The use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has expanded both in number and scope over the past 2 decades. Initially carried out to avoid the birth of children with severe genetic disease, PGD is now used for a variety of medical and non-medical purposes. While some human studies have concluded that PGD is safe, animal studies and a recent human study suggest that the embryo biopsy procedure may result in neurological problems for the offspring. Given that the long-term safety of (...) PGD has not been clearly established in humans, this study sought to determine how PGD safety is presented to prospective patients by means of a detailed website analysis. The websites of 262 US fertility centres performing PGD were analysed and comments about safety and risk were catalogued. Results of the analysis demonstrated that 78.2% of centre websites did not mention safety or risk of PGD at all. Of the 21.8% of centres that did contain safety or risk information about PGD, 28.1% included statements highlighting the potential risks, 38.6% presented information touting the procedure as safe and 33.3% included statements highlighting potential risks and the overall safety of the procedure. Thus, 86.6% of PGD-performing centres state that PGD is safe and/or fail to disclose any risks on their websites despite the fact that the impact of the procedure on the long-term health of offspring is unproven. This lack of disclosure suggests that informed consent is inadequate; this study examines numerous factors that are likely to inhibit comprehensive discussions of safety. (shrink)

In 1971, Günter Blobel and David Sabatini proposed a novel and quite speculative schematic model to describe how proteins might reach the proper cellular location. According to their proposal, proteins destined to be secreted from the cell contain a “signal” to direct their release. Despite the fact that Blobel and Sabatini presented their signal hypothesis as a “beautiful idea” not grounded in experimental evidence, they received criticism from other scientists who opposed such speculation. Following the publication of the 1971 model, (...) Blobel persisted in conducting experiments and revising the model to incorporate new data. In fact, over the period of 1975–1984, Blobel and colleagues published five subsequent schematic models of the signal hypothesis, each revised based on new laboratory evidence. I propose that the original 1971 model can be viewed as an epistemic creation. Additionally, analysis of the subsequent schematic diagrams over the period of 1975–1984 allows one to track Blobel’s changing conception of an epistemic object over time. Furthermore, the entire series of schematic diagrams presented by Blobel from 1971 to 1984 allow one to visualize the initial conception and subsequent reworking of a scientific theory. In 1999, Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the signal hypothesis, which was ultimately supported by experimental evidence gathered after the speculative model was published. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of management in most countries. Despite the effectiveness of identity conscious initiatives for increasing the proportion of women, many organizations have been reluctant to implement such initiatives because potential employees may perceive them negatively. Given the increasing competition for labor, attracting talent is relevant for the long-term success of organizations. In this study, we used an experimental design to examine the effects of identity blind and identity conscious gender diversity initiatives on people’s pursuit (...) intentions toward organizations using them. We used counterfactual thinking, derived from fairness theory, as a guiding framework for our hypothesis development and investigated the moderating influence of a forthcoming government-mandated gender quota as well as individual characteristics. Participants reviewed statements regarding workplace diversity initiatives and rated either the initiatives’ effectiveness or indicated their intentions to pursue employment with organizations using them. Of those rating pursuit intentions, half were informed that the country in which they were conducting their job search was about to implement gender quotas. Results indicated a diversity management paradox such that initiatives perceived as more effective made organizations using them less attractive as employers. However, these negative perceptions were mitigated by a government-mandated quota, and also lower among women. Implications for the study and practice of diversity are discussed. (shrink)

Although establishing gender equality in board and managerial positions has recently become more important for organizations, companies with low levels of gender diversity seem to perceive an ethical dilemma regarding the ways, in which they attempt to attain it. One way that organizations try to move toward gender equality is through the use of their corporate websites to manage potential applicants’ impressions of their current levels of, and actions to improve, gender diversity. The dilemma is whether to truthfully communicate their (...) low level of gender diversity, conceal it, or exaggerate it. On the one hand, organizations that are truthful may find it difficult to achieve equality because women are less attracted to companies that lack diversity. On the other hand, organizations that are untruthful risk their moral legitimacy. The present work investigates gender diversity-related communication on the corporate websites of 99 major German companies. Based on theoretical work on minority attraction, we apply an organizational impression management taxonomy to guide our in-depth content analysis. With this approach, we hope to advance the understanding of how the issue of gender diversity is presented on corporate websites, which is useful for both organizational decision makers as well as diversity researchers. We found that although gender diversity-related communications on corporate websites contain both assertive and defensive organizational impression management tactics, as well as a third type of tactic we refer to as “acknowledgement,” assertive tactics were used more frequently. We argue the existence of a paradox whereby organizations use assertive impression management tactics to maintain pragmatic legitimacy but compromise their moral legitimacy by doing so. Furthermore, we argue that moral legitimacy can be maintained or restored through the sincere use of defensive impression management tactics and acknowledgement. (shrink)

