Authors Kathleen A. Staudt and William G. Weaver argue that political science as a discipline is operating well under full intellectual capacity because connections have not been made with women, gender, or feminist analysis. Staudt and Weaver thoroughly examine the discipline, incorporating analysis of the six relatively autonomous subfields that define political science - political theory, American politics, comparative politics, international relations, public law, and public administration. Employing Rounaq Johan's integrative-transformative framework, Staudt and Weaver's study reaches beyond (...) U.S. boundaries into comparative and international studies, connecting political science to other social sciences and humanities disciplines and identifying bridge points that can rejuvenate the mainstream of political science, which the authors view as narrow and constricted. Staudt and Weaver document their judgment persuasively. They effectively combine in-depth analysis with original, substantive empirical data culled from mainstream journals, questionnaire responses, syllabi, and textbooks. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

Short-circuit evaluation denotes the semantics of propositional connectives in which the second argument is evaluated only if the first is insufficient to determine the value of the expression. Com...

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and in this issue of the Journal, seven authors discuss the moral, social and medical implications of having 70% of those stricken living in this area. Anton A. van Niekerk considers complexities of plague in this region (poverty, denial, poor leadership, illiteracy, women's vulnerability, and disenchantment of intimacy) and the importance of finding responses that empower its people. Solomon Benatar reinforces these issues, but also discusses the role of global politics in (...) sub-Saharan Africa, especially discrimination, imperialism and its exploitation by first world countries. Given the public health crisis, Udo Schüklenk and Richard E. Ashcroft defend compulsory licensing of essential HIV/AIDS medications on consequentialist grounds. Keymanthri Moodley discusses the importance of conducting research and the need to understand a moderate form of communitarianism, also referred to as "ubuntu" or "communalism", to help some Africans understand research as an altruistic endeavour. Godfrey B. Tangwa also defends traditional African values of empathy and ubuntu, discussing how they should be enlisted to fight this pandemic. Loretta M. Kopelman criticizes the tendency among those outside Africa to dismiss the HIV/AIDS pandemic, attributing one source to the ubiquitous and misguided punishment theory of disease. The authors conclude that good solutions must be cooperative ventures among countries within and outside of sub-Saharan Africa with far more support from wealthy countries. (shrink)

Consider an object or property a and the predicate F. Then a is vague if there are questions of the form: Is a F? that have no yes-or-no answers. In brief, vague properties and kinds have borderline instances and composite objects have borderline constituents. I'll use the expression "borderline cases" as a covering term for both. ;Having borderline cases is compatible with precision so long as every case is either borderline F, determinately F or determinately not F. Thus, in addition (...) to borderline cases, vagueness requires "fuzzy borders". A has fuzzy borders if there is no sharp line between a's borderline cases, a's determinate cases and a's determinate non-cases. To illustrate, loudness is vague because in a continuum of gradually increasing volume, there is no fact about where the last definite loud noise is and where the first borderline noise is. ;Actual borderline cases are not required for vagueness. Suppose actual noises are either ear-shatteringly loud or silent. Even so, loudness is vague since it could have borderline instances. Just so for objects. Suppose a table is cleanly bounded such that there is a sharp break between the table and its surroundings. Still, that table is vague since there are worlds at which it is indeterminate whether some wood molecule a is, or is not, part of that table. ;There are three views about which things can be vague. On the linguistic view, vagueness is solely a feature of expressions. On the nihilistic view, nothing is vague because vagueness is incoherent. Pitted against these views is the ontological conception of vagueness according to which borderline instances and constituents arise due to genuine indeterminacy in nature. ;My dissertation defends the ontological conception. I argue against the adequacy of the theory's rivals, disarm a damaging objection and demonstrate the causal superiority of vague events. Anyone familiar with the literature on vagueness will notice that only a subset of issues are discussed. What I offer is preliminary--I hope only to make the theory of ontological vagueness attractive enough to merit future work. (shrink)

Within the popular consciousness, Emma Goldman has become something of an icon, a symbol for rebellion and women’s rights. But there has been surprisingly little substantive analysis of her influence on social, political, and feminist theory. In _Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman,_ Weiss and Kensinger present essays that resist a simplistic understanding of Goldman and instead attempt to examine her thinking in its proper social, historical, and philosophical context. Only by considering the sources, influences, and specific significance of Goldman’s ideas (...) can her proper place in feminist theory be truly understood. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Martha A. Ackelsberg, Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Lynne M. Adrian, Berenice A. Carroll, Voltairine de Cleyre, Janet E. Day, Candace Falk, Kathy E. Ferguson, Marsha Aileen Hewitt, Lori Jo Marso, Jonathan McKenzie, Alix Kates Shulman, Craig Stalbaum, Jason Wehling, and Alice Wexler. (shrink)

