Background: There is general consensus internationally that unfair distribution of the benefits of research is exploitative and should be avoided or reduced. However, what constitutes fair benefits, and the exact nature of the benefits and their mode of provision can be strongly contested. Empirical studies have the potential to contribute viewpoints and experiences to debates and guidelines, but few have been conducted. We conducted a study to support the development of guidelines on benefits and payments for studies conducted by the (...) KEMRI-Wellcome Trust programme in Kilifi, Kenya. Methods: Following an initial broad based survey of cash, health services and other items being offered during research by all programme studies (n = 38 studies), interviews were held with research managers (n = 9), and with research staff involved in 8 purposively selected case studies (n = 30 interviewees). Interviews explored how these ‘benefits’ were selected and communicated, experiences with their administration, and recommendations for future guidelines. Data fed into a consultative workshop attended by 48 research staff and health managers, which was facilitated by an external ethicist.FindingsThe most commonly provided benefits were medical care (for example free care, and strengthened quality of care), and lunch or snacks. Most cash given to participants was reimbursement of transport costs (for example to meet appointments or facilitate use of services when unexpectedly sick), but these payments were often described by research participants as benefits. Challenges included: tensions within households and communities resulting from lack of clarity and agreement on who is eligible for benefits; suspicion regarding motivation for their provision; and confusion caused by differences between studies in types and levels of benefits. Conclusions: Research staff differed in their views on how benefits should be approached. Echoing elements of international benefit sharing and ancillary care debates, some research staff saw research as based on goodwill and partnership, and aimed to avoid costs to participants and a commercial relationship; while others sought to maximise participant benefits given the relative wealth of the institution and the multiple community needs. An emerging middle position was to strengthen collateral or indirect medical benefits to communities through collaborations with the Ministry of Health to support sustainability. (shrink)

At Supplices 337, as part of the increasingly tense stichomythic testing between the Danaids and Pelasgus, the Danaids utter an emotional question, which reads in all the MSS, that is M and the apographa Ma, Mb, Mc, Me, Md.

Significant associations have been found between specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and organ transplant rejection, autoimmune disease development, and the response to infection. Traditional searches for disease associations have conventionally measured risk associated with the presence of individual HLA alleles. However, given the high level of HLA polymorphism, the pattern of amino acid variability, and the fact that most of the HLA variation occurs at functionally important sites, it may be that a combination of variable amino acid sites shared (...) by several alleles (shared epitopes) are better descriptors of the actual causative genetic variants. Here we describe a novel approach to genetic association analysis in which genes/proteins are broken down into smaller sequence features and then variant types defined for each feature, allowing for independent analysis of disease association with each sequence feature variant type. We have used this approach to analyze a cohort of systemic sclerosis patients and show that a sequence feature composed of specific amino acid residues in peptide binding pockets 4 and 7 of HLA-DRB1 explains much of the molecular determinant of risk for systemic sclerosis. (shrink)

In summarizing key developments in the study of ethics in journalism and mass communication, problems and opportunities for the future are identified. Major activities contributing to the ethics study trend include a succession of specialized books, a journal, workshops, courses, and student writing contests. These achievements have pulled journalism ethics from the marsh of neglect to a flatland of consciousness, with a four?tiered mountain remaining to be scaled that will propel mainstream communication ethicists into the arena with a growing (...) number of critical theorists and a thrust of critical scholarship. (shrink)

American Catholic Philosophical Association President James Marsh is calling for a “Philosophy after Catonsville.” This paper begins by examining Catonsvilleas specifically American, Catholic, and philosophical. “Wildness” is then presented as it has emerged recently as a category in environmental philosophy andis shown to necessitate a social ecology for Catonsville. Finally, Marsh’s problematic relationship to ecology will be presented and resolved by discussing the necessary entailment of social ecology by his trilogy of Post-Cartesian Meditations, Critique, Action, and Liberation, and (...) Process, Praxis, and Transcendence. By the end of this paper, wildness will have established a crucial connection between Catonsville, Marsh’s “greened” critical theory, and social ecology as a necessary condition for the possibility of a “Philosophy after Catonsville.”. (shrink)

George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), first US Minister to the Kingdom of Italy, is also known as a father of environmentalism, due to his book, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864). The book includes environmental changes George witnessed during his New England years and as he and his wife Caroline lived and traveled abroad. Caroline’s diaries written in Italy attest to her partnership in the book’s composition and to its role among their ambassadorial duties.

In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of (...) the central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner. (shrink)

Campbell came to the Klamath marshes, a wetland in southern Oregon formed by three ancient, shallow lakes, a vast emptiness that is paradoxically home to an amazing diversity of life, of untold thousands of birds both migratory and resident, of all the interconnected life forms that make up one of North America's richest natural environments.".

Eden In Iraq is an environmental design and water remediation project in the marshes of southern Iraq using design and wastewater as bio-art, to create a restorative garden for education, cultural memory, and contemplation. Earmarked for a 20,000 m2 site at Al Manar in the marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, near a probable site of the historic Garden of Eden, Eden in Iraq is a project that brings, art, design, and technology together with culture and history. Drawing on (...) Islamic and Mesopotamian traditions originating in this historically and symbolically charged region, the Eden in Iraq Waste Water Garden is designed to be a syncretic container for ecological and cultural restoration and heritage after the time of war. This paper looks at this project from three inter-related activities, namely, treatment of wastewater suitable for growing a large scale garden, design of the garden starting from the Islamic garden design principles and thirdly, reviving the cultural heritage of the pre-Islamic, Mesopotamian art in contemporary forms.Graphic abstract. (shrink)