The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 26-27, November 2011.

There is a growing trend of refusal of blood transfusions from COVID-19 vaccinated donors. We highlight three cases where parents have refused blood transfusions from COVID-19 vaccinated donors on behalf of their children in the setting of congenital cardiac surgery. These families have also requested accommodations such as explicit identification of blood from COVID-19 vaccinated donors, directed donation from a COVID19 unvaccinated family member, or use of a non-standard blood supplier. We address the ethical challenges posed by these issues. We (...) describe the current screening and safety processes for standard blood donation and explore the importance of donor anonymity and challenges with directed donation and non-standard blood suppliers. We present an ethical framework using the Best Interest Standard, the Zone of Parental Discretion, and the Harm Principle when considering these refusals. Finally, we provide recommendations for how to approach these requests as they potentially become more commonplace in pediatrics. (shrink)

There is a growing trend of refusal of blood transfusions from COVID-19 vaccinated donors. We highlight three cases where parents have refused blood transfusions from COVID-19 vaccinated donors on behalf of their children in the setting of congenital cardiac surgery. These families have also requested accommodations such as explicit identification of blood from COVID-19 vaccinated donors, directed donation from a COVID-19 unvaccinated family member, or use of a non-standard blood supplier. We address the ethical challenges posed by these issues. We (...) describe the current screening and safety processes for standard blood donation and explore the importance of donor anonymity and challenges with directed donation and non-standard blood suppliers. We present an ethical framework using the Best Interest Standard, the Zone of Parental Discretion, and the Harm Principle when considering these refusals. Finally, we provide recommendations for how to approach these requests as they potentially become more commonplace in pediatrics. (shrink)

Understanding what makes governance 'good' or 'bad' has been impeded by construct ambiguity. Contemporary governance research has struggled to define 'governance' and related constructs such as 'ownership', 'agency', and 'management' in a way that clearly separates and distinguishes them. Often, the line between governance and management is so blurred that it is impossible to say what is good or bad 'governance' versus 'management'. Here we provide a systematic classification of key governance concepts in terms of their distinct economic functions. 'Governance', (...) for instance, is the economic function of behavioural constraint. This allows us to state what 'good' governance is and how it might be assessed. We conclude that goodness of governance is idiosyncratic to each organisation, or even to each owner. Thus, while objective measures of good governance are possible, broadly utilised criteria for measuring governance are unlikely to capture whether governance is actually good or bad. (shrink)

In this bold, challenging book, D. S. Clarke outlines reasons for accepting panpsychism and defends the doctrine against its critics.

Programmes serving international patients are increasingly common throughout the USA. These programmes aim to expand access to resources and clinical expertise not readily available in the requesting patients’ home country. However, they exist within the US healthcare system where domestic healthcare needs are unmet for many children. Focusing our analysis on US children’s hospitals that have a societal mandate to provide medical care to a defined geographic population while simultaneously offering highly specialised healthcare services for the general population, we assume (...) that, given their mandate, priority will be given to patients within their catchment area over other patients. We argue that beyond prioritising patients within their region and addressing inequities within US healthcare, US institutions should also provide care to children from countries where access to vital medical services is unavailable or deficient. In the paper, we raise and attempt to answer the following: (1) Do paediatric healthcare institutions have a duty to care for all children in need irrespective of their place of residence, including international patients? (2) If there is such a duty, how should this general duty be balanced against the special duty to serve children within a defined geographical area to which an institution is committed, when resources are strained? (3) Finally, how are institutional obligations manifest in paradigm cases involving international patients? We start with cases, evaluating clinical and contextual features as they inform the strength of ethical claim and priority for access. We then proceed to develop a general prioritisation framework based on them. (shrink)

Families and clinicians approaching a child’s death in the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) frequently encounter questions surrounding medical decision-making at the end of life (EOL), including defining what is in the child’s best interest, finding an optimal balance of benefit over harm, and sometimes addressing potential futility and moral distress. The best interest standard (BIS) is often marshalled by clinicians to help navigate these dilemmas and focuses on a clinician’s primary ethical duty to the paediatric patient. This approach does (...) not consider a clinician’s potential duty to the patient’s family. This paper argues that when a child is dying in the PICU, the physician has a duty to serve both the patient and the family, and that in some circumstances, the duty to serve the family becomes as important as that owed to the child. We detail the limitations of the BIS in paediatric EOL care and propose the relational potential standard as an additional ethical framework to guide our decisions. (shrink)

Debate on free will with Christian List, Gregg Caruso, and Cory Clark. The exchange is focused on Christian List's book Why Free Will Is Real.