Introduction -- Healing justice and whole self-care -- Oppression, trauma, and healing justice -- Stress and the self-care revolution -- The whole self -- A skillful path of healing justice -- Holistic self-care practices and skills -- Connecting to the body -- Befriending the mind-heart -- Rediscovering spirit -- In the fabric of community -- Cultivating connections between person and planet -- Where the rubber meets the road -- The healing justice organization -- Healing justice on the frontlines -- Widening (...) the circle and coming home -- Notes -- Index. (shrink)

Twitter, an online application, allows users to post microblog statements in real time. Have psychologists in leadership positions adopted Twitter? What ethical standards are navigated in doing so? Little research has examined the adoption rate of Twitter within a sample of psychologists. This article outlines a series of case vignettes depicting ethical dilemmas encountered by psychologists who adopt Twitter. Data reviewing Twitter adoption by professional psychologists who served as president within psychology advocacy organizations reveal higher adoption rates from student group (...) leaders than professional organization advocacy presidents. Implications for ethical standards and professional development are discussed. (shrink)

The proposal that care ethic be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander-Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.

: The proposal that care ethic(s) (CE) be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic(s) (VE) is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander-Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.

Referential gaze has been shown to benefit language processing in situated communication in terms of shifting visual attention and leading to shorter reaction times on subsequent tasks. The present study simultaneously assessed both visual attention and, importantly, the immediate cognitive load induced at different stages of sentence processing. We aimed to examine the dynamics of combining visual and linguistic information in creating anticipation for a specific object and the effect this has on language processing. We report evidence from three visual‐world (...) eye‐tracking experiments, showing that referential gaze leads to a shift in visual attention toward the cued object, which consequently lowers the effort required for processing the linguistic reference. Importantly, perceiving and following the gaze cue did not prove costly in terms of cognitive effort, unless the cued object did not fit the verb selectional preferences. (shrink)

Case methods of reasoning are persuasive, but we need to address problems of bias in order to use them to reach morally justifiable conclusions. A bias is an unwarranted inclination or a special perspective that disposes us to mistaken or one-sided judgments. The potential for bias arises at each stage of a case method of reasoning including in describing, framing, selecting and comparing of cases and paradigms. A problem of bias occurs because to identify the relevant features for such purposes, (...) we must use general views about what is relevant; but some of our general views are biased, both in the sense of being unwarranted inclinations and in the sense that they are one of many viable perspectives. This reliance upon general views to determine relevancy creates additional difficulties for defenders who maintain that case methods of moral reasoning are not only useful, but more basic, reliable or prior to other forms of moral reasoning. If we cannot identify the case's relevant features and issues independently of our general views or biases, we need further explanation about why a case method or casuistry should be viewed as prior to or more basic or reliable than other forms of moral reasoning. Problems of bias also arise for other methods of reasoning. In medical science, case reviews are regarded as an unreliable way to form generalizations, and methods such as clinical trials are used to address bias. (shrink)

The view that identity can be vague holds that there are statements of identity which are neither true nor false. The view that composition can be vague holds that unities can have borderline constituents — that is, elements that are neither parts nor non-parts of some larger unity. The case for vague identity is typically made by way of an argument for the vagueness of composition. In this paper, however, I argue that the thesis that composition can be vague is (...) actually incompatible with the thesis of vague identity. The argument for the incompatibility of these two views arises out of a demonstration of the way in which constituency facts are grounded in the other facts about how a larger unity is configured. Thus, I show that composites that are allegedly vaguely identical are actually different configurations. Hence, the alliance of vague composition with vague identity is taken to be all that is needed in order to show that compositional vagueness is indefensible. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiry into pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering is a growing area of interest to academic philosophers. This volume brings together a diverse group of philosophers to speak about topics in this reemerging area of philosophical inquiry, taking up new themes, such as maternal aesthetics, and pursuing old ones in new ways, such as investigating stepmothering as it might inform and ground an ethics of care. The theoretical foci of the book include feminist, existential, ethical, aesthetic, phenomenological, social and political theories. (...) These perspectives are then employed to consider many dimensions of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering, which are of central importance to human existence, but are only rarely discussed in philosophical cannons. Topics include pregnancy and embodiment, breast-feeding, representations – or the lack thereof – of pregnant and birthing women, adoption, and post-partum motherhood. (shrink)

The proposal that care ethic be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander-Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.

