The diffusion of technology in the US has taken place in an environment of both regulation and free enterprise. Each has been subject to manipulation by doctors and medical administrators that has fostered unprecedented ethical dilemmas and legal challenges. Understanding these developments and historical precedents may allow a more rational diffusion policy for medical technology in the future.

The primary aim of this article is to develop and defend a conceptual analysis of safety. The article begins by considering two previous analyses of safety in terms of risk acceptability. It is argued that these analyses fail because the notion of risk acceptability is more subjective than safety, as risk acceptability takes into account potential benefits in a way that safety does not. A distinction is then made between two different kinds of safety—safety qua cause and safety qua recipient—and (...) both are defined in terms of the probability of a loss of value, though the relationship between safety and the probability of loss varies in each case. It is then shown that although this analysis is less subjective than the previously considered analyses, subjectivity can still enter into judgments of safety via the notions of probability and value. In the final section of this article, it is argued that the difference between safety and risk acceptability is important because it corresponds in significant ways to the difference between consequentialist and deontological moral viewpoints. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that statutes should be interpreted in accordance with the intentions of the legislatures that produce them. As a theory of legislative interpretation, intentionalism has been very influential, but it has also been subject to much critical attention. It is claimed that legislatures will seldom have any relevant intentions, and that even if they did, we could not come to know them. I propose a modification of intentionalism that significantly mitigates the severity of these problems. I begin (...) by noting that legislation is seldom (if ever) written by an entire legislature. Instead, it is commonly written by individuals or subgroups acting as proxies on behalf of the legislature. I then argue that the reasons why legislation should be interpreted in accordance with the intentions of legislatures are equally applicable to the intentions of proxies. This is significant because proxies are much more likely to have ascertainable intentions. (shrink)

Community supported agriculture programs are transforming the way people relate to food and agriculture. Many researchers have considered the transformative potential of CSAs on economic, social, and environmental relations. They illustrate how participants are embedded in broader political economic transformations. The same focus, however, has not been given to CSAs’ transformative impact on individual shareholders—especially in terms of their relationship to food and health. We draw together literatures from behavioral economics, econometrics, and political ecology to evaluate the potential impacts of (...) CSA participation on food lifestyle behaviors. Using primary data drawn from a survey of four groups with distinct food acquisition environments, we compare respondents’ self-assessed food-related behaviors along three different categories: produce versus processed food consumption, food away from home consumption, and food acquisition and interest in nutrition. By documenting between-group differences, we confirm that shareholders display significant absolute differences to other groups along numerous indicators related to the above-stated categories and in general assessments of health. These differences correspond directionally to behaviors public health officials identify as correlated to beneficial health outcomes. We conclude by theorizing how the food environments delineated by a CSA exchange relationship provide unique reflexive opportunities for participants to develop diverse food-related skills and behaviors. (shrink)

In March of 2021, a woman named Ashley Caswell was arrested in Etowah County, Alabama after testing positive for methamphetamine (Levin 2023). Ms. Caswell was two months pregnant and was arrested f...

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Dear Editor,I was pleased to see a recent piece by Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz entitled “Is It Ethical to Mandate SARS-CoV-2 Vaccinations among Incarcerated Persons?” I agree with the author that incarcera...

This copiously illustrated volume is the first systematic general work to do justice to the fruits of recent scholarship in the history of natural history. Public interest in this lively field has been stimulated by environmental concerns and through links with the histories of art, collecting and gardening. The centrality of the development of natural history for other branches of history - medical, colonial, gender, economic, ecological - is increasingly recognized. Twenty-four specially commissioned essays cover the period from the sixteenth (...) century, when the first institutions of natural history were created, to its late nineteenth-century transformation by practitioners of the new biological sciences. An introduction discusses novel approaches that have made this a major focus for research in cultural history. The essays, which include suggestions for further reading, offer a coherent and accessible overview of a fascinating subject. An epilogue highlights the relevance of this wide-ranging survey for current debates on museum practice, the display of ecological diversity and concerns about the environment. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

At long last a comprehensive tool in English for a better understanding of the most basic terms in Aristotle's philosophy. A careful comparison of the original Greek, medieval and renaissance Latin translations and a reappraisal of English usage make the work a definitive source for the precise grasp of what has been the historical Aristotle as far as the documents permit one to judge. -- provided by the publisher.

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)