Michel Foucault was the first to embed the roots of human sexuality in discipline and biopolitics, therefore revolutionizing our conception of sex and its relationship to society, economics, and culture. Yet over the past two decades, scholars have limited themselves to the study of Foucault's _History of Sexuality_, volume 1 paying lesser attention to his equally explosive _History of Madness_. In this earlier volume, Foucault recasts Western rationalism as a project that both produces and represses sexual deviants, calling out the (...) complicity of modern science and the exclusionary nature of family morality. By reclaiming these deft moves, Lynne Huffer teases out exciting new strands of Foucauldian thought. She then revisits the theorist's ethical work in light of these discoveries, divining an ethics of eros that sees sexuality as a lived experience we are repeatedly called on to remember. Throughout her study, Huffer weaves her own experiences together with Foucault's, sampling from unpublished interviews and other archived materials in order to intimately rework the problem of sexuality as a product of reason. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse the novel case of Phoenix, a non-binary adult requesting ongoing puberty suppression to permanently prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics, as a way of affirming their gender identity. We argue that the aim of OPS is consistent with the proper goals of medicine to promote well-being, and therefore could ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle; there are additional equity-based reasons to offer OPS to non-binary adults as a group; and the ethical defensibility (...) of facilitating individual requests for OPS from non-binary adults also depends on other relevant considerations, including the balance of potential benefits over harms for that specific patient, and whether the patient’s request is substantially autonomous. Although the broadly principlist ethical approach we take can be used to analyse other cases of non-binary adults requesting OPS apart from the case we evaluate, we highlight that the outcome will necessarily depend on the individual’s context and values. However, such clinical provision of OPS should ideally be within the context of a properly designed research study with long-term follow-up and open publication of results. (shrink)

Lynne Huffer's ambitious inquiry redresses the rift between feminist and queer theory, traversing the space of a new, post-moral sexual ethics that includes pleasure, desire, connection, and betrayal. She begins by balancing queer theorists' politics of sexual freedoms with a moralizing feminist politics that views sexuality as harm. Drawing on the best insights from both traditions, she builds an ethics centered on eros, following Michel Foucault's ethics as a practice of freedom and Luce Irigaray's lyrical articulation of an ethics of (...) sexual difference. Through this theoretical lens, Huffer examines everyday experiences of ethical connection and failure connected to sex, including queer sexual practices, sodomy laws, interracial love, pornography, and work-life balance. Her approach complicates sexual identities while challenging the epistemological foundations of subjectivity. She rethinks ethics "beyond good and evil" without underestimating, as some queer theorists have done, the persistence of what Foucault calls the "catastrophe" of morality. Elaborating a thinking-feeling ethics of the other, Huffer encourages contemporary intellectuals to reshape sexual morality from within, defining an ethical space that is both poetically suggestive and politically relevant, both conceptually daring and grounded in common sexual experience. (shrink)

We thank the commentators for their thoughtful responses to our article.1 Due to space constraints, we will confine our discussion to just three key issues. The first issue relates to the central ethical conundrum for clinicians working with young people like Phoenix: namely, how to respect, value and defer to a person’s own account of their identity and what is needed for their well-being, while staying open to the possibility that such an account may reflect a work in progress. This (...) conundrum thus relates both to what will be beneficial for that person and what constitutes respecting their autonomy, and clinicians must dwell on these questions when deciding what forms of medical intervention to offer. D’Angelo,2 Lemma3 and Wren4 highlight the importance of considering Phoenix as a ‘whole person in context’ 2 prior to initiating treatment or care. In this way, they advocate for a process of ‘therapeutic exploration’,4 which includes taking sufficient time to explore Phoenix’s personhood with them so as to support them in achieving an ‘authentic self-discovery’.2 We agree with these authors that identity development is a complex, life-long process that is influenced by biological, psychosocial and relational aspects, all of which may contribute to an individual’s desire to pursue gender-affirming interventions. To explore the various factors—both conscious and unconscious—that might be motivating Phoenix’s decision to pursue ongoing puberty suppression, D’Angelo,2 Lemma3 and Wren4 describe a comprehensive psychological approach to working with transgender and gender diverse individuals and propose questions to guide such discussions. Consistent with this approach, we stipulated that Phoenix had undergone regular psychological counselling and that the psychologist had judged that ‘Phoenix’s distress is significant and enduring…not a symptom …. (shrink)

