‘I understand that the world was nothing, a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understand that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.—An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree.’.

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)

My office is in a medical building in suburban Washington, D.C. —in Bethesda, named for the Biblical healing pool. All of the offices of my building are occupied by medical specialists, representing the most sophisticated training in the application of the scientific method. Downstairs and of service to all of us is a pharmacy, looking for all the world like a research laboratory with its gleaming surface, meticulous cleanliness, micro-balances, records, reference books, and cash register. It is neatly stocked with (...) modern, physiologically-defined preparations of active, predictable drugs. Among the enzymes, hormones, antibiotics, and chemo therapeutics for neoplasm, are a few newly hatched, unfledged remedies, but most are dependable and thoroughly assayed. The intently busy, white-coated, unsentimental pharmacists serve a hard-headed group of practitioners and a neighborhood of upper-class, well-educated patients. It is disconcerting, then, to see the undersurface of this sophistication, the irrational shadows beneath the science. On the front counter of the pharmacy are displayed attractive colored advertisements and pleasantly seductive inducements to self-improvement through diet cults and foods, tranquilizers, energizers, protein supplements, happiness promisers, preparations to enhance sexuality, vitamins artfully combined, and many packeted stuffs of no rational or pretended use whatsoever. “Why,” I ask the gimlet-eyed pharmacist, “do you have this large display of ‘Il Wah Genuine Chinese Ginseng, the Miraculous Herb of Life’? Doesn't it violate your university training? Your integrity as a modernist?” “Oh,” says he, “ginseng makes you feel better! You have more energy. You can do more! Lots of athletes use it, and people who work too hard and feel exhausted. It's only $3.45 a package. The prescriptions you give me once in a while yield no profit, but I sell a lot of ginseng. I use it myself!” Bemused, I walk back to my office, wondering about the easy abandonment of rationality, and pull down a box of medicinals collected the year before at an open-air pharmacy in the riverside markets of Brazil. The box gives forth deliciously rich forest smells. The packets within contain barks, roots, seeds, all of purported medical value. Other packets have amulets, charms, and protectives. The colorful labels on some of the patent medicines invoke ancient saints and healers, and promise happiness, health, prosperity and power. The essential rationale for their use in indigenous medicine was illusive to me despite many conversations with indigenous healers, and many times I have gone through the hundreds of items trying to find the key to what Brazilian and North American people fundamentally want from a pharmacy. In both cultures, where does magic stop and science begin? Do shops in both countries vend talismans in the search for the enhanced life, and fetishes against death? How much of all drug use is ritual and inchoate expectation? How can we reduce the mystification and incrementally increase the rationality of our pharmacopeia? (shrink)

This article develops a multidimensional approach for the investigation of the ethical codes of professional associations. The authors: (a) examine various ethical frameworks to identify ethical constructs, (b) select ethical constructs to apply to the assessment of professional codes of ethics, (c) content analyze conceptual and descriptive similarities and differences across a large sample of professional codes of ethics, (d) address organizational variables that affect the development of ethical codes, and (e) investigate through survey research the beliefs and attitudes of (...) association leadership toward ethical code issues. The content analysis and survey research results have implications for association leadership, its membership, public policy makers, the general public and for future research. (shrink)

The paper develops a unified account of both deterministic and indeterministic laws of nature which inherits the merits but not the defects of the best existing accounts. As in Armstrong's account, laws are embodied in facts about universals; but not in higher‐order relations between them, and the necessity of laws is not primitive but results from their containing chances of 0 or 1. As in the Ramsey‐Lewis account, law statements would be the general axioms and theorems of the simplest deductive (...) theory of everything; but because laws are not so defined, simplicity of statement is not a criterion of law‐hood. (shrink)

This paper attacks two contrary views. One denies that nature has joints, taking the properties we call natural to be merely artefacts of our theories. The other accepts real natural properties but takes their naturalness to come by degrees. I argue that both are wrong: natural properties are real, and their naturalness no more comes by degrees than does the naturalness of the things that havethem.

D. H. Hodgson has argued that among highly knowledgeable and rational act-Utilitarians there is no non-Circular reason to be truthful or to expect truthfulness from others; wherefore these utilitarians forfeit the benefits of communication. I reply that hodgson goes wrong by tacitly assuming that his utilitarians have no premises to reason from except those that hodgson lays down in specifying the example under consideration.