Australia and New Zealand boast an active community of scholars working in the field of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for their work. Each volume comprises a group of thematically-connected essays edited by scholars based in Australia or New Zealand with special expertise in that particular area. In each volume, a majority ofthe contributors are from Australia or New Zealand. Contributions from elsewhere are (...) by no means ruled out, however, and are actively encouraged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question. Earlier volumes in the series have been welcomed for significantly advancing the discussion of the topics they have dealt with. I believe that the present volume will be greeted equally enthusiastically by readers in many parts of the world. R. W. Home General Editor Australasian Studies in History And Philosophy of Science viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The majority of the papers in this collection had their origin in the 2001 Australasian Association for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science annual conference, held at the University of Melbourne, where streams of papers on the themes of scientific realism and commonsense were organised. (shrink)

High-spin states in the odd-odd N = Z nucleus Co-54 have been investigated by the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32,1 alpha 1p1n)Co-54. Gamma-ray information gathered with the Ge detector array Gammasphere was correlated with evaporated particles detected in the charged particle detector system Microball and a 1 pi neutron detector array. A significantly extended excitation scheme of Co-54 is presented, which includes a candidate for the isospin T = 1, 6(+) state of the 1f(7/2)(-2) multiplet. The results are compared to large-scale shell-model (...) calculations in the fp shell. Effective interactions with and without isospin-breaking terms have been used to probe isospin symmetry and isospin mixing. A quest for deformed high-spin rotational cascades proved negative. This feature is discussed by means of cranking calculations. (shrink)

Two rotational bands have been identified and characterized in the proton-magic N = Z + 1 nucleus Ni-57. These bands complete the systematics of well-and superdeformed rotational bands in the light nickel isotopes starting from doubly magic Ni-56 to Ni-60. High-spin states in Ni-57 have been produced in the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32, 2p1n)Ni-57 and studied with the gamma-ray detection array GAMMASPHERE operated in conjunction with detectors for evaporated light charged particles and neutrons. The features of the rotational bands in Ni-57 (...) are compared to those of neighbouring isotopes and interpreted by means of configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations. The two observed high-spin bands are considered signature partners and assigned to configurations with one 1g(9/2) proton and one 1g(9/2) neutron, resulting in an unambiguous understanding of the energetically favoured signature alpha = -1/2 band but a somewhat less satisfactory description of the signature alpha = +1/2 band. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

An anthology of readings in panpsychism, spanning two millennia.

Tomasello argues in the target article that a sense of moral obligation emerges from the creation of a collaborative “we” motivating us to fulfill our cooperative duties. We suggest that “we” takes many forms, entailing different obligations, depending on the type of the relationship in question. We sketch a framework of such types, functions, and obligations to guide future research in our commentary.

Although suicide has traditionally carried a negative sanction in Western societies, this is now being challenged, and while there remains substantial public concern surrounding youth and elder suicide, there is a paradoxical push to relax the prohibition under certain circumstances. Central to the arguments behind this are the principles of respect for autonomy and the importance of rationality. It is argued here that the concepts of rationality and autonomy, while valuable, are not strong enough to substantiate a categorical "right to (...) suicide" and that the concepts of "understandability" and "respect" are more useful and able to provide the foundation for responding to a person expressing a wish to die. Roman suicide, sometimes held as an example of "rational suicide", illustrates the effects of culture, tradition and values on the attitudes to, and the practice of, suicide. (shrink)

I discuss Thomas Aquinas’ views on being, power, and logic, and show how together they provide rebuttals against certain principal objections to the notion of divine omnipotence. The objections I have in mind can be divided into the two classes. One says that the notion of omnipotence ends up in self-contradiction. The other says that it ends up contradicting certain doctrines of traditional theism. Thomas’ account is frequently misunderstood to be a version of what I call a ‘consistent description’ account (...) of omnipotence, which is a standard contemporary account. That account of omnipotence, however, succumbs to certain contemporary objections. Thomas’ account withstands those objections because of his view of logic and, specifically self-contradiction. Moreover, a certain thesis found in Thomas’ understanding of God, but almost entirely absent from contemporary debates about omnipotence, is that God is not just a being, but the source of being. This thesis, I argue, puts Thomas’ account in a position that differs greatly from many contemporary accounts since the scope of possibility, and specifically the scope of what possible powers there are, is ultimately grounded in God’s being. Further still, many contemporary accounts of omnipotence do not seek to establish substantive account of power itself. Thomas, by contrast, has a robust and independent account of what power is. And that account informs his account of what it is to have all powers, or to be omnipotent, in a way that makes his account resistant to contemporary objections. Against contemporary objections, Thomas’ account of omnipotence can sustain the claim that God can do all things. (shrink)