This article describes a model of DNA banking that incorporates appropriate consumer influence on the design and use of DNA data banks. This model values input of consumer stakeholders in key decisions, including contracts between donors, researchers and the bank.

The currently evolving debate over ethical and legal approaches to DNA data banks reflects, in part, shifting societal perceptions of dividing lines between humanity and commodity, definitions of genetic inheritance between individuals and families, and the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community. Tensions arise whether the data bank has been created for medical or for forensic purposes. The authors, through their work as community activists described more fully below, have come to realize that the key to (...) resolving these tensions and developing ethically acceptable DNA data bank practices is meaningful community engagement. Not unlike medical DNA data banks, personally identifiable DNA samples are routinely retained by states long after a convict's or arrestee's DNA profile has been derived from it and entered into the state database. The question arises, then, as to what, if any, non-forensic uses can these samples – ethically – be put. (shrink)

No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental fnd-ings in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are fndings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers (...) have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

Human genomics is a translational field spanning research, clinical care, public health, and direct-to-consumer testing. However, law differs across these domains on issues including liability, consent, promoting quality of analysis and interpretation, and safeguarding privacy. Genomic activities crossing domains can thus encounter confusion and conflicts among these approaches. This paper suggests how to resolve these conflicts while protecting the rights and interests of individuals sequenced. Translational genomics requires this more translational approach to law.

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

Numerous studies have shown almost uniformly positive opinions among patients and physicians regarding theconceptof advance directives (either a healthcare proxy or living will). Several of these studies have also shown that the actual use of advance directives is significantly lower than this enthusiasm would suggest, but they have not explained the apparent discordance. Nor have researchers explained why members of minority groups are much less likely to complete advance directives than are white patients. In this study, we used a focus (...) group methodology to examine the ways in which diverse populations of patients view the medical, philosophical, and practical issues surrounding advance directives. We were motivated by the significantly lower prevalence of advance directives among African-American and Hispanic patients at one urban teaching hospital (18% for Caucasians, 4% for African-Americans, and 2% for Hispanics). Our premise was that African-American and Hispanic populations, who have had higher rates of morbidity and mortality across numerous disease categories, and historically have had limited access to care and opportunities to discuss health concerns, may be more suspicious about the right of autonomy that an advance directive is designed to ensure. (shrink)

Numerous studies have shown almost uniformly positive opinions among patients and physicians regarding theconceptof advance directives (either a healthcare proxy or living will). Several of these studies have also shown that the actual use of advance directives is significantly lower than this enthusiasm would suggest, but they have not explained the apparent discordance. Nor have researchers explained why members of minority groups are much less likely to complete advance directives than are white patients. In this study, we used a focus (...) group methodology to examine the ways in which diverse populations of patients view the medical, philosophical, and practical issues surrounding advance directives. We were motivated by the significantly lower prevalence of advance directives among African-American and Hispanic patients at one urban teaching hospital (18% for Caucasians, 4% for African-Americans, and 2% for Hispanics). Our premise was that African-American and Hispanic populations, who have had higher rates of morbidity and mortality across numerous disease categories, and historically have had limited access to care and opportunities to discuss health concerns, may be more suspicious about the right of autonomy that an advance directive is designed to ensure. (shrink)

The factors preventing registered nurses from failing students in practice are multifaceted and have attracted much debate over recent years. However, writers rarely focus on what is needed to fail an incompetent pre-registration nursing student in their final placement. This hermeneutic study explored the mentor experience of failing a pre-registration nursing student in their final placement. A total of 19 mentors were recruited from 7 different healthcare organisations in both inner city and rural locations in the southeast of England. Participants (...) took part in individual reflective interviews about their experience of failing a pre-registration nursing student in their final placement. These experiences were interpreted through a hermeneutic discovery of meaning. The new horizon of understanding which developed as a result of this research is framed within the context of moral stress, moral integrity and moral residue with the overall synthesis being that these mentors’ stories presented a new horizon of moral courage. (shrink)

