It is argued by Lie et al in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics that an international consensus opinion has formed on the issue of standards of care in clinical trials undertaken in developing countries. This opinion, so they argue, rejects the Declaration of Helsinki’s traditional view on this matter. They propose furthermore that the Declaration of Helsinki has lost its moral authority in the controversy in research ethics. Although the latter conclusion is supported by this author, (...) it will be demonstrated in this paper that there is not such a thing as an international consensus opinion, and that the authorities used by Lie et al as evidence in support of their claim should not be relied upon as authorities or final arbiters in this debate. Furthermore, it will be shown that arguments advanced substantively to show that lower standards of care are ethically acceptable in the developing world, conflate scientific with economic reasons, and ultimately fail to bolster the case they are designed to support. (shrink)

Is it time to leave the non-professional aspects of personal life at the door and face patients as medical professionals and no more?Ever wondered about the appropriateness of Christian doctors displaying pictures of Pope Benedict, Muslim doctors displaying pictures of Osama son of Laden or former PLO leader Yassir Arafat, or gay doctors proudly flying the rainbow flag in their rooms? I suggest that we should be concerned about such display of religious, political, or other allegiance to non-professional causes in (...) loci of health care delivery.Let us take a step back, however, and ask why we seek health care professionals’ help or assistance. Our reasons have, of course, primarily to do with doing our fair share by way of enabling health care delivery services to achieve their primary objectives for being in existence, namely to ensure that we live as long as is feasible at as high a quality of life as is possible. While legitimate questions may be asked about acceptable trade-offs between length and quality of life, broadly speaking, that is what we expect health care providers to do for us. Importantly, we expect them to do so in a professional manner. This is very much in line with the historical roots of the idea of professionalism, meaning essentially to profess publicly to serve the public good.1 The public …. (shrink)

Avery’s et al. ’s 1944 paper provides the first direct evidence of DNA having gene-like properties and marks the beginning of a new phase in early molecular genetics (with a strong focus on chemistry and DNA). The study of its reception shows that on the whole, Avery’s results were immediately appreciated and motivated new research on transformation, the chemical nature of DNA’s biological specificity and bacteria genetics. It shows, too, that initial problems of transferring transformation to other systems and prominent (...) criticism of its results nurtured skepticism. Avery’s experiment was downplayed and neglected particularly by many of those scientists who worked in the new fields of biochemical and biophysical genetics, genetic phage, and TMV research. This was not due to the fact that the implications of the paper could not be connected to generally accepted knowledge. Contrary to a widespread belief, the assumed uniformity of DNA as opposed to proteins was not used as an argument against the validity of Avery’s et al.’s finding. The indifference rather reflected, among other things, the disciplinary gap between the chemically oriented microbiologists and the old and new geneticists who remained committed to genetic and physical methods (in particular x-ray studies) and clung to the assumption that proteins were the sole carriers of biological specificity. The responses to Avery’s et al.’s paper show how different research interests in the areas between microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry interacted with the prejudices, dogmas, individual farsightedness or short-sightedness, and scientific authority during a pivotal period of early molecular biology. (shrink)

Epistrofē, ili, Fenomen "vozvrashchenii︠a︡" v pervoĭ evropeĭskoĭ kulʹture -- "Osevye veka" evropeĭskoĭ istorii -- Logika istorii -- Istina i istorii︠a︡ -- Evropeĭskiĭ istorizm (nekotorye aspekty problemy).

The set-theoretic and individual-theoretic analyses of collections make the same mistake: their ontologies are far removed from language. Our basic notion, the collector, has a clear linguistic counterpart: the definite article. Our theory furnishes a theory of definite descriptions as a special case. We use 3-valued valued logic in order to come to grips with the existential presuppositions of the collections.

--- 2. Peraḳim 3-4 -- 3. Peraḳim 5-6 --.

The overall objective of this research is to determine the religious perceptions and its levels of university youth and to interpret the findings from the point of view of their psychological features. This research consists of four chapter. These are: introduction, first chapter consist of discussions of the basic concepts such as religiosity, spirituality, second chapter that the data obtained from the survey was assessed the relationships with hypotheses and conclusions in which the findings were interpreted. The study’s population consists (...) of the students at the undergraduate level in faculties of the Erciyes University in 2011-2012. A questionnaire was administered on 553 students, chosen randomly in this population. The survey contains descriptive and Likert style items. As independent variables in this study, branches of science, faculty, department, class, age, gender, living environment for the longest time before coming to university, graduated high school, mother's and father's education level and the accommodation place during training have been taken. When analyzing the data, percentages, frequency distributions, descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and T-Tests and Chi-Square (x²) techniques were used. As a result of this research hypotheses associated with gender, age, branches of science, faculty and department were confirmed on the other hand the others were rejected. (shrink)