Background: Bioethics consultations are conducted in varied settings, including hospitals, universities, and other research institutions, but there is sparse information about bioethics consultations conducted in corporate settings such as pharmaceutical companies. The purpose of this article is to describe a bioethics consultation service at a pharmaceutical company, to report characteristics of consultations completed by the service over a 6-year period, and to share results of a consultation feedback survey. Methods: Data on the descriptive characteristics of bioethics consultations were collected from (...) 2008 to 2013 and analyzed in Excel 2007. Categorical data were analyzed via the pivot table function, and time-based variables were analyzed via formulas. The feedback survey was administered to consultation requesters from 2009 to 2012 and also analyzed in Excel 2007. Results: Over the 6-year period, 189 bioethics consultations were conducted. The number of consultations increased from five per year in 2008 to approximately one per week in 2013. During this time, the format of the consultation service was changed from a committee-only approach to a tiered approach (tailored to the needs of the case). The five most frequent topics were informed consent, early termination of a clinical trial, benefits and risks, human biological samples, and patient rights. The feedback survey results suggest the consultation service is well regarded overall and viewed as approachable, helpful, and responsive. Conclusions: Pharmaceutical bioethics consultation is a unique category of bioethics consultation that primarily focuses on pharmaceutical research and development but also touches on aspects of clinical ethics, business ethics, and organizational ethics. Results indicate there is a demand for a tiered bioethics consultation service within this pharmaceutical company and that advice was valued. This company's experience indicates that a bioethics consultation service raises awareness about bioethics, empowers employees to raise bioethical concerns, and helps them reason through challenging issues. (shrink)

BackgroundThe biopharmaceutical industry operates at the intersection of life sciences, clinical research, clinical care, public health, and business, which presents distinct operational and ethical challenges. This setting merits focused bioethics consideration to complement legal compliance and business ethics efforts. However, bioethics as applied to a biopharmaceutical industry setting often is construed either too broadly or too narrowly with little examination of its proper scope.Main textAny institution with a scientific or healthcare mission should engage bioethics norms to navigate ethical issues that (...) arise from the conduct of biomedical research, delivery of clinical care, or implementation of public health programs. It is reasonable to assume that while bioethics norms must remain constant, their application will vary depending on the characteristics of a given setting. Context “specification” substantively refines ethics norms for a particular discipline or setting and is an expected, needed and progressive ethical activity. In order for this activity to be meaningful, the scope for bioethics application and the relevant contextual factors of the setting need to be delineated and appreciated. This paper defines biopharmaceutical bioethics as: the application of bioethics norms (concepts, principles, and rules) to the research, development, supply, commercialization, and clinical use of biopharmaceutical healthcare products. It provides commentary on this definition, and presents five contextual factors that need to be considered when applying bioethics norms to a biopharmaceutical industry setting: (1) dual missions; (2) timely and pragmatic guidance; (3) resource stewardship; (4) multiple stakeholders; and (5) operational complexity.ConclusionUnderstanding the scope of the biopharmaceutical enterprise and contextual factors of a biopharmaceutical industry setting is foundational for the application of bioethics norms. Establishing a common language and approach for biopharmaceutical bioethics will facilitate breadth and depth of discussion and subsequent implementation to benefit patients, the healthcare system and society. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to be frustrated by the outcome of an election or a decision in voting, law, economics, engineering, and other fields. Does this 'bad' result reflect poor data or poorly informed voters? Or does the disturbing conclusion reflect the choice of the decision/election procedure? Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow's famed theorem has been interpreted to mean 'no decision procedure is without flaws'. Similarly, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen dashes hope for individual liberties by showing their incompatibility with societal needs. (...) This highly accessible book offers a new, different interpretation and resolution of Arrow's and Sen's theorems. Using simple mathematics, it shows that these negative conclusions arise because, in each case, some of their assumptions negate other crucial assumptions. Once this is understood, not only do the conclusions become expected, but a wide class of other phenomena can also be anticipated. (shrink)

Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality provides abundant cause for intellectual offense—including challenges to physics, to theology, and, seemingly, to common sense. Few philosophical conundrums remain unaddressed. Still, the book is stimulating and well presented.

Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality provides abundant cause for intellectual offense—including challenges to physics, to theology, and, seemingly, to common sense. Few philosophical conundrums remain unaddressed. Still, the book is stimulating and well presented.