Association between sister chromatids is essential for their attachment and segregation to opposite poles of the spindle in mitosis and meiosis II. Sister‐chromatid cohesion is also likely to be involved in linking homologous chromosomes together in meiosis I. Cytological observations provide evidence that attachment between sister chromatids is different in meiosis and mitosis and suggest that cohesion between the chromatid arms may differ mechanistically from that at the centromere. The physical nature of cohesion is addressed, and proteins that are candidates (...) for holding sister chromatids together are discussed. Dissolution of sister‐chromatid cohesion must be regulated precisely, and potential mechanisms to release cohesion are presented. (shrink)

Different religious traditions offer apparently very different pictures of the world. How are we to make sense of this radical diversity of religious belief? In this book, Professor Godlove argues that religions are alternative conceptual frameworks, the categories of which organise experience in diverse ways. He traces the history of this idea from Kant to Durkheim, and then proceeds to discuss two constraints on the diversity of all human judgment and belief: first that human experience is made possible by shared, (...) a priori rules, and second, that as language-users we must presuppose that we hold the vast bulk of our beliefs in common. Given these unavoidable constraints, it is clear how religions may offer encompassing symbolic systems that often diverge dramatically from one another. 'An original and brilliant critique of Durkheim and Kant from within the framework of Davidson's semantic theory. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the academic study of religion, and the problems of relativism and the diversity of belief.' -- Hans H. Penner, Dartmouth CollegeDifferent religious traditions offer apparently very different pictures of the world. How are we to make sense of this radical diversity of religious belief? In this book, Professor Godlove argues that religions are alternative conceptual frameworks, the categories of which organise experience in diverse ways. He traces the history of this idea from Kant to Durkheim, and then proceeds to discuss two constraints on the diversity of all human judgment and belief: first that human experience is made possible by shared, a priori rules, and second, that as language-users we must presuppose that we hold the vast bulk of our beliefs in common. Given these unavoidable constraints, it is clear how religions may offer encompassing symbolic systems that often diverge dramatically from one another. 'An original and brilliant critique of Durkheim and Kant from within the framework of Davidson's semantic theory. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the academic study of religion, and the problems of relativism and the diversity of belief.' -- Hans H. Penner, Dartmouth College. (shrink)

My topic is a long-standing tension in the interpretation of religion. On the one hand, it seems undeniable — seems almost to go without saying — that liturgical and sacrificial practices, sacred dance, divination, procession and pilgrimage are intentional actions undertaken by persons. Yet there is a distinguished tradition in the study of religion according to which religious activity is typically caused by forces over which the agent has little or no control. Visible, latter-day members of this tradition include Hume, (...) Nietzsche, Marx, Durkheim, Freud, and, in some moods, Wittgenstein, but its roster is by no means limited to the religiously unmusical. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion are indebted to Nancy Frankenberry for a trail of important papers and books in which she scouts the line between philosophical and religious thinking. Robert Neville has already conveyed some sense of the breadth and scope of her work—of the difficult landscape through which she has guided us. So I am going to go small. I am going to focus on two clusters of issues that have been central to her thinking. I have had the good fortune (...) over the years to think with Frankenberry about these issues. With this paper I am, as it were, reporting in on where I am at the moment in our continuing conversation. The first cluster of issues centers on a different kind of conversation: the one.. (shrink)

Today it is no news to point out that Kant’s doctrine of space as a form of intuition is motivated by epistemological considerations independent of his commitment to Euclidean geometry. These considerations surface—apparently without his own recognition—in Poincaré’s, Science and Hypothesis, the very work that helped turn analytically-minded philosophers away from the Critique. I argue that we should view Poincaré as refining Kant’s doctrine of space as the form of intuition, even as we see both views as arbitrarily limited—in Kant’s (...) case, to Euclidean transformations, and, in Poincaré's, to geometries of constant curvature. Both run together the question whether space is an a priori form of intuition with the question whether there are a priori constraints on its applied geometry. At his best, Kant sees—what Poincaré does not—that they are connected by a form of cognition consisting in the intuition of homogeneous pluralities, of totalities apprehended as unities. (shrink)

Abstract Robert Hanna has recently advanced a theory of non-conceptual content, the central claim of which is that "it is perfectly possible for there to be directly referential intuitions without concepts". Hanna bases this claim in Kant's account of intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason, and so extends his Kantian non-conceptualism beyond the epistemology of empirical knowledge into the realm of mathematics. Thus, Hanna has proposed a Kantian non-conceptualist solution to a well-known dilemma set out by Paul Benacerraf in (...) his 1973 paper, "Mathematical Truth". I argue that Hanna is right about Kant's non-conceptualism, but mistaken in its application to Benacerraf's Dilemma. (shrink)

