Vaccination is one of history's most successful public health interventions. Since 2000, vaccination campaigns against measles, which is highly contagious but preventable through the measles‐mumps‐rubella (MMR) vaccine, have reduced both the global incidence of the disease and measles deaths by 80 percent. However, progress toward measles elimination has slid backward in several previously well‐protected global regions. With more communities below or at risk of falling below the 95 percent immunization rates required for herd immunity—due more and more to vaccine skepticism (...) and declination rather than lack of access—many U.S. states and countries must reappraise their vaccination policies and programs. (shrink)

This piece explores legal, ethical, and policy arguments associated with using interventions that leverage feelings of shame and social exclusion to promote uptake of childhood immunizations by parents.

Although interest in the field of public health law has dramatically increased over the past two decades, there remain significant challenges in communicating and sharing public health law-related knowledge. Access to quality information, which may assist in a public health department's efforts to protect the public's health, welfare, and safety, varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and interjurisdictional communication remains at best a patchwork quilt with many holes. What follows is an analysis of several approaches the Public Health Law Association (...) or other public health law-related organizations might undertake to serve as a conduit for the identification, gathering, and dissemination of extant public health law information, as well as the development of new public health law-related content, with a particular focus on the use of electronic means for such efforts. (shrink)

The Public Health Law Association’s grant proposal described the problem of accessing public health law information, and the charge for this paper, as follows:The last decade has witnessed a renaissance in public health law. An array of forces have given rise to new model acts, important litigation developments and a growing body of academic research in the field. While there have been some initial attempts to collate important materials, practitioners in the field lack access to “real world” documents and practice (...) guides. If public health law is to remain an organic and growing field and, more importantly, if the fruits of this renaissance are to have lasting practical effect, practitioners in multiple fields must have access to this body of knowledge. (shrink)

: In June 2002, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) approved draft recommendations concerning preparation for potential biological terror attacks that utilize the smallpox virus. ACIP recommends against both mandatory and voluntary vaccination of the general public. The present paper examines the moral and political considerations both for and against each of the general public vaccination options considered by the ACIP in the context of the state's authority over vaccination for the purposes of protecting public health. Although it is (...) clear that compulsory mass vaccination is not justified at this time, the issues surrounding voluntary vaccination are more complex. Should smallpox vaccination prior to an outbreak be made available to the general public? The paper concludes that the vaccine should not be made available at this time. This conclusion, however, is based upon contingent features of current circumstances, which would change once an outbreak occurred. In the event of a terror-related outbreak of smallpox, the general public's access to voluntary vaccination would become justified, even in areas beyond where the outbreak has occurred. (shrink)

Reflecting on their service as mentors in the fellowship program, the authors describe their experiences and offer thoughts on lessons learned about mentoring, individuals' roles in institutional changes, their own professional growth, and implications for and evaluation of legal and interprofessional education.

Health care workers have not gone along with President Bush's request that they be vaccinated against smallpox in order to prepare the nation's health care system for a terrorist attack using the virus. But there is no professional moral obligation to receive the vaccination—either as a matter of public health or as a matter of national security.

This brief, accessible introduction shows that philosophy is valuable, practical, and significant for every aspect of Christian life and ministry.

Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar explicates and defends a novel neo-Aristotelian account of the structure of material objects. While there have been numerous treatments of properties, laws, causation, and modality in the neo-Aristotelian metaphysics literature, this book is one of the first full-length treatments of wholes and their parts. Another aim of the book is to further develop the newly revived area concerning the question of fundamental mereology, the question of whether wholes are metaphysically prior to their parts (...) or vice versa. Inman develops a fundamental mereology with a grounding-based conception of the structure and unity of substances at its core, what he calls substantial priority, one that distinctively allows for the fundamentality of ordinary, medium-sized composite objects. He offers both empirical and philosophical considerations against the view that the parts of every composite object are metaphysically prior, in particular the view that ascribes ontological pride of place to the smallest microphysical parts of composite objects, which currently dominates debates in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Ultimately, he demonstrates that substantial priority is well-motivated in virtue of its offering a unified solution to a host of metaphysical problems involving material objects. (shrink)

The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomously generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different (...) research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge. (shrink)

An oft-repeated dictum in contemporary epistemology is that the epistemic goal minimally includes the acquisition of true beliefs and the avoidance of false beliefs. There is, however, a robust epistemological tradition in the Christian West that distinguishes between a virtuous and a vicious desire for and pursuit of cognitive contact with reality. The cognitive ideal for humans consists in epistemic temperance, an appetite for and pursuit of truth that is conducted in appropriate measure, and calibrated to appropriate objects and ends. (...) Here I explore this rich Christian tradition with an eye toward its application to contemporary Christian philosophy. (shrink)

On the basis of extensive research on the relationship between physical activity, exercise and health, as well as strong support from policymakers and practitioners, the “Exercise is Medicine” initiative has become something of a linchpin in the agenda for modern healthcare reform and reflects a broader acceptance that the philosophy of health politics must shift from social engineering to performativity. However, in spite of the avowed commitment to encouraging individuals to take on a more reflexive relation to their health, it (...) remains unclear as to whether an initiative such as this is, unambiguously, a good thing. In this paper, a number of cautionary remarks are made with respect to “Exercise is Medicine” in principle as well as in practice. Firstly, it is argued that equating exercise with medicine is to equate it with a definition of and relation to the body to which it is not entirely akin. And secondly, it is argued that any proposed alignment of the fitness and healthcare industries needs further critical examination, a realigning of interests, and a thorough reconsideration of their suitability of fit. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 31-32.

As regimes move from illiberal to liberal, post-transition justice methodology has been employed to engender truth and reconciliation. These normative concepts have evolved into a policy of creating truth and reconciliation commissions that trade civil and criminal amnesty with applicants in ex change for information. This bargained-for exchange can be analyzed as an imperfect information game, where the commission attempts to maximize information while the applicant seeks amnesty for the lowest possible price. Using game-theoretic analysis, the authors model the truth-amnesty (...) game and predict the optimal commission strategy. The analysis leads to the recommendation that future transitional justice commissions employ various specific lexicographic ordering strategies to minimize dead weight loss in the transaction. (shrink)