Grafts of embryonic neural tissue into the brains of adult patients are currently being used to treat Parkinson's disease and are under serious consideration as therapy for a variety of other degenerative and traumatic disorders. This target article evaluates the use of transplants to promote recovery from brain injury and highlights the kinds of questions and problems that must be addressed before this form of therapy is routinely applied. It has been argued that neural transplantation can promote functional recovery through (...) the replacement of damaged nerve cells, the reestablishment of specific nerve pathways lost as a result of injury, the release of specific neurotransmitters, or the production of factors that promote neuronal growth. The latter two mechanisms, which need not rely on anatomical connections to the host brain, are open to examination for nonsurgical, less intrusive therapeutic use. Certain subjective judgments used to select patients who will receive grafts and in assessment of the outcome of graft therapy make it difficult to evaluate the procedure. In addition, little long-term assessment of transplant efficacy and effect has been done in nonhuman primates. Carefully controlled human studies, with multiple testing paradigms, are also needed to establish the efficacy of transplant therapy. (shrink)

This clear reference to unlimited freedom in values despite limited freedom in causality pictures quite accurately the theme of this article. Lord Russell made the statement in the closing eloquent paragraph of a 1927 volume he wrote to outline the problems of philosophy. He evidently feels that, prescinding from determinism or non-determinism in the causal sphere, freedom can still be meaningfully discussed in the ethical sphere, the realm of human values, though obviously in a special sense of the word ‘freedom’. (...) In other words, regardless of man’s psychological freedom or nonfreedom, Russell asserts that in the moral order man has perfect ‘freedom’ to decide for himself what shall be good or evil, right or wrong. (shrink)

The concept of “the good life” is not one that receives much attention from conventional economic theory.1 About the closest it comes to such attention is in the area of welfare economics and here it is mostly concerned with the distribution of costs and benefits of various economic choices and wherein benefits are measured in terms of utility and costs in terms of disutility or utility foregone. It is usually taken for granted that utility is a function of consumption of (...) goods and services, and disutility is a function of the “toil and trouble” associated with the effort to acquire goods and services. Labor, therefore, is typically taken to be a major source of disutility. Even many economists will admit that .. (shrink)

In this book Dr. Donald Bloesch sharply diverges from much traditional thinking on the relationship between theology and philosophy and suggests an alternative that is solidly anchored in biblical faith. Instead of seeing this relationship in terms of synthesis or correlation or even simple subordination, he calls for the conversion and transformation of philosophical meanings in the light of the biblical revelation. Philosophy can be of considerable aid to theologians, but they must take care not to let philosophical concepts (...) determine the meaning of faith. Reason can be enlisted in the service of revelation, but it cannot establish the truth of revelation. Against the irrationalism of contemporary existentialist theology and the rationalism that has pervaded both scholastic orthodoxy (Catholic and Protestant) and liberal philosophical theology, Bloesch proposes an evangelical theology of revelation that seeks to employ reason in the task of understanding the faith. The author upholds not an autonomous reason but an obedient reason, and he shows that this ideal has support in the history of theology as well as in the Bible. (shrink)

The mystery of the Jews as the chosen people of God is to be understood in light of the wider biblical view that God intends his covenant of grace for all humanity; all peoples are destined to serve the glory of God and to participate in his Kingdom.

The different ways in which contemporary theologians understand the saving work of Christ arise from the different premises with which the theological task is undertaken.

Despite some clinical promise, using fetal transplants for degenerative and traumatic brain injury remains controversial and a number of issues need further attention. This response reexamines a number of questions. Issues addressed include: temporal factors relating to neural grafting, the role of behavioral experience in graft outcome, and the relationship of rebuilding of neural circuitry to functional recovery. Also discussed are organization and type of transplanted tissue, the of transplant viability, and whether transplants are really needed to obtain functional recovery (...) after brain damage. (shrink)

Claims that representatives of both sides of the psi debate (e.g., J. E. Alcock; K. R. Rao and J. Palmer [see PA, Vol 76:10501 and 10507]) have implicitly adopted the empirical epistemology without spelling out or systematically applying the rational epistemology, an essential step for both psychology and parapsychology. ((c) 1997 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved).

It is well known that decision methods based on pairwise rankings can suffer from a wide range of difficulties. These problems are addressed here by treating the methods as systems, where each pair is looked upon as a subsystem with an assigned task. In this manner, the source of several difficulties is equated with the standard concern that the “whole need not be the sum of its parts.” These problems arise because the objectives assigned to subsystems need not be compatible (...) with that of the system. Knowing what causes the difficulties leads to resolutions. (shrink)

This chapter examines the stages of processing meta‐theory (SPM) that has guided construction of theories in psychology during the past 350 years, from philosopher René Descartes in seventeenth‐century France to neuropsychologists Carl Wernicke and Paul Broca in nineteenth‐century Europe to psychologists Dominic Massaro and Alan Baddeley in late twentieth‐century America and Britain. The most basic SPM assumptions are that processing and storage of information take place within a finite number of autonomous modules or stages, and that some stages are sequentially (...) ordered with respect to others. Flowcharts typically summarize these assumptions. The traditional stages of processing for verbal information are comprehension, storage, retrieval, and production. SPM flowcharts can add new stages and can alter old labels to represent new types of information processing, but whatever the labels, the stages must be finite in number, distinct, independent, and sequentially ordered between input and output. (shrink)