This paper presents research on the moral sensibility of six pre-service teachers in an undergraduate teacher education program. Using their reflective writing across their first two semesters of coursework as well as focus group interviews in their third semester as sources of data, the paper identifies and describes three distinctive types of moral sensibility and examines ways in which moral sensibility interacts with experiences in teacher education. Suggestions for explicitly incorporating the moral in pre-service teacher education are presented.

We explore the different meanings of “quantum uncertainty” contained in Heisenberg’s seminal paper from 1927, and also some of the precise definitions that were developed later. We recount the controversy about “Anschaulichkeit”, visualizability of the theory, which Heisenberg claims to resolve. Moreover, we consider Heisenberg’s programme of operational analysis of concepts, in which he sees himself as following Einstein. Heisenberg’s work is marked by the tensions between semiclassical arguments and the emerging modern quantum theory, between intuition and rigour, and between (...) shaky arguments and overarching claims. Nevertheless, the main message can be taken into the new quantum theory, and can be brought into the form of general theorems. They come in two kinds, not distinguished by Heisenberg. These are, on one hand, constraints on preparations, like the usual textbook uncertainty relation, and, on the other, constraints on joint measurability, including trade-offs between accuracy and disturbance. (shrink)

Christopher Insole argues that we have underestimated the importance of the following theological problem in the development of Kant’s mature, critical philosophy: “How can it be said that we are free, given that we are created by God?” (p. 5). The author makes a strong case that this problem was formative for a range of Kant’s pre-critical views. What role it continues to play in the 1780s and beyond will be, as the author himself notes, controversial. Chapters 1–3 contain lucid (...) and, especially for those familiar only with Kant’s critical period, helpful discussions of several pre-critical texts together with an engagement with selected secondary literature. Thus, readers who know only Kant’s destruction of the divine proofs, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), may be surprised to find him defending versions of the ontological and cosmological proofs in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). Here Insole’s exposition is nuanced... (shrink)

Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom. By Ronald Dworkin. Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartse. By Gareth B. Matthews.

A substantial portion of the developed world's population is increasingly dependent on machines to make their way in the everyday world. For certain privileged groups, computers, cell phones, PDAs, Blackberries, and IPODs, all permitting the faster processing of information, are commonplace. In these populations, even exercise can be automated as persons try to achieve good physical fitness by riding stationary bikes, running on treadmills, and working out on cross-trainers that send information about performance and heart rate.

An experiment designed to test the highly speculative hypothesis of photon consciousness was executed. It was found that, within the accuracy attainable with the apparatus, there is no empirical justification for the hypothesis.

Mechanical devices implanted in the body present implications for broad themes in religious thought and experience, including the nature and destiny of the human person, the significance of a person's embodied experience, including the experiences of pain and suffering, the person's relationship to ultimate reality, the divine or the sacred, and the vocation of medicine. Community-constituting convictions and narratives inform the method and content of reasoning about such conceptual questions as whether a moral line should be drawn between therapeutic or (...) enhancement interventions and/or between somatic and neural/cognitive interventions. By attending to these broader community-forming concepts, it is possible to identify three general orienting themes in religious perspectives on incorporated mechanical devices, which we shall designate as perspectives of “appropriation,” “ambivalence,” and “resistance.”. (shrink)

Terry F. Godlove discovers in Immanuel Kant's theoretical philosophy resources that have much wider implications beyond Christianity and the philosophical issues that concern monotheism and its beliefs. For Godlove, Kant's insights, when properly applied, can help rejuvenate our understanding of the general study of religion and its challenges. He therefore bypasses what is usually considered to be the "Kantian philosophy of religion" and instead focuses on more fundamental issues, such as Kant's account of concepts, experience, and reason and their (...) significance in controversial matters. _Kant and the Meaning of Religion_ is a subtle and penetrating effort by a leading contemporary philosopher of religion to redefine and reshape the contours of his discipline through a sustained reflection on Kant's so-called "humanizing project.". (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)