penetrating review of (...) Sidgwick's insights and ambiguities on the differences between ancient and modern ethics. (shrink)

Taking reduction in the traditional deductive sense, the programmatic claim that most of genetics can be reduced by molecular genetics is defended as feasible and significant. Arguments by Ruse and Hull that either the relationship is replacement or at best a weaker form of reduction are shown to rest on a mixture of historical and logical confusions about the nature of the theories involved.

I begin with a note about moral goodness as a quality, disposition, or trait of a person or human being. This has at least two different senses, one wider and one narrower. Aristotle remarked that the Greek term we translate as justice sometimes meant simply virtue or goodness as applied to a person and sometimes meant only a certain virtue or kind of goodness. The same thing is true of our word “goodness.” Sometimes being a good person means having all (...) the virtues, or at least all the moral ones; then goodness equals the whole of virtue. But sometimes, being a good person has a narrower meaning, namely, being kind, generous, and so forth. Thus, my OED sometimes equates goodness with moral excellence as a whole and sometimes with a particular moral excellence, viz., kindness, beneficence, or benevolence; and the Bible, when it speaks of God as being good sometimes means that God has all the virtues and sometimes only that he is kind, mereiful, or benevolent. When Jesus says, “Why callest thou me good: None is good, save one, that is God,” he seems to be speaking of goodness in the inclusive sense, but when the writer of Exodus has God himself say that he is “merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” God is using “goodness” in the narrower sense in which it means benevolence, for he goes on to make it clear that he is also just and severe. Similarly, “good will” may mean either “morally good will” in general, as it does in Kant, or it may mean only “benevolent will,” as it usually does; in “men of good will” it is perhaps ambiguous. (shrink)

It is well known that Sidgwick finished his examination of “the methods of ethics” in some difficulty. Just what that difficulty was and how he came to be in it, we shall see in due course. This paper is written in the conviction that what he was doing is worth looking at again in the context of contemporary discussion.

In this paper I tee off from a footnote in prichard's article, "is moral philosophy based on a mistake?" in it he contrasts living under the aegis of moral obligation and moral goodness with living under the aegis of virtue. Using prichard's terms I try to say what an ethics of virtue as versus one of duty and moral goodness would be like. Then I try to see what prichard's case against the former and for the latter would be like, (...) And to indicate my own sympathies in the matter. (shrink)

This paper analyzes in some detail what an ethics of love would be like if interpreted rigorously as an ethics of being rather than of doing. It delineates the metaethical structure of such an ethics and suggests the characteristics of love appropriate to the structure. The author then indicates some problems that arise for such an ethical theory.

In response to Hauerwas, Frankena explores the nature of a moral virtue and the relation between virtue and obligation. He argues that those notions are not related in all the ways Hauerwas suggests and that the ties that do link them can be understood on the basis of an ethical analysis that gives primacy to moral obligation. In response to both Hauerwas and Carney, he examines the relation between morality and religion and argues that his analysis of the concept of (...) morality allows an adequate understanding of both systems of thought. (shrink)

The Carus Lectures appear above in the form in which they were read, but with the addition of a number of passages, some longer and some shorter, which were omitted in the reading. I think that my presentation of Clause 3 is the only other important change made in the printed version. Except for this change, the lectures as here printed stand essentially as they were written in 1973. The manuscript has been out of my hands since 1974 and would (...) not satisfy me now, even apart from the faults pointed out by my three critics. My lectures need to be both clarified and corrected. They were written in a state of some excitement, not only because I had been invited to give the Carus Lectures, but also because I thought I had hit upon certain interesting newish questions and answers. I was a bit carried away by this, and hence was not so clear or rigorous as I should have been. I therefore welcome this opportunity to rethink what I said and to make some of the needed clarifications and corrections. Because of the nature of this occasion, however, I shall limit myself almost wholly to dealing with points raised by my critics, without going on to revise what I said about Anscombe, Foot, Taylor, or others, in the ways in which I would now wish to. To the three critics I am especially grateful for their willingness to take what I said as seriously as they do. I am not so sure that I can defend my line of thought as I was six years ago, but I shall still try to say what I can about and for it, being not yet quite convinced that I should give it up. (shrink)

There has been much impatience with what R. S. Peters calls “the endless talk about the aims of education,” but this talk continues to go on, and we are invited to add to it on this happy occasion. Indeed, those who deny that education has ends or that educators must have aims seem always to end up talking about much the same thing in a slightly different idiom. At any rate, I am quite ready, at least on this occasion, to (...) assume that there are values or goals which it is the business of education to promote, whether they are external, imposed, and far-off, or internal, autonomous, and nearby. I shall also assume that the values or goals which education is to promote consist of certain abilities, dispositions, habits, or traits. To have a single term for them I shall call them ‘dispositions’, taking this word, not in the narrower ordinary ‘sunny disposition’ sense, but in the wider one common among philosophers. So far as I am aware, there is really only one view that might reject the concept of dispositions in this sense, namely existentialism, and, as we shall see, even it seems to advocate our developing certain dispositions or, if you prefer, choosing certain postures. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to three important philosophies of education. It's main purpose, however, is to help teach the the student how to do philosophy of education.

I critically examine an argument, due to howard wettstein, purporting to show that sentences containing definite descriptions are semantically ambiguous between referential and attributive readings. Wettstein argues that many sentences containing nonidentifying descriptions--descriptions that apply to more than one object--cannot be given a Russellian analysis, and that the descriptions in these sentences should be understood as directly referential terms. But because Wettstein does not justify treating referential uses of nonidentifying descriptions differently than attributive uses of nonidentifying descriptions, his argument fails.

Although numerical systems have been regarded as static models of a symbolic system and treated as mythological behavior, it is postulated that these systems are more profitably analyzed as dynamic models, better understood as ritual behavior. As ritual, numerical systems, limited in number and expressive of rhythmicity, contribute to the biogenetic structuralist's notion of “equilibration” between the central nervous system and the environment.The relationship between concrete and abstract numeration is also examined, showing that counting behavior, requiring asymmetrical use of the (...) hands, may contribute to understanding the relationships between handedness and brain hemisphericity, as well as enumeration and memorization. (shrink)

This paper provides an analytical overview of the apostolic networks in Britain. There are several ways to understand the success of the apostolic networks. They can be seen as an extreme answer to an extreme problem an answer to a profound secularisation leading to declining church attendance and influence within society. The apostolic networks appear to fit into post-modern society better than conventional denominational structures. In terms of their organization, despite appearances, these networks are however hierarchical like the denominational structures (...) which they challenge. The difference is in the characteristic informality with which these networks can collaborate with each other even when they grow. (shrink)