(1884). MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. xxi-xxvii.

This volume brings together a number of important studies by leading scholars on ritual and law, philosophy and religion, literature and entertainments in Qin and Han China. A few contributions deal with the Han legacy to later Chinese culture.

Tick and tick-borne diseases, especially East Coast fever, caused byTheileria parva, are amongst the most important factors limiting cattle production in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. In the past, they have been controlled mainly by the use of acaricides to kill ticks. Immunization has been shown to be an effective alternative method of control of tick-borne diseases in limited field trials. A development program has been initiated to produce vaccines and implement immunization on a wide scale in the region in (...) a sustainable manner as part of an integrated tick and tickborne disease control program. The consequent reduction in cattle mortality is expected to have far-reaching benefits for the region. (shrink)

Veterinarians play an essential role in the animal-based food chain. They are professionally responsible for the health of farm animals to secure food safety and public health. In the last decades, food scandals and zoonotic disease outbreaks have shown how much animal and human health are entangled. Therefore, the concept of One Health is broadly promoted within veterinary medicine. The profession embraces this idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment is inextricably linked and supports the related call (...) for transdisciplinary collaboration. Especially in zoonotic disease control, the benefits of the cooperation between veterinarians and human doctors seem evident. However, applying a One Health approach also makes moral problems explicit. For instance, how should veterinarians deal with situations in which measures to protect public health negatively affect animal health? This creates a conflict of professional responsibilities. To deal with such moral problems and to strengthen the veterinarian’s position, the starting point is a holistic perspective on One Health. We will argue for an ‘encapsulated health’ argument: the best way to safeguard human health is to promote the health of animals and the environment. This also holds for the responsibility of the veterinary profession: to serve public health, the central responsibility of veterinarians should be to be experts in animal health and welfare. We elaborate this point by using a case study on the role of the veterinary profession in antimicrobial resistance policies in the Netherlands. (shrink)

An excellent account of one of those rare occasions in history when a number of great minds, working on a common problem independently, come up with sufficiently new answers as to send their science, and in this case a good part of human thinking, in a completely new direction.

Planned home birth has been considered by some to be consistent with professional responsibility in patient care. This article critically assesses the ethical and scientific justification for this view and shows it to be unjustified. We critically assess recent statements by professional associations of obstetricians, one that sanctions and one that endorses planned home birth. We base our critical appraisal on the professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics, which is based on the ethical concept of medicine from the Scottish and (...) English Enlightenments of the 18th century. Our critical assessment supports the following conclusions. Because of its significantly increased, preventable perinatal risks, planned home birth in the United States is not clinically or ethically benign. Attending planned home birth, no matter one’s training or experience, is not acting in a professional capacity, because this role preventably results in clinically unnecessary and therefore clinically unacceptable perinatal risk. It is therefore not consistent with the ethical concept of medicine as a profession for any attendant to planned home birth to represent himself or herself as a “professional.” Obstetric healthcare associations should neither sanction nor endorse planned home birth. Instead, these associations should recommend against planned home birth. Obstetric healthcare professionals should respond to expressions of interest in planned home birth by pregnant women by informing them that it incurs significantly increased, preventable perinatal risks, by recommending strongly against planned home birth, and by recommending strongly for planned hospital birth. Obstetric healthcare professionals should routinely provide excellent obstetric care to all women transferred to the hospital from a planned home birth. The professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics requires obstetricians to address and remedy legitimate dissatisfaction with some hospital settings and address patients’ concerns about excessive interventions. Creating a sustained culture of comprehensive safety, which cannot be achieved in planned home birth, informed by compassionate and respectful treatment of pregnant women, should be a primary focus of professional obstetric responsibility. (shrink)