A dispute exists about whether bioethics should become a new discipline with its own methods, competency standards, duties, honored texts, and core curriculum. Unique expertise is a necessary condition for disciplines. Using the current literature, different views about the sort of expertise that might be unique to bioethicists are critically examined to determine if there is an expertise that might meet this requirement. Candidates include analyses of expertise based in "philosophical ethics," "casuistry," "atheoretical or situation ethics," "conventionalist relativism," "institutional guidance," (...) "regulatory guidance and compliance," "political advocacy," "functionalism," and "principlism." None succeed in identifying a unique area of expertise for successful bioethicists that could serve as a basis for making it a new discipline. Rather expertise in bioethics is rooted in many professions, disciplines and fields and best understood as a second-order discipline. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Lactational Burkas, Lactational Burdens Breastfeeding as Obscene The Intimacy of Breastfeeding “Breast is Best” Milkmen Conclusion Notes.

ABSTRACT A complex problem exists about how to promote the best interests of children as a group through research while protecting the rights and welfare of individual research subjects. The Nuremberg Code forbids studies without consent, eliminating most children as subjects, and the Declaration of Helsinki disallows non-therapeutic research on non-consenting subjects. Both codes are unreasonably restrictive. Another approach is represented by the Council for the International Organizations of Medical Science, the U.S. Federal Research Guidelines, and many other national policies. (...) They allow research ethics committees or institutional review boards to authorize studies with acceptable balances of likely benefits and harms, but neither clarify how to balance them nor explain the meaning of pivotal concepts, like “minimal risk.” Paths to the improvement of balancing or consequentialist approaches include improving standardizing of risk assessment, rejecting crude utilitarianism, identifying and justifying normative or moral judg-ments, and acknowledging extra-regulatory thresholds and deontological or non-negotiable duties to children. (shrink)

Classifying research proposals by risk of harm is fundamental to the approval process and the most pivotal risk category in most regulations is that of “minimal risk.” If studies have no more than a minimal risk, for example, a nearly worldwide consensus exists that review boards may sometimes: (1) expedite review, (2) waive or modify some or all elements of informed consent, or (3) enroll vulnerable subjects including healthy children, incapacitated persons and prisoners even if studies do not hold out (...) direct benefits to them. The moral and social purposes behind this threshold are discussed along with relevant views from the National Commission, NBAC, NHRPAC, Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute, The Nuremberg Code, and The WMA's Declaration of Helsinki. Representative policies from Australia, Canada, South Africa, the U.S., and CIOMS are reviewed revealing different understandings of this sorting threshold. Six of nine frequently cited interpretations of “minimal risk” are untenable. The “absolute” interpretation of the “routine examination” standard is defended as best. (shrink)

Short-circuit evaluation denotes the semantics of propositional connectives in which the second argument is evaluated only if the first argument does not suffice to determine the value of the expression. Free short-circuit logic is the equational logic in which compound statements are evaluated from left to right, while atomic evaluations are not memorised throughout the evaluation, i.e. evaluations of distinct occurrences of an atom in a compound statement may yield different truth values. We provide a simple semantics for free short-circuit (...) logic and an independent axiomatisation. Finally, we discuss evaluation strategies, some other SCLs, and side effects. (shrink)

Two incompatible policies exist for guiding medical decisions for extremely premature, sick, or terminally ill infants, the Best Interests Standard and the newer, 20-year old "Baby Doe" Rules. The background, including why there were two sets of Baby Doe Rules, and their differences with the Best Interests Standard, are illustrated. Two defenses of the Baby Doe Rules are considered and rejected. The first, held by Reagan, Koop, and others, is a "right-to-life" defense. The second, held by some leaders of the (...) American Academy of Pediatrics, is that the Baby Doe Rules are benign and misunderstood. The Baby Doe Rules should be rejected since they can thwart compassionate and individualized decision-making, undercut duties to minimize unnecessary suffering, and single out one group for treatment adults would not want for themselves. In these ways, they are inferior to the older Best Interests Standard. A "negative" analysis of the Best Interests Standard is articulated and defended for decision-making for all incompetent individuals. (shrink)

