Purpose The purpose of this paper is to inform or alert readers to the extensive use and ready availability of genetic information that poses varying degrees of social and legal danger. The eugenics movement of the 1920s and the general acceptance of genetic essentialism provide context for considering contemporary examples of the problem. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes an argumentative approach, supporting proposals with ideas from historical and current research literature. Findings The limits of data protection, extensive use of direct-to-consumer genetic (...) testing and use of genetic information in white nationalist circles portend a resurgence of eugenic beliefs from a century ago. Social implications Research-based recommendations may help to avoid extreme consequences by encouraging people to make informed decisions about the use of genetic information. Originality/value The paper counterposes contemporary understanding of genetic testing and data accessibility with the much older ideology of eugenics, leading to concerns about how white nationalists might further their aims with 21st century technology. (shrink)

"This book explores the role of photography and media in transforming sports from a casual leisure activity into a spectacle of mass participation. It catalogs photography and other media exhibited at "The Sports Show" - an exhibit held at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, February 19 through May 13, 2012"--.

Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world. Or so most of the authors in this book claim. While Calvinism has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years amongst theologians and laypersons, many philosophers have yet to follow suit. The reason seems fairly clear: Calvinism, many think, cannot handle the problem of evil with the same kind of plausibility as other (...) more popular views of the nature of God and the nature of God's relationship with His creation. This book seeks to challenge that untested assumption. With clarity and rigor, this collection of essays seeks to fill a significant hole in the literature on the problem of evil. (shrink)

Acculturation is the process through which an individual's cultural behaviors and values change via contact with a majority or host culture. Although some individuals accomplish acculturation smoothly, most experience psychological stress during the acculturation process. When psychologists encounter individuals struggling to acculturate, they are mandated by ethical guidelines and principles to help through several steps: (a) recognize their own biases, beliefs, and attitudes that may influence their work with the acculturating individual; (b) develop competence to work with individuals whose cultural (...) beliefs and practices differ from their own; (c) counsel the acculturating individual using scientifically supported techniques; and (d) intervene without discrimination or disrespect. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how psychologists can ethically and effectively encourage mentally healthy acculturation. Keywords: acculturation, ethics, cultural differences. (shrink)

BackgroundRobust ethics consultation services cannot be sustained by all hospitals; consultative service from a high-volume center via teleconferencing is an attractive alternative. This pilot study was conceived to explore the feasibility and understand the practical implications of offering such a service.MethodsHigh-definition videoconferencing was used to provide real-time interaction between the rounding clinicians and a remote clinical ethicist. Data collection included: (1) evaluation of the hardware and software required for teleconferencing, and (2) comparison of ethics trigger counts between the remote and (...) on-site ethicist during rounds.ResultsIssues with audio represented the majority of technical problems. Once technical difficulties were addressed, the onsite ethicist’s count of “triggers” was not statistically different from the count of the remote ethicist.ConclusionRemote clinical ethics rounding is feasible when the equipment is optimized. Remote ethicists can identify similar numbers of “triggers” for possible ethical issues when compared to on-site ethicist numbers. (shrink)

The understanding of decision-making systems has come together in recent years to form a unified theory of decision-making in the mammalian brain as arising from multiple, interacting systems (a planning system, a habit system, and a situation-recognition system). This unified decision-making system has multiple potential access points through which it can be driven to make maladaptive choices, particularly choices that entail seeking of certain drugs or behaviors. We identify 10 key vulnerabilities in the system: (1) moving away from homeostasis, (2) (...) changing allostatic set points, (3) euphorigenic signals, (4) overvaluation in the planning system, (5) incorrect search of situation-action-outcome relationships, (6) misclassification of situations, (7) overvaluation in the habit system, (8) a mismatch in the balance of the two decision systems, (9) over-fast discounting processes, and (10) changed learning rates. These vulnerabilities provide a taxonomy of potential problems with decision-making systems. Although each vulnerability can drive an agent to return to the addictive choice, each vulnerability also implies a characteristic symptomology. Different drugs, different behaviors, and different individuals are likely to access different vulnerabilities. This has implications for an individual's susceptibility to addiction and the transition to addiction, for the potential for relapse, and for the potential for treatment. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Linguists who work within the tradition of transformational generative grammar tend to regard semantics as an intractable, perhaps ultimately ...