Jorge Luis Borges introduces the mythical ouroboros as follows: “A third-century Greek amulet, to be found today in the British Museum, gives us an image that can better illustrate that infinitude:...

A critical review of four recent works that reflect current conflicts and tensions among feminists regarding new reproductive technologies: In Search of Parenthood by Judith Lasker and Susan Borg; Ethics and Human Reproduction by Christine Overall; Made to Order, Patricia Spallone and Deborah Steinberg, eds. and Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Michelle Stanworth, ed. Their positions are evaluated against the background of growing feminist dialogue about the future of reproduction and the bearing of reproductive innovations on such related issues (...) as racism, sexuality, motherhood and abortion. (shrink)

In December 1984 Angela Weir and Elizabeth Wilson, two founding members of Feminist Review, published an article assessing contemporary British feminism and its relationship to the left and to class struggle. They suggested that the women's movement in general, and socialist-feminism in particular, had lost its former political sharpness. The academic focus of socialist-feminism has proved more interested in theorizing the ideological basis of sexual difference than the economic contradictions of capitalism. Meanwhile the conditions of working-class and black women have (...) been deteriorating. In this situation, they argue, feminists can only serve the general interests of women through alliance with working-class movements and class struggle. Weir and Wilson represent a minority position within the British Communist Party (the CP), which argues that ‘feminism’ is now being used by sections of the left, in particular the dominant ‘Eurocommunist’ left in the CP, to justify their moves to the right, with an accompanying attack on traditional forms of trade union militancy. Beatrix Campbell, who is aligned to the dominant position within the CP, has been one target of Weir and Wilson's criticisms. In several articles from 1978 onwards, and in her book Wigan Pier Revisited, Beatrix Campbell has presented a very different analysis of women and the labour movement. She has criticized the trade union movement as a ‘men's movement’, in the sense that it has always represented the interests of men at the expense of women. And she has described the current split within the CP as one extending throughout the left between the politics of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’: traditional labour movement politics as against the politics of those who have rethought their socialism to take into account the analysis and importance of popular social movements – in particular feminism, the peace and anti-racist movements. In reply to this debate, Anne Phillips has argued that while women's position today must be analysed in the context of the capitalist crisis, it is not reducible to the dichotomy ‘class politics’ versus ‘popular alliance’. Michèle Barrett, in another reply to Weir and Wilson, has argued that they have presented a reductionist and economistic approach to women's oppression, which caricatures rather than clarifies much of the work in which socialist-feminists have been engaged. To air these differences between socialist-feminists over the question of feminism and class politics, and to see their implications for the women's movement and the left, Feminist Review has decided to bring together the main protagonists of this debate for a fuller, more open discussion. For this discussion Feminist Review drew up a number of questions which were put to the participants by Clara Connolly and Lynne Segal. (Michèle Barrett was present in a personal capacity.) They cover the recent background to socialist-feminist politics, the relationship of feminism to Marxism, the role of feminists in le ft political parties and the labour movement, the issue of racism and the prospects for the immediate future. The discussion was lengthy and what follows is an edited version of the transcript. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

This two-part article summarizes the major arguments of Lynne Huffer’s 2010 book, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. The second part of the piece is a dialogue between Huffer and feminist theorist Elizabeth Wilson about the implications of the book’s arguments about rethinking queer theory, interiority, psychic life, lived experience and received understandings of Michel Foucault’s work.