Clinicians sometimes disagree about how much to honor surrogates’ deeply held cultural values or traditions when they differ from those of the host country. Such a controversy arose when parents requested a cultural accommodation to let their infant die by withdrawing life saving care. While both the parents and clinicians claimed to be using the Best Interests Standard to decide what to do, they were at an impasse. This standard is analyzed into three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions and used (...) to resolve the question of how much to accommodate cultural preferences and how to treat this infant. The extreme versions of absolutism and relativism are rejected. Properly understood, the Best Interests Standard can serve as a powerful tool in settling disputes about how to make good decisions for those who cannot decide for themselves. (shrink)

Many pediatric research regulations, including those of the United States, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Science, and South Africa, offer similar rules for review board approval of higher hazard studies holding out no therapeutic or direct benefit to children with disorders or conditions. Authorization requires gaining parental permissions and the children’s assent, if that is possible, and showing that these studies are intended to gain vitally important and generalizable information about children’s conditions; it also requires limiting the risks (...) of harm to no more than a “minor increase over minimal risk” and showing the study is commensurable with the children’s experiences. For convenience, these investigations will be called “no benefit, higher hazard” studies.Despite the existence of these policies for decades, studies show that review boards’ judgments vary about what “no benefit, higher hazard” studies should be approved. (shrink)

Many pediatric research regulations, including those of the United States, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Science, and South Africa, offer similar rules for review board approval of higher hazard studies holding out no therapeutic or direct benefit to children with disorders or conditions. Authorization requires gaining parental permissions and the children’s assent, if that is possible, and showing that these studies are intended to gain vitally important and generalizable information about children’s conditions; it also requires limiting the risks (...) of harm to no more than a “minor increase over minimal risk” and showing the study is commensurable with the children’s experiences. For convenience, these investigations will be called “no benefit, higher hazard” studies.Despite the existence of these policies for decades, studies show that review boards’ judgments vary about what “no benefit, higher hazard” studies should be approved. (shrink)

Beyond the observation that both speakers and listeners rapidly inspect the visual targets of referring expressions, it has been argued that such gaze may constitute part of the communicative signal. In this study, we investigate whether a speaker may, in principle, exploit listener gaze to improve communicative success. In the context of a virtual environment where listeners follow computer-generated instructions, we provide two kinds of support for this claim. First, we show that listener gaze provides a reliable real-time index of (...) understanding even in dynamic and complex environments, and on a per-utterance basis. Second, we show that a language generation system that uses listener gaze to provide rapid feedback improves overall task performance in comparison with two systems that do not use gaze. Aside from demonstrating the utility of listener gaze in situated communication, our findings open the door to new methods for developing and evaluating multi-modal models of situated interaction. (shrink)

A new analysis of the Best Interests Standard is given and applied to the controversy about testing children for untreatable, severe late-onset genetic diseases, such as Huntington's disease or Alzheimer's disease. A professional consensus recommends against such predictive testing, because it is not in children's best interest. Critics disagree. The Best Interests Standard can be a powerful way to resolve such disputes. This paper begins by analyzing its meaning into three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions showing it: is an "umbrella" (...) standard, used differently in different contexts, has objective and subjective features, is more than people's intuitions about how to rank potential benefits and risks in deciding for others but also includes evidence, established rights, duties and thresholds of acceptable care, and can have different professional, medical, moral and legal uses, as in this dispute. Using this standard, support is given for the professional consensus based on concerns about discrimination, analogies to adult choices, consistency with clinical judgments for adults, and desires to preserve of an open future for children. Support is also given for parents' legal authority to decide what genetic tests to do. (shrink)

In Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute, the Maryland Court of Appeals considered whether it is possible for investigators or research entities to have a special relationship with subjects, thereby creating a duty of care that could, if breached, give rise to an action in negligence. The research under review, the Lead Abatement and Repair & Maintenance Study, was conducted from 1993 to 1996 by investigators at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University.After briefly discussing the case at (...) the center of this ruling, I consider how ambiguities within the federal research regulations at 45 C.F.R. § 46 contribute to disagreements among reasonable and informed people of good will about what studies should be approved. I argue that Grimes may be understood as placing restrictions on how these regulations may be interpreted and used. (shrink)