An infinite number of elastically colliding balls is considered in a classical, and then in a relativistic setting. Energy and momentum are not necessarily conserved globally, even though each collision does separately conserve them. This result holds in particular when the total mass of all the balls is finite, and even when the spatial extent and temporal duration of the process are also finite. Further, the process is shown to be indeterministic: there is an arbitrary parameter in the general solution (...) that corresponds to the injection of an arbitrary amount of energy (classically), or energy-momentum (relativistically), into the system at the point of accumulation of the locations of the balls. Specific examples are given that illustrate these counter-intuitive results, including one in which all the balls move with the same velocity after every collision has taken place. (shrink)

While environmental claims are increasingly used by companies to appeal consumers, they also attract greater scrutiny from independent parties interested in consumer protection. Consumers are now able to compare corporate environmental claims against external, often disconfirming, information to form their brand attitudes and purchase intentions. What remains unclear is how the level of information specificity of both the environmental claims and external disconfirming information interact to influence consumer reactions. Two experiments address this gap in the CSR communication literature. When specific (...) claims are countered by specific external information, consumers report more negative brand attitudes and lower purchase intentions. The effect is serially mediated by skepticism toward the claims and lack of corporate credibility. We conclude by discussing strategies that firms can utilize to avoid information dilution and ensure that external disconfirming information percolates to consumers as specific. (shrink)

Although research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention, the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training have not been fully explored. We examined whether brief meditation training affects cognition and mood when compared to an active control group. After four sessions of either meditation training or listening to a recorded book, participants with no prior meditation experience were assessed with measures of mood, verbal fluency, visual coding, and working memory. Both interventions (...) were effective at improving mood but only brief meditation training reduced fatigue, anxiety, and increased mindfulness. Moreover, brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning. Our findings suggest that 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators. (shrink)

An actual infinity of colliding balls can be in a configuration in which the laws of mechanics lead to logical inconsistency. It is argued that one should therefore limit the domain of these laws to a finite, or only a potentially infinite number of elements. With this restriction indeterminism, energy nonconservation and creatio ex nihilo no longer occur. A numerical analysis of finite systems of colliding balls is given, and the asymptotic behaviour that corresponds to the potentially infinite system is (...) inferred. (shrink)

Understanding the mechanisms of early embryonic patterning and the timely allocation of specific cells to embryonic regions and fates as well as their development into tissues and organs, is a fundamental problem in Developmental Biology. The classical explanation for this process had been built around the notion of positional information. Accordingly the programmed appearance of sources of Morphogens at localized positions within a field of cells directs their differentiation. Recently, the development of organs and tissues from unpatterned and initially identical (...) stem cells (adult and embryonic) has challenged the need for positional information and even the integrity of the embryo, for pattern formation. Here we review the emerging area of organoid biology from the perspective of Developmental Biology. We argue that the events underlying the development of these systems are not purely linked to “self‐organization,” as often suggested, but rather to a process of genetically encoded self‐assembly where genetic programs encode and control the emergence of biological structures. (shrink)

The prevailing “segregated model” for understanding clinical research sharply separates it from clinical care and subjects it to extensive regulations and guidelines. This approach is based on the fact that clinical research relies on procedures and methods—research biopsies, blinding, randomization, fixed treatment protocols, placebos—that pose risks and burdens to participants in order to collect data that might benefit all patients. Reliance on these methods raises the potential for exploitation and unfairness, and thus points to the need for independent ethical review (...) and more extensive informed consent. In contrast, it is widely assumed that clinical care does not raise these ethical concerns because it is designed to promote the best interests of individual patients. The segregation of clinical research from clinical care has been largely effective at protecting research participants. At the same time, this approach ignores the fact that several aspects of standard clinical care, such as clinician training and scheduling, also pose some risks and burdens to present patients for the benefit of all patients. We argue that recently proposed learning health care systems offer a way to address this concern, and better protect patients, by developing integrated review and consent procedures. Specifically, current approaches base the need for independent ethical review and more extensive informed consent on whether an activity is categorized as clinical research or clinical care. An ethically sounder approach, which could be incorporated into learning health care systems, would be to base the need for independent ethical review and more extensive informed consent on the extent to which an activity poses risks to present patients for the benefit of all patients. (shrink)

PET studies in domains like vision and attention have been successful because the experiments are the product of highly articulated theories. In contrast, the results of PET studies investigating language processing are difficult to interpret. We suggest that this difficulty is due to the more tentative connection of these experiments with the insights of psycholinguistics and linguistic theory.

