I take up the call for a more nuanced engagement with race in bioethics by using Creary’s analytic of bounded justice and argue that it helps illuminate processes of racialization, or racial formation, specifically Blackness, as a dialectical processes of both invisibility and hyper-visibility. This dialectical view of race provides a lens through which the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics field can reflect on fraught issues such as inclusion in genomic and biomedical research. Countering or (...) interrupting racialization in precision medicine can involve asking how marginalized groups are made invisible or hyper-visible in various aspects of the research process. Incorporating these kinds of questions into biomedical research inclusion efforts could lead to potentially powerful engagements with marginalized groups and could provide the opportunity for stakeholders to engage with the ways that racialization can happen in real-time and might undermine good intentions. (shrink)

In the article, “Precision Medicine for Whom? Public Health Outputs from “Genomics England” and “All of Us” to Make Up for Upstream and Downstream Exclusion,” Galasso focuses on how marginalized pe...

McCradden et al.’s article makes a distinctive contribution to the growing literature on the ethics of artificial intelligence in medicine. Not only do the authors raise important ethical is...

Liao and Carbonell’s (2023) article, “Materialized Oppression in Medical Tools and Technologies” directs our attention, not to new cutting edge medical technologies, but to the pulse oximeter and t...

In their article “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies that Process Personal Data”, McCoy and colleagues (2023) propose the Ethical Data Practices Framework as a tool for navigating and preventin...

In the context of long waiting time to access rehabilitation services, a large majority of settings use referral prioritization to help manage waiting lists. Prioritization practices vary greatly between settings and there is little consensus on how best to prioritize referrals. This paper describes the prioritization processes for physiotherapy services in Québec and its potential implications in terms of equity in access to services. This is a secondary analysis of a survey of outpatient physiotherapy departments (n=98; proportion of participation was (...) 99%) conducted in 2015 across publicly funded hospitals in Québec. In many settings, persons with acute orthopaedic conditions were prioritized while chronic conditions were given a lower priority. There were 72 different combinations of prioritization criteria used in outpatient physiotherapy departments. Variability was also observed in the type of personnel involved in the prioritization process, the number of priority levels used to rank the referrals and the source of information used to prioritize referrals. These results highlight potential issues regarding equity in access to physiotherapy services: the prioritization of persons with acute conditions to the detriment of those with chronic conditions, the lack of consensus on a fair prioritization process and the importance to adequately assess patients’ needs for treatment. Further research and interventions on prioritization criteria and processes are needed to ensure equitable access to physiotherapy services, especially in the public sector. (shrink)

In the context of long waiting time to access rehabilitation services, a large majority of settings use referral prioritization to help manage waiting lists. Prioritization practices vary greatly between settings and there is little consensus on how best to prioritize referrals. This paper describes the prioritization processes for physiotherapy services in Québec and its potential implications in terms of equity in access to services. This is a secondary analysis of a survey of outpatient physiotherapy departments conducted in 2015 across publicly (...) funded hospitals in Québec. In many settings, persons with acute orthopaedic conditions were prioritized while chronic conditions were given a lower priority. There were 72 different combinations of prioritization criteria used in outpatient physiotherapy departments. Variability was also observed in the type of personnel involved in the prioritization process, the number of priority levels used to rank the referrals and the source of information used to prioritize referrals. These results highlight potential issues regarding equity in access to physiotherapy services: the prioritization of persons with acute conditions to the detriment of those with chronic conditions, the lack of consensus on a fair prioritization process and the importance to adequately assess patients’ needs for treatment. Further research and interventions on prioritization criteria and processes are needed to ensure equitable access to physiotherapy services, especially in the public sector. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi offers quite a few stories that centre on performance: a bellstand maker who selects wood to create wonderful bellstands; a ferryman who steers through rough waters; a cicada catcher who uses a stick, as if it were his hand, to catch cicadas; and a wheelmaker who, in using his chisel, feels it in his hand and responds with his heart. What is the role of the stick, for the cicada catcher, and the chisel, for the wheelmaker? What (...) do these masters know? I situate these questions within the intellectual context of the Zhuangzi, highlighting the text’s opposition to prevailing conceptions of a flourishing life. I draw on recent debates in extended mind and cognition to suggest that they offer interesting ways of understanding the knowledgeable practices of these masters. The frameworks and vocabulary of extended mind allow me to bring out how and why the Zhuangzi’s examples of mastery are apt and insightful reasons for rejecting the then current views on good government. The dialogue benefits both Chinese and Western traditions: the examples in the Zhuangzi help to diversify contemporary Western philosophy’s understanding of knowledge. (shrink)

Do not pass by my epitaph, Wayfarer, but when you have stopped, hear and learn, then depart. There is no boat, To carry you to Hades, No ferryman Charon, No judge Aeacus, No Dog Cerberus. All of us below have become bones and ashes. Truly, I have nothing more to tell you. So depart, wayfarer, Lest dead though I am I seem to you to be a teller of vain tales.