"Applied" is a technical term describing a variety of new philosophical enterprises. The author examines and rejects the view that these fields are derivative. Whatever principles, judgments, or background theories that are employed to solve problems in these areas are either changed by how they are used, or at least the possibility exists of their being changed. Hence we ought to stop calling these endeavors "applied", or agree that the meaning of "apply" will have to include the possibility that what (...) is applied may be changed. The socalled applied fields of philosophy, therefore, are not derivative. The strongest cases to the contrary are the foundationalist views that what we apply is epistemically privileged. Different foundationalist views take different principles, judgments, or background theories to be epistemically privileged. Strong and weak versions of each of these foundationalist views are considered but none establish these fields as derivative. Keywords: applied ethics, background theories, casuistry, epistemic privilige, foundationalism, principles, reflective equilibrium CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute, the Maryland Court of Appeals considered whether it is possible for investigators or research entities to have a special relationship with subjects, thereby creating a duty of care that could, if breached, give rise to an action in negligence. The research under review, the Lead Abatement and Repair & Maintenance Study, was conducted from 1993 to 1996 by investigators at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University.After briefly discussing the case at (...) the center of this ruling, I consider how ambiguities within the federal research regulations at 45 C.F.R. § 46 contribute to disagreements among reasonable and informed people of good will about what studies should be approved. I argue that Grimes may be understood as placing restrictions on how these regulations may be interpreted and used. (shrink)

Bioethics and humanities (inclusive of medical ethics, health care ethics, environmental ethics, research ethics, philosophy and medicine, literature and medicine, and so on) seems like one field; yet colleagues come from different academic disciplines with distinct languages, methods, traditions, core curriculum and competency examinations. The author marks six related "framework" features that unite and make it one distinct field. It is a commitment to (1) work systematically on some of the momentous and well-defined sets of problems about the human condition (...) that drive our field (such as death and dying, disability, confidentiality, professionalism, informed consent, abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, personhood, health-care resource allocation and environmental ethics, as well as the impact of new technologies, including genetic and reproductive); (2) use interdisciplinary approaches to unravel them; (3) employ cases and practical reasoning to understand problems and solve answers; (4) apply teaching methods and goals associated with John Dewey to make students better problem-solvers; (5) find morally justifiable solutions to the problems driving our field; and (6) seek interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship, service or teaching. (shrink)

Edmund Pellegrino and David Thomasma’s writings have had a worldwide impact on discourse about the philosophy of medicine, professionalism, bioethics, healthcare ethics, and patients’ rights. Given their works’ importance, it is surprising that commentators have ignored their admission of an unresolved and troubling dilemma and inconsistency in their theory. The purpose of this article is to identify and state what problems worried them and to consider possible solutions. It is argued that their dilemma stems from their concerns about how to (...) justify professional rules restricting colleagues from performing acts they view as direct, active, and formal killings, such as physician-assisted suicide, mercy killing, and abortion. It is further argued that their inconsistency is that they both assert and deny that professional colleagues should not use their moral or theological values to impose professional restrictions on other colleagues without adequate philosophical grounds. At risk are their arguments about the nature of an internal morality for medicine, a secular and multicultural basis for medical ethics, and a nonarbitrary way to determine what acts fall outside the ends of medicine. These are arguments they claim also apply to other healthcare professions. The article begins with a brief overview of their key positions to provide the context in which they make their admission. (shrink)

HIV/AIDS strikes with the greatest frequency in sub-Saharan Africa, a region lacking resources to deal with this epidemic. To keep millions more people from dying, wealthy countries must provide more help. Yet deeply ingrained biases may distance the sick from those who could provide far more aid. One such prejudice is viewing disease as punishment for sin. This 'punishment theory of disease" ascribes moral blame to those who get sick or those with special relations to them. Religious versions hold that (...) God punishes them in order to castigate, encourage virtue, warn, rehabilitate, or maintain some cosmic order. Its various religious and secular forms are untenable; they lack cogency, risk blaming people unjustly, and jeopardize compassionate care for people. These views are not only irrational but also dangerous because they influence policies and cost lives. We need to cooperate and respond as befits this global public-health disaster and not engage in the misguided and bad faith activity of dividing the world into the blameworthy and blameless. (shrink)

A series of cases have crystallized disputes about when medical treatments are useful or futile, and consequently about the doctor-patient relationship, resource allocation, communication, empathy, relief of suffering, autonomy, undertreatment, overtreatment, paternalism and palliative care. It is helpful to understand that utility and futility are complimentary concepts and that judgments about whether treatments are useful or futile in the contested cases have common features. They are: (1) grounded in medical science, (2) value laden, (3) at or near the threshold of (...) utility, and (4) burdensome. No schema for linedrawing escapes borderline cases and we should focus upon justification of the empirical, ethical and evaluative components underlying these judgments, rather than make an arbitrary decision about whether doctors, patients or societal consensus should be the final arbiter. Keywords: futility, ethics, physician authority, consent CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)