Population-based genomics studies have proven successful in identifying genetic variants associated with diseases. High-quality biospecimens linked with informative health data from diverse segments of the population have made such research possible. However, the success of biobank research depends on the willingness of the public to participate in this type of research. We aimed to explore the factors associated with the willingness of the public to participate in biobank research from four low- and middle-income countries in the Arab region (Egypt, Jordan, (...) Morocco, and Sudan). We used a previously validated questionnaire to assess several constructs that included the public’s perceptions, attitudes, and willingness to participate in biobank research. We recruited 967 participants. More than half did not have prior awareness of biobanks. Participants’ willingness to donate biospecimens and health data was less than 10%. Our results also showed that participants harbored concerns with trust, privacy, and with data-sharing involving international researchers. Predictors of willingness to participate in biobank research included no previous involvement in research and positive attitudes toward biobanks. Finally, our study showed several differences between the four countries regarding several of the investigated constructs. We conclude there should be additional efforts to raise public awareness and enhance perceptions of the public in biobanking research to enhance trust. We further recommend qualitative research to explore the underlying factors that contribute to the public’s concerns with international data sharing that would enhance global health. (shrink)

Members of research ethics committees (RECs) face a number of ethical challenges when reviewing genomic research. These include issues regarding the content and type of consent, the return of individual research results, mechanisms of sharing specimens and health data, and appropriate community engagement efforts. This article presents the findings from a survey that sought to investigate the opinions and attitudes of REC members from four Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and Jordan) toward these (...) ethical issues. Our findings suggest that efforts are required to better familiarize REC members with the requirements for ethical biobank research. Additionally, we recommend that further research is undertaken with REC members regarding the main items that should be present in the Material Transfer Agreements /Data Transfer Agreements in their corresponding countries and the type of consent that should be used in genomic research. (shrink)

The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays dealing with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. Had Edward Said known about the impact of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan on Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, he might have reached different conclusions in his book Orientalism.

The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays dealing with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. Had Edward Said known about the impact of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan on Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, he might have reached different conclusions in his book Orientalism.

On religious life in Islam; conduct of life for Muslims and on Islamic ethics.

In this article, we discuss the current trend of authoritarianism in the Islamic world, especially as embodied in the institution of taqlîd, whereby a lay person blindly follows a religious scholar. We will compare this to the mystical tradition of Ibn ‘Arabî as well as the early esoteric Shî’ite tradition, where a much more “rebellious” type of Islam was offered and provided purviews of pluralism and universalism that challenge authoritarian closures of interpretation in relationship with God. By way of further (...) comparison, we will also attend to the writings of some liberal and pluralistic thinkers in the Muslim world. Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness?-Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols. (shrink)

Thoughts of Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, a prominent Indonesian author and ulama, on Islamic ethics.

This study presents the circuitous route taken in an attempt to identify an assessment mechanism for evaluating the impact of STS courses. After initially developing a survey that faculty felt only allowed for the measurement of student opinions about the impact of required STS general education courses, the faculty at Clemson University identified Aikenhead and Ryan's Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) as an instrument that, when used with the scoring guide created in this project, might be able to assess the sophistication (...) of students views about science and technology in society. The results from administering the pre- and post-VOSTS surveys in one STS course revealed no significant differences when comparing the sophistication of students' views about STS before and after the course. These findings demonstrate that, among other considerations discussed in the manuscript, it will be difficult to find a way of assessing STS courses that can be used for the diverse courses meeting the requirement. (shrink)

Taftāzānī, Masʻūd ibn ʻUmar, 1322-1389?. Tahdhīb al-manṭiq wa-al-kalām.

Qurʼan; hermeneutics; criticism, textual; criticism, interpretation, etc.

The Supreme Court’s antiabortion opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., which overruled Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of S.E. Penn. v. Casey, on the one-hand suggests that the Court may be moving toward eliminating all non-enumerated fundamental rights not deeply rooted in the Nation’s longstanding history and tradition. On the other hand, it may suggest only that the Court might be just opening the door to overruling specific non-enumerated rights with which it no longer agrees. Either way, (...) many long-recognized, non-enumerated, human rights, beyond abortion that are essential to individual autonomy and human dignity are now up for grabs. Such rights in the area of privacy law will most likely include not just abortion, but also contraception, interracial marriage, and the Court’s more recent recognition of same-sex marriage, and possibly still other precedents, including whether states can criminalize adult consensual same-sex behavior in private. More importantly, the proposed foundation for this Court’s potential departure from its past case precedents cannot be justified even by claiming such rights are not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition. As I hope to show in this article, neither from the point of view of looking to this Nation’s longstanding history and traditions, if properly understood, nor from the point of view of allowing Equal Protection to aide in identifying forms of discrimination not previously recognized or afforded much attention, can departures from past human rights precedents based in autonomy be justified. (shrink)

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses were meant to guarantee freedom of religion for all persons living in the United States. This was to be done by ensuring that government could not establish a state religion nor interfere with individual practices and beliefs so long as they did not violate public morals. The idea was to have the two clauses operate together to ensure state separation in matters of religion. However, recent caselaw involving government accommodations to religious organizations (...) has emphasized the Free Exercise Clause with little or no attention afforded the Establishment Clause. As a result, intermediate factors like entanglement, endorsement, general applicability, and neutrality, that previously were used to assist the separation of church and state, are now called into question. This Article attempts to rekindle these factors by attaching a public/private distinction to the way the two clauses are understood, to ensure a more certain and clearer basis for the separation of church and state. (shrink)

Where did the right to privacy come from and what does it mean? Grappling with the critical issues involving women and gays that relate to the current Supreme Court appointment, Vincent J. Samar develops a definition of legal privacy, discusses the reasons why and the degree to which privacy should be protected, and shows the relationship between privacy and personal autonomy. He answers former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's questions about scope, content, and legal justification for a general right (...) to privacy and pays particular attention to issues involving gays and lesbians. (shrink)

AIDS and the Politician’s Right to Privacy.