The target article “Bounded Justice, Inclusion and the Hyper/Invisibility of Race in Precision Medicine” (Ferryman 2023) raises critical questions about the development of genuinely inclusive, fair...

There is no fragment of the older Attic Comedy that concerns Greek religion so intimately as this, and none which has been so misinterpreted. It may also claim to have a certain value for our literary judgment of Plato. The story of Phaon is preserved for us by three authorities, Aelian, Palaiphatos, and Servius; and with few variations and additions all three present it as follows: Phaon was an elderly Lesbian ferryman who transported Aphrodite, disguised as an old woman, (...) across the sea; and she in reward gave him a magic ointment which restored his youth and ensured him the desperate love of all women. I am not concerned here with the handling of the story in other literature, nor with its original significance. We may suspect that it originated as a ίερòς λόγος. But it is presented to us merely as a piece of folklore, as a theme well suited to the temper of the Middle Attic Comedy. We may suppose that Plato followed a version known to Kratinos, according to which Aphrodite was the chief lover of Phaon and jealous of guarding him against her rivals. For it is certain, as Meineke has pointed out, that it is Aphrodite who delivers the speech contained in this fragment; in line seven she demands a preliminary sacrifice to herself, under the name κουροτρόος Only a divinity can demand sacrifice, and κουροτρόο;ος is a familiar epithet of many deities including Aphrodite, and she is the only deity possible in this scene, in which she is trying to keep off the ardent crowd of women from her beloved Phaon, by insisting on long and complicated preliminary rites and sacrifices before their admission to her shrine, where she is keeping him, as she once kept Kinyras. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.1 (2004) 223-225 [Access article in PDF] Devoirs et Délices d'une vie de passeur: Entretiens avec Catherine Portevin, by Tzvetan Todorov; 395 pp. Paris: Les Éditions du Seuil, 2002, €22. Caveat lector. Let the reader beware: this is no leisurely, nostalgic stroll by another Parisian intellectual now ruminating and pontificating over issues and events outside his competence. True to his vocation as ferryman (passeur), Todorov (...) guides the reader over the vast expanses of historical, ideological, and intensely personal terrain that he has explored as an émigré of Bulgaria, a brilliant Structuralist, French citizen, father, spouse, and son caring for his aged father. The resulting mosaic composes a narrative itinerary rich in intellectual history.The exceptional range of Todorov's experience and research affords him a unique perspective. Having first lived and studied under Stalinism, he distinguished himself as a Parisian literary scholar stressing the primacy of the linguistic. Now internationally renowned, his books cover a broad spectrum of human experience, including the Holocaust, WWII, totalitarianism, the ethics of memory, the role and function of the intellectual, race and culture, ethnocentrism and conquest, and, most recently, human identity and a new humanism. Having immersed himself in numerous contexts, Todorov has acquired extensive firsthand knowledge from within. He is nevertheless adept at standing back and assessing them from without, revealing idiosyncrasies and limitations. His uncompromising scrutiny bows to no ideological a priori, nor spares any sacred cow.Some pronouncements will ruffle feathers in a number of intellectual aviaries. He values literature, for example, above philosophy, science, and the social sciences as a source of not only beauty, but meaning and truth. Contrary to the tendency to view literature as an arbitrary construction used to further an agenda of socio-economic domination and political repression, he contends that literary texts can best enrich our vision of the world and our personal sensibilities. Stressing art's essential humanity while challenging the obsession with science and technology, Todorov views language as neither estranged from reality nor subjugated by politics. Hence the impossibility of isolating literature from ethics and existence: writers legitimately seek to come to terms with the human condition, communicating experiences and sensibilities we would otherwise ignore. [End Page 223]Criticism, contends Todorov, should accordingly plunge back into the work's context or thought, as does Bénichou in studying French Classicism, or Joseph Frank in analyzing Dostoyevsky, or else it should explore anthropological perspectives, as does René Girard. Todorov's focus remains squarely on the literary work, not on the genius of theory: we have more to learn from texts of all ages than from contemporary critics who embed them in systems, reducing them to mere examples of theory.Beyond the "ethnocentrism" (p. 124) that he sees in the tendency to approach literary works through current preoccupations, Todorov delivers a severe verdict on the Marxist intellectuals so prominent throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s: "... the thirty years (1945-1975) that were so glorious for the French economy [were] disastrous for political thought. Ideologically, these are years of stagnation and of an intellectual straight jacket in which all discourse was judged by the measure of Marxist-Leninist dogma" (pp. 144-45, translation mine). Todorov thus deplores such irresponsibility: all while enjoying the many material comforts and civil freedoms of a free-market, democratic society, "bobos" (bourgeois bohèmes) advocated the instauration of a totalitarian regime whose economic failures and political repression Todorov had known only too well. Their actions thus were not in keeping with their discourse, for they made no effort to seriously weigh the concrete results of their ideology.Like Tony Judt, who voices similar criticisms in Past Imperfect and The Burden of Responsibility, Todorov prefers Raymond Aron's intellectual rigor and Camus's humane moderation to Sartre's knee-jerk radicalism and futile gesticulations. Given Todorov's experience and erudition, such criticisms can neither be brushed aside nor attributed to being a rear-guard action. He moreover distributes incisive criticisms to the Right, to the Left, and even to the Center. But... (shrink)