First published in 1925. This book is a brief analysis of the historical relation of contemporary writers to their immediate predecessors. The author attempts to further a comprehensive summary of certain selected writers, with a criticism of their ideas, while in the last chapter an attempt is made at synthesis. Among those whose work is examined are Ramsay MacDonald, Bertrand Russell, Harold Laski, the Pauls, Hobhouse, Bryce, G. D. H. Cole, Norman Angell, etc. This title will be of great interest (...) to students of politics, philosophy and history. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungHume unterscheidet zwischen dem Prinzip, dass alles, was geschieht, einen Kausalgrund hat, und dem Prinzip der Regelmässigkeit der Natur, d.h. dass ähnliche Kausalgriinde ähnliche Kausalfolgen haben. In der zweiten Analogie der Erfahrung versucht Kant, die Erklärung unserer Annalime des ersten Prinzips, welche er irrtümlieherweise Hume zuschreibt, zu widerlcgen. Er versucht dort nichl ausdrücklich das zweite Prinzip zu begründen, aber J. Dodge hat nachgewiesen, dass die zweite Analogie doch versteckterweise eine Begründung dieses Prinzips enthält, Kant selbst begründet jedoch dieses zweite Prinzip (...) nur als ein regulatives Prinzip der reflektierenden Urteilskraft. (shrink)

Realism and metaphysics.--Ultimates and a way of looking.--Religion and the paranormal.--Quinton, A., Lewis, H. D., Williams, B. Life after death.--Lewis, H. D., Flew, A. Survival.--Shoemaker, S., Lewis, H. D. Immortality and dualism.--The belief in life after death.--The person of Christ.

It is demonstrated that neither the arguments leading to inconsistencies in the description of quantum-mechanical measurement nor those “explaining” the process of measurement by means of thermodynamical statistics are valid. Instead, it is argued that the probability interpretation is compatible with an objective interpretation of the wave function.

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics, and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications and limitations. This new scholarly debate includes not only economists, but also contributors from philosophy, cognitive psychology, legal studies, and public policy who can further illuminate the justification and moral implications of this method and specify alternative measures. These articles originally appeared in the Journal of Legal Studies. (...) Contributors: - Matthew D. Adler - Gary S. Becker - John Broome - Robert H. Frank - Robert W. Hahn - Lewis A. Kornhauser - Martha C. Nussbaum - Eric A. Posner - Richard A. Posner - Henry S. Richardson - Amartya Sen - Cass R. Sunstein - W. Kip Viscusi. (shrink)

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the ancient Greek text of the paraphrases and quotations of Zeno's philosophical arguments, together with a facing-page English translation and editorial commentary. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout and a bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Zeno and ancient philosophy.

The program of a physical concept of information is outlined in the framework of quantum theory. A proposal is made for how to avoid the intuitive introduction of observables. The conventional and the Everett interpretations in principle may lead to different dynamical consequences. An ensemble description occurs without the introduction of an abstract concept of information.

Evaluating the risks and anticipated benefits of medical, behavioral and, social research is a central function of institutional review boards. The calculation that IRBs undertake ultimately determines whether a particular research project involving human participants is permitted to proceed. In medical research the physical harms and even the anticipated benefits of a new procedure or drug are often apparent and quantifiable. In contrast, for social/behavioral research that may involve probing the most intimate feelings, thoughts, and actions of participants, the weighing (...) of risks and anticipated benefits, the calculation of possible harms and the acceptability of that harm require a more intense level of scrutiny.Even the early step of identifying and recruiting participants for a research endeavor may potentially cause harm, making participant selection a focus of IRB analysis. (shrink)

Evaluating the risks and anticipated benefits of medical, behavioral and, social research is a central function of institutional review boards. The calculation that IRBs undertake ultimately determines whether a particular research project involving human participants is permitted to proceed. In medical research the physical harms and even the anticipated benefits of a new procedure or drug are often apparent and quantifiable. In contrast, for social/behavioral research that may involve probing the most intimate feelings, thoughts, and actions of participants, the weighing (...) of risks and anticipated benefits, the calculation of possible harms and the acceptability of that harm require a more intense level of scrutiny.Even the early step of identifying and recruiting participants for a research endeavor may potentially cause harm, making participant selection a focus of IRB analysis. (shrink)

A review of a work in which a systematic and general theory of the nature of the conventions governing the semantics of a natural language is developed, with the object of offering a conceptual framework within which semantic phenomena can be understood in relation to syntax and to the communicative and social aspects of language. The empiricist theory of language is criticized for not supplying an adequate framework for the explanation of language learning. Taxonomy is a solution to the problems (...) caused by the limited application of general names. General concepts are not mastered individually, but rather as systems of the arbitrary division of ranges. Linguistic devices are systems of rules showing how human beings communicate with each other in order to forward specific human purposes. One such device can incorporate another and a natural language is merely a system of such systems. An attempt is made to put Wittgenstein's idea of "meaning as use" to work in the context of a general theory of language. A discussion follows on the relationship of Harrison's views to Chomsky's work in grammar and to recent studies in child language learning. R. Gaskill. (shrink)