Recent historical work on changing perceptions of the human body has been influenced by Michel Foucault’s contention that the self of western individualism was created by new regimes of disciplining the body. A different approach is taken here, one that focuses on how individual bodies came to be viewed as separate and inviolable, that is, as autonomous. The separateness and inviolability of bodies can be traced in the histories of bodily practices as different as portraiture and legal torture. After 1750, (...) regular public exhibitions, themselves a new feature of the social landscape, showed increasing numbers of portraits in London and Paris. The proliferation of individual likenesses encouraged the view that each person was an individual, that is, single, separate, distinctive and original. At the same time, the tide turned against judicially sanctioned torture and cruel punishment. Long-held notions of sacrificial punishment and truth through pain withered under the pressure of new experiences of the body that in turn facilitated the emergence of new conceptions of rights of individuals. (shrink)

This essay attends to the place of virginity at the center of the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Confessions of the Flesh. Reading virginity through a rhetorical lens, the essay argues for an ethics and a politics of counter-conduct in Foucault characterized by chiasmus, a rhetorical structure of inverted parallelism. That chiastic structure frames Foucault’s Confessions, and all of his work, as a fragmented, self-hollowing speech haunted by death and the dissolution of the subject. The essay reads (...) Foucault as apophatic speech that returns to us, no longer itself, made strange. In that deathly movement of eternal recurrence, Foucault’s Confessions speak after death from the x’d out place of the queer virgin: on a threshold that separates life from death, in a movement of metanoia or ethical conversion. As an unfinished history in fragments, the essay’s form brings attention to incompletion as a crucial aspect of Foucault’s work. The fragmentation that characterizes an unfinished history underscores poetic discontinuity as the hallmark of Foucault’s genealogical method and thought. (shrink)

About the Author James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His many books include Pictures and Tears, How to Use Your Eyes, and What Painting Is, all published by Routledge. Michael Newman teaches in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is Professor of Art Writing at Goldsmiths College in the University of (...) London. His publications include the books Richard Prince: Untitled (couple) and Jeff Wall, and he is co-editor with Jon Bird of Rewriting Conceptual Art. (shrink)

A theory of customary international law -- Case studies -- A theory of international agreements -- Human rights -- International trade -- A theory of international rhetoric -- International law and moral obligation -- Liberal democracy and cosmopolitan duty.

First published in 1992, The Way is Edward Goldsmith's magnum opus. In it, he proposes that the stability and integrity of humans depend on the preservation of the balance of natural systems surrounding the individual--family, community, society, ecosystem, and the ecosphere itself. Portraying life processes and ecological thinking as holistic, Goldsmith calls for a paradigm shift away from the reductionist approach of modern science. The basic belief in the whole was at the heart of the worldview of primal, (...) earth-oriented societies, as manifested by the Tao of the ancient Chinese, the R'ta of Vedic India, the Asha of the Avestas, and the Sedaq of the tribal Hebrews. The Way was the path taken to maintain the critical order of the cosmos. Echoing the way of traditional cultures, Goldsmith presents an all-embracing, coherent worldview that promotes more harmonious and sustainable practices capable of satisfying real biological, social, ecological, and spiritual needs. Revised to include a glossary, index, bibliographic notes, and several updated chapters, this is a major work by one of our boldest and most promising thinkers. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role played by derogatory terms (e.g., ‘inyenzi’ or cockroach, ‘inzoka’ or snake) in laying the social groundwork for the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. The genocide was preceded by an increase in the use of anti-Tutsi derogatory terms among the Hutu. As these linguistic practices evolved, the terms became more openly and directly aimed at Tutsi. Then, during the 100 days of the genocide, derogatory terms and coded euphemisms were used to direct killers (...) to their victims. Understanding these speech acts helps to illuminate the important ways that power is enacted through discourse, how speech acts can prepare the way for physical and material acts, and how speech generates permissions for actions hitherto uncountenanced. Studying the role of speech acts and linguistic practices in laying the groundwork of the genocide illuminates how patterns of speech acts become linguistic practices that constitute permissibility conditions for non-linguistic behaviors. Further, the analysis presented here helps to make sense of the view that a steady, deep, and widespread derogation of a group can be part and parcel of genocide, not only an antecedent to it. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Reopening a Discussion The empiricist-derived epistemology that has directed most social and natural scientific inquiry for the last three ...

This volume is a wonderful introduction to Foucault and a testimony to the deep humanity of the man himself.