In his note on Hesiod, WD 705 M. L. West tentatively suggests adeo for deo, saying rightly that ‘Charon is not a god in the literary tradition generally or in Virgil's scheme’ . Palaeographically nothing could be more attractive than this emendation. But for all Virgil's fondness for adeo he does not use it in this intensifying sense with adjectives other than those indicating number , nor does he ever use it later than the second foot . The difficulty which (...) West is combating is a very real one, but it is not solved by the removal of deo. Virgil's dilemma was that the old ferryman must be as timeless as all the other members of Pluto's establishment, and to achieve this object of portraying an unchanging picture of the machinery of the underworld he has elevated Charon to the rank of dues. In Olympus the gods are frozen at the point suitable for the anthropomorphic vision of them: Cupid is always a boy, Apollo young and handsome, Neptune older and more austere. Similarly Charon is frozen just as he has reached vigorous old age. He may not be, indeed is not, a real god, but he is a necessary part of the world of the gods and so must share their agelessness. (shrink)

On inquiring into the nature of the Charites one may be astonished at the disagreement of their compounding elements. On the one hand, they appear as the very representatives and even personification of gracefulness and charm, brightness, and joy; their name itself seems to testify this, closely allied as it is with the verb χαρειν besides the particular names of the most renowned Hesiodic trinity—Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia—that is to say, brilliancy, mirth, and florescence. Hence arose the Roman conception of (...) the Gratiae decentes; hence also the widespread neo-humanistic idea, clothed by Goethe in the well-known verse of the Classical Walpurgis Night: ‘Grace we are bringing into life ….’ But, on the other hand, we discover the incontestable kinship of Charis with Charon, the ugly and sullen ferryman of the lower world, the still more amazing relation between Eurynome, the mother of the Hesiodic trinity, and Eurynomos, the horrid demon of decay, the vulture-skinned devourer of putrefying corpses in the Delphic Nekyia of Polygnotos. (shrink)

In his note on Hesiod, WD 705 M. L. West tentatively suggests adeo for deo, saying rightly that ‘Charon is not a god in the literary tradition generally or in Virgil's scheme’. Palaeographically nothing could be more attractive than this emendation. But for all Virgil's fondness for adeo he does not use it in this intensifying sense with adjectives other than those indicating number, nor does he ever use it later than the second foot. The difficulty which West is combating (...) is a very real one, but it is not solved by the removal of deo. Virgil's dilemma was that the old ferryman must be as timeless as all the other members of Pluto's establishment, and to achieve this object of portraying an unchanging picture of the machinery of the underworld he has elevated Charon to the rank of dues. In Olympus the gods are frozen at the point suitable for the anthropomorphic vision of them: Cupid is always a boy, Apollo young and handsome, Neptune older and more austere. Similarly Charon is frozen just as he has reached vigorous old age. He may not be, indeed is not, a real god, but he is a necessary part of the world of the gods and so must share their agelessness. (shrink)