The focus on translational research in clinical trials has the potential to generate clinically relevant genetic data that could have importance to patients. This raises challenging questions about communicating relevant genetic research results to individual patients. An exploratory pharmacogenetic analysis was conducted in the international ovarian cancer phase III trial, AGO-OVAR 16, which found that patients with clinically important germ-line BRCA1/2 mutations had improved progression-free survival prognosis. Mechanisms to communicate BRCA results were evaluated, because these findings may be beneficial to (...) patients and their families. Communicating individual BRCA results was not anticipated during clinical trial design. Consequently, options were not available for patients to indicate their preference for receiving their individual results when they signed pharmacogenetic informed consent. Differences in local requirements, clinical practice, and opinion regarding the ethical aspects of how to convey genetic results to patients are all potential barriers to returning individual BRCA results to patients. Communicating the aggregate BRCA result from this study provided clinical investigators with a mechanism to disseminate the overall study finding to patients while taking individual circumstances, local guidelines and clinical practice into account. This study illustrates the importance of increasing the clarity and scope of informed consent and the need for patient engagement to ensure clinical trial participants can indicate their preference regarding receipt of potentially important individual pharmacogenetic results. This study was registered in the NCT Clinical Trial Registry under NCT00866697 on March 19, 2009, following approval from participating ethics committees. (shrink)

Conscious technology features in many Black Mirror episodes. For example, there are the cookies in White Christmas, the people uploaded into the San Junipero simulation, Robert Daly's digital copies of his coworkers in USS Callister, and the copy of Clayton Leigh that is exhibited in Black Museum. But would such pieces of technology really be conscious? Would they, for example, feel pain? And how could we tell? Is uploading or replicating someone's consciousness even possible? This chapter explores these questions and (...) discusses the ethical issues that are raised by consciousness technology. (shrink)

[Open access] In this book symposium the author takes up questions from phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethical theory, and intellectual history raised by a group of scholarly interlocutors from a range of backgrounds. In the course of engaging with these issues, he discusses, inter alia, McDowell’s realism, Jonathon Lear’s work on the end of a world, Michael Oakeshott’s view of selfhood, Heidegger’s conception of Jemeinigkeit, Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, and Gadamer’s hermeneutic conception of truth.

The orphaned son of an Anglican clergyman, David Hartley (1705–57) was originally destined for holy orders. Declining to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he turned to medicine and science yet remained a religious believer. This, his most significant work, provides a rigorous analysis of human nature, blending philosophy, psychology and theology. First published in two volumes in 1749, Observations on Man is notable for being based on the doctrine of the association of ideas. It greatly influenced scientists, theologians, social (...) reformers and poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who named his eldest son after Hartley, had his portrait painted while holding a copy. In Volume 1, Hartley utilises Newtonian science in his observations, presenting his theory of 'vibrations'. Volume 2 is particularly concerned with human morality and the duty and expectations of mankind. Hartley is keen to show that scientific observation is not necessarily in conflict with religious conviction. (shrink)

While prior research suggests a link between mindfulness and ethical decision-making, most of the evidence for this link is correlational and refers to self-focused ethical behaviors. The paucity of experimental evidence, coupled with a lack of clarity on what mechanisms underlie the effect, limits our understanding of whether and how mindfulness might foster other-focused ethical behaviors. In this research, we hypothesize that state mindfulness might promote other-focused ethical behaviors by increasing resourcefulness, which we define as a perceived state of resource (...) abundance. Across four experimental studies, we report causal evidence for the effects of state mindfulness instantiated through brief mindful meditation exercises on other-focused ethical behaviors, including choice of fair-trade products, charitable giving, and volunteering. Resourcefulness mediates the effects of mindfulness on other-focused ethical behaviors. Our work answers the call for more experimental research on mindfulness and its important implications for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

There is little to indicate from, her circumstances that events would propel Helga Wanglie, an 86-year-old Minneapolis woman, into the center of public controversy. We know little of her life prior to the events that removed her from the world of conscious, sentient beings. By the time of her death on 4 July 1991, Mrs. Wanglie had become the focus of a nationwide public and professional debate on the rights of a patient in a persistent vegetative state to receive aggressive (...) medical treatment when such treatment is felt by the patient's doctors not to be in the patient's best interests. (shrink)

This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed.

This essay presents and analyzes the recent work of four prominent contemporary Jewish ethicists: Eugene Borowitz, David Novak, Byron Sherwin, and Walter Wurzburger. These authors are united in their affirmation of covenant as the central category of Jewish moral obligation and their concern to construct a Jewish ethic out of the classical sources of Judaism. Yet, as an individual analysis of their books will show, they adopt markedly different views of the authority of traditional Jewish law , the (...) respective roles of individual and community in moral deliberation, and the degree to which changing historical circumstances alter moral truths. (shrink)