The expression ‘nonreductive materialism’ refers to a variety of positions whose roots lie in attempts to solve the mind-body problem. Proponents of nonreductive materialism hold that the mental is ontologically part of the material world; yet, mental properties are causally efficacious without being reducible to physical properties.s After setting out a minimal schema for nonreductive materialism (NRM) as an ontological position, I’ll canvass some classical arguments in favor of (NRM).1 Then, I’ll discuss the major challenge facing any construal of (NRM): (...) the problem of mental causation, pressed by Jaegwon Kim. Finally, I’ll offer a new solution to the problem of mental causation. (shrink)

A curious feature of Aztec philosophy is that the basic metaphysical question of the “Western” tradition cannot be formulated in their language, in Nahuatl. This did not, however, prevent the Aztecs from developing an account of 'reality', or whatever it is that might exist. The article is the first of its kind to compare the work of Aristotle on ousia (being) and the Aztecs on teotl and ometeotl. Through this analysis, it suggests that both of the Nahuatl terms are fundamental (...) for expressing the basic character of reality as process for the Aztecs. It also defends their notion as prima facia reasonable, despite its wide divergence from Aristotle's view. (shrink)

"Next to Sartre's Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years." -- Library Journal.

Scholars in the early seventeenth century who studied ancient Greek scientific theories often drew upon philology and history to reconstruct a more general picture of the Greek past. Gassendi's training as a humanist historiographer enabled him to formulate a conception of the history of philosophy in which the rationality of scientific and philosophical inquiry depended on the historical justifications which he developed for his beliefs. Professor Joy examines this conception and analyzes the nature of Gassendi's historical training, especially its relationship (...) to his career as a physicist and astronomer. She shows how he rehabilitated Epicurean atomism by bringing together the arguments of the Greek atomists and those of his contemporaries. In doing so, he produced an account of the natural world which made it an object of empirical study and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

Monotheistic conceptions of an afterlife raise a philosophical question: In virtue of what is a postmortem person the same person who lived and died? Four standard answers are surveyed and criticized: sameness of soul, sameness of body or brain, sameness of soul-body composite, sameness of memories. The discussion of these answers to the question of personal identity is followed by a development of my own view, the Constitution View. According to the Constitution View, you are a person in virtue of (...) having a first-person perspective, and a postmortem person is you if and only if that person has the same first-person perspective. The Christian doctrine of resurrection has three features: a postmortem person is embodied; a postmortem person is identical to some premortem person; and the postmortem person owes existence to a miracle. I show how the Constitution View accommodates these three features. (shrink)

Whether the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural substrates of consciousness is currently debated. Against prefrontal theories of consciousness, many have argued that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex does not correlate with consciousness but with subjective reports. We defend prefrontal theories of consciousness against this argument. We surmise that the requirement for reports is not a satisfying explanation of the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious trials, and that prefrontal theories of consciousness come out of this (...) debate unscathed. (shrink)

The use of storytelling in the judgment process is based on the necessary assumption that experience and meaning are universal. In place of recognizing legitimate differences in the interpretation of social experience, jurors more often are compelled to regard unfamiliar story elements or dissonant interpretations as signs of guilt. When key elements in a case are anchored in different social worlds, defendants may be found guilty simply by reason of their social experiences and their communication styles. The important question arising (...) from this state of affairs is whether anything can be done to correct biased judgment of trials.Securing access to justice means, at a minimum, recognition for the legitimacy—if not the validity—of one's grievances and aspirations. (shrink)

This article argues that the real promise of feminist philosophy of language is in its account of articulated normativity. Feminist philosophy of language began within a descriptivist framework, seeking to identify and root out sexist discursive practices, like naming practices that subsume women’s identity under men’s, descriptive practices that erase or undermine women’s accomplishments and presence as subjects, and so on. This approach had its limits, and led to increased attention to the discursive practices through which we articulate our experiences (...) and construct our lives. Examining the core frameworks through which feminists have analyzed the power of language to shape social reality and construct social selves, this article shows how language is normative in its production and reproduction of social norms by way of its content, forms, and constitutive discursive practices. The article urges feminists to use knowledge of the processes of articulation and legitimation to effect and explain feminist reconstitution of women as whole. (shrink)