This qualitative research study with a content analysis approach aimed to explore families’ experiences of an organ donation request after brain death. Data were collected through 38 unstructured and in-depth interviews with 14 consenting families and 12 who declined to donate organs. A purposeful sampling process began in October 2009 and ended in October 2010. Data analysis reached 10 categories and two major themes were listed as: 1) serenity in eternal freedom; and 2) resentful grief. The central themes were peace (...) and honor versus doubt and regret. The findings indicated that the families faced with an organ donation request of a brain-dead loved one experienced a lasting effect long after the patient's demise regardless of their decision to donate or refusal to donate. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of family support and follow-up in an efficient healthcare system aimed at developing trust with the families and providing comfort during and after the final decision. (shrink)

Completa y exhaustiva monografía sobre la obra y el pensamiento de Edgar Morin desde la perspectiva de sus planteamientos antropológicos, relacionando éstos con algunos de los debates antropológicos actuales más relevantes.

We suggest an approach to studying consciousness that focuses on its evolutionary origins. The proposed framework is inspired by the study of the transition from inanimate matter to life, which proved extremely useful for understanding what 'life' entails. We follow the theoretical and methodological scheme put forward by Tibor Ganti, who suggested a marker for the transition to life -- an evolved feature that is sufficient for ascribing dynamic persistence to a minimal living system and that can serve as a (...) point of departure for reconstructing it. We apply this approach to consciousness and suggest an overt behavioural trait -- unlimited associative learning -- as a candidate transition marker. We show that the enabling system of UAL instantiates the set of properties that are considered jointly sufficient for minimal consciousness, and discuss the experimental predictions and the implications of our approach for the taxonomic distribution of consciousness in the animal world. (shrink)

Behavioral genetic (BG) research has yielded many important discoveries about the origins of human behavior, but offers little insight into how we might improve outcomes. We posit that this gap in our knowledge base stems in part from the epidemiologic nature of BG research questions. Namely, BG studies focus on understanding etiology as it currently exists, rather than etiology in environments that could exist but do not as of yet (e.g., etiology following an intervention). Put another way, they focus exclusively (...) on the etiology of “what is” rather than “what could be”. The current paper discusses various aspects of this field-wide methodological reality, and offers a way to overcome it by demonstrating how behavioral geneticists can incorporate an experimental approach into their work. We outline an ongoing study that embeds a randomized intervention within a twin design, connecting “what is” and “what could be” for the first time. We then lay out a more general framework for a new field—experimental BGs—which has the potential to advance both scientific inquiry and related philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Cemil Şahinöz liefert eine wissenschaftliche und theologische Grundlage für den Begriff der islamischen Seelsorge und entwickelt darüber hinaus ein Konzept über die Arbeit der Seelsorge für die Gruppe der Muslime in Deutschland. Der Autor analysiert mehrere Seelsorgedisziplinen, macht eine breite Bestandsaufnahme, interviewt Seelsorger und Ausbilder islamischer Seelsorger und untersucht islamische Seelsorgekonzepte in anderen Ländern. Die islamische Theologie und die historische Entwicklung der Seelsorge innerhalb der muslimischen Gemeinschaften standen für die Erarbeitung seines Konzepts im Fokus.

Trust is central to the therapeutic relationship, but the epistemic asymmetries between the expert healthcare provider and the patient make the patient, the trustor, vulnerable to the provider, the trustee. The narratives of pain sufferers provide helpful insights into the experience of pain at the juncture of trust, expert knowledge, and the therapeutic relationship. While stories of pain sufferers having their testimonies dismissed are well documented, pain sufferers continue to experience their testimonies as being epistemically downgraded. This kind of epistemic (...) injustice has received limited treatment in bioethics. In this paper, we examine how a climate of distrust in pain management may facilitate what Fricker calls epistemic injustice. We critically interrogate the processes through which pain sufferers are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, such as testimonial injustice. We also examine how healthcare institutions and practices privilege some kinds of evidence and ways of knowing while excluding certain patient testimonies from epistemic consideration. We argue that providers ought to avoid epistemic injustice in pain management by striving toward epistemic humility. Epistemic humility, as a form of epistemic justice, may be the kind disposition required to correct the harmful prejudices that may arise through testimonial exchange in chronic pain management. (shrink)

Arab countries; intellectual life; congresses.

Objectives: To explore how subjects in a placebo-controlled vitamin A supplementation trial among Ghanaian women aged 15–45 years perceive the trial and whether they know that not all trial capsules are the same, and to identify factors associated with this knowledge.Methods: 60 semistructured interviews and 12 focus groups were conducted to explore subjects’ perceptions of the trial. Steps were taken to address areas of low comprehension, including retraining fieldworkers. 1971 trial subjects were randomly selected for a survey measuring their knowledge (...) that not all trial capsules are the same. The subjects’ fieldworkers were also interviewed about their characteristics and trial knowledge. Factors associated with knowledge were explored using multi-level modeling.Results: Although subjects knew they were taking part in research, most thought they were receiving an active and beneficial medication. Variables associated with knowledge were education and district of residence. Radio broadcasts benefited those with some schooling. Fieldworkers’ characteristics were not associated with subjects’ knowledge.Conclusions: Research and debate on new or improved consent procedures are urgently required, particularly for subjects with little education. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of ethnocultural educational technologies in forming of public spirit and patriotism feelings in modern student youth.