A Gerwithian Framework for Protecting the Basic Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) People.

In this article, I argue that public education should provide a constructive forum for discussing aspects of lesbian and gay lifestyles in both primary and secondary schools. My argument is that such action is necessary to offset the way the dominant culture limits the capacities of gays and lesbians to achieve human self-fulfillment. In making this argument, I recognize that I am going beyond merely promoting social tolerance to legitimizing an actual place for discussion of the needs and interests of (...) gays and lesbians in the society at large. The principles I will apply to make this argument are not specifically situated in legal philosophy (concerning the nature of law and its evaluation), but rather, principles of normative political philosophy (concerning ethical justifications of governmental institutions) as we might find in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. (shrink)

A Moral Justification for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Legislation.

Is the current state of international governance by the United Nations and related organizations a preface to what eventually might become a world government? Is it at all similar to what was the structure of government in the United States after the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1781 and before adoption of the Constitution of 1787? Are changes in the way international institutions like the United Nations operate related to changes in our conceptions of the role of these (...) institutions in providing international governance? When governmental institutions prove to be too weak to adequately perform the tasks expected of them is there a natural evolution toward greater centralization of power? If so, might an early sign of this evolution be decisions by public officials that afford greater deference to the decrees of international institutions that previously might have been sidestepped? (shrink)

At the Intersection of Due Process and Equal Protection: Expanding the Range of Protected Interests.

More than thirty-four years after the United States Supreme Court initially recognized a woman’s constitutional right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy (at least within the first two trimesters) in its landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade, the issue of whether women ought to have this right continues to affect public debate. Presidential candidates are asked about the issue, and potential Supreme Court nominees and their prior judicial decisions, academic writings, and speeches are thoroughly scrutinized for any (...) inkling of how they would likely rule in a future case on the issue. Perhaps even more important is the way the debate over this issue has impacted federal funding for stem cell research in the United States. Because of moral concerns regarding the personhood status and level of dignity owed to the human embryo as a form of human life, in September of 1999, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended against providing federal funding for the use and derivation of embryonic stem (ES) cells and embryonic germ (EG) cells except when obtained from “cadaveric fetal tissue” or “embryos remaining after infertility treatment.” In this article, I will suggest that the abortion debate and its offshoots into embryonic medical research persist because of a failure to properly separate human personhood from human biology. I will argue further that a proper analysis of the problem will not only enlighten the abortion and fetal tissue research debate, but will have implications for end-of-life issues as well. (shrink)

Is there an independent legal method separate from the political process for handling a constitutional amendment that may be inconsistent with, or contrary to, the basic structure and rights the Federal Constitution currently inaugurates, or are courts stuck with having to accept the amendment on its face? This problem is not unique to the United States. Nor is it the same problem as whether a state constitutional amendment may violate the Federal Constitution. While I initially focus on the U.S. Constitution, (...) I plan, before the end of this piece, to broaden out to other national constitutions as well, and certainly some of the arguments might also apply to state constitutional amendments, as we see with the controversy over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8. In this vein, it will make sense to consider cases from other nations, like Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, in which the Supreme Court of India held that the judiciary could strike down amendments to the constitution passed by Parliament that conflict with the constitution’s “basic structure.” The U.S. Supreme Court has never addressed what constitutes the basic structure of the U.S. Constitution. This is the question addressed in this article. (shrink)

Large-scale data brokers collect massive amounts of highly personal consumer information to be sold to whoever will pay their price, even at the expense of sacrificing individual privacy and autonomy in the process. In this Article, I will show how a proper understanding and justification for a right to privacy, in context to both protecting private acts and safeguarding information and states of affairs for the performance of such acts, provides a necessary background framework for imposing legal restrictions on such (...) collections. This problem, which has already gained some attention in literature, now becomes even more worrisome, as government itself becomes a consumer of this information to fight off a domestic instantiation of the global Covid-19 pandemic. This Article proposes some definite ways in which the courts and Congress might limit both the private sector and the government’s use of such data to ensure individual autonomy will not be sacrificed. (shrink)

The article argues that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) rights are a particular instantiation of human rights. But in order to make this argument several things must be done first. Preliminarily, it should be noted that some transgendered issues fall under the rubric "gay rights," even though strictly speaking, they center most prominently on gender and not sexual orientation. Still, there gender aspects are often ignored because of concerns related to sexual orientation, such as whether a transgendered female can (...) use a woman's washroom. Arguably, the reverse may also be true of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, as many of society's concerns regarding this group involve their following gender roles, even though the discrimination against them is not usually seen as sex discrimination. Bearing that in mind, among the various responsibilities of this article is to define--in the broad sense--what gay and lesbian rights are. This is followed by a similar set of expressions defining what human rights are and an argument for how such rights get justified. Once that is done, the connection between gay and lesbian rights and human rights is pursued within the context of a theory of political morality that establishes the centrality of human rights to all moral concerns. (shrink)