Presents a unique view of the current state of development of bioethics in Latin America.

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

This book brings the history of Latin American philosophy to an English-speaking audience through the prominent voices of Mauricio Beuchot, Horacio Cerutti-Guldberg, María Luisa Femenías, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Oscar R. Martí, León Olivé, Carlos Pereda, and Eduardo Rabossi. They argue that Spanish is not a philosophically irrelevant language and that there are original positions to be found in the work of Latin American philosophers.

Ruy Perez Tamayo, Rubén Lisker, and Ricardo Tapia, La Construcción de la Bioética, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007, reviewed by Arleen L. F. Salles.

Polyclonal antibodies raised against the human erythrocyte nucleoside transporter were used to investigate the distribution of the nucleoside transporters in the placenta. Immunoblots of brush-border membranes isolated from the human syncytiotrophoblast revealed a cross-reactive species that co-migrated with the erythrocyte nucleoside transporter as a broad band of apparent M 55,000. In contrast, no labelling was detected in basal membranes containing a similar number of equilibrative nucleoside transporters as assessed by nitrobenzylthioinosine -binding. The absence of cross-reactive epitopes in basal membranes and (...) their presence in brush-border membranes was confirmed by confocal immunofluorescence microscopy. The results suggest that at least two isoforms of the NBMPR-sensitive nucleoside transporter are present in the human placenta. The lumenal surfaces of fetal capillaries, small placental vessels and umbilical vein ware also strongly labelled by the antibody, a finding that suggests that the high fetal-placental adenosine uptake previously reported is due to endothelial transporters. (shrink)

In three experiments, we found that after a subtle suggestion, subjects falsely recognized words from their own dreams and thought they had been presented during the waking state. The procedure used in these studies involved three phases. Subjects studied a list of words on Day 1. On Day 2, they received a false suggestion that some words from their previously reported dreams had been presented on the list. On Day 3, they tried to recall only what had occurred on the (...) initial list. Subjects falsely recognized their dream words at a very high rate—sometimes as often as they accurately recognized true words. They reported that they genuinely “remembered” the dream words, as opposed to simply “knowing” that they had been previously presented. These findings, which suggest that dreams can sometimes be mistaken for reality, have significant implications for the practice of psychotherapy. (shrink)

En 1936, F. Chapouthier découvrait sous le sol de la pièce III 2 du palais de Malia deux épées de bronze ; le pommeau d'os de l'une était décoré d'une rondelle d'or portant un acrobate au repoussé. Ces trouvailles étaient rapportées par lui au premier palais, datation contestée depuis par plusieurs savants. Une fouille complémentaire en 1946 amenait la découverte sous le dallage de la pièce voisine III 1 d'un groupe de petits vases de Chamaizi. En 1981 un nouveau nettoyage (...) du niveau antérieur a été réalisé après dépose du dallage de III 1. Une installation caractéristique avec plates-formes stuquées, rigoles et vases collecteurs, qui n'était connue jusqu'ici que par des photographies, a été remise au jour, soigneusement relevée et étudiée. La chronologie proposée par Chapouthier a été confirmée : la salle stuquée et donc l'épée à l'acrobate trouvée sur son sol sont à dater de l'époque protopalatiale. (shrink)

Possible distributive justice frameworks for providing health care by general practitioners are discussed. The ethical considerations before and after the recent changes to the British National Health Service are contrasted, with particular emphasis on a possible ethical divide that has been produced between fund-holding and non-fund-holding general practitioners. It is argued that general practitioners in non-fund-holding practices can continue as ethical advocates for their patients and distribute health care within an egalitarian framework. However, those in fund-holding practices may now be (...) seen as interest advocates and may have to practise utilitarian distributive justice. Patient groups may be needed to ensure that these general practitioners are seen to act justly in the distribution of the health care resources for which they are now responsible. (shrink)

What has not yet been imagined in thought is: how to remain together while still being two, how to be and become subjectively two, how to discover a way of coexisting as two beings … a way of living and thinking and loving as two beings without one being reduced to the other? … [t]hanks to the respect that I feel for the other as other, to articulate both attraction and restraint with respect to him. I go out from and (...) return to myself in order to respect his alterity, and this respect for the other becomes respect for myself, my life and my growth. So there is no longer fusion or submission, but the existence of a two which is irreducible to one or to the simple opposition between one (male) and the other (female), a reduction which makes them simply two poles of the one. Luce Irigaray , Democracy Begins Between Two 112-13. (shrink)

Joachim Schulte’s introduction provides a distinctive and masterful account of the full range of Wittgenstein’s thought. It is concise but not compressed, substantive but not overloaded with developmental or technical detail, informed by the latest scholarship but not pedantic. Beginners will find it accessible and seasoned students of Wittgenstein will appreciate it for the illuminating overview it provides.

This article is an attempt to evaluate the Oregon plan from the perspective of a Scandinavian national health care system. The Nordic welfare states are marked by a strong emphasis on equality. As an example of an egalitarian system we present the Norwegian health care model in part one. In part two, the arguments in favor of a one tier system in Norway are presented and compared to Oregon's two tier system. Although we argue, in part three, that a comparison (...) of the degree of explicitness in the prioritization process shows that Norway has much to learn from Oregon, we do believe that the Norwegian system has some attractive elements that may function as an important corrective. In part four we present the Norwegian Guidelines for priority-setting and discuss the weight assigned to the severity of disease criterion. It is argued that the exclusion of information about the severity of disease partly explains the counterintuitive ranking of treatment-condition pairs in Oregon's initial method based on the principle of health maximization. A normative analysis of the conflicting norms of efficiency and equality of results is called for. The final part of the paper is devoted to the problem of rigidity. Henry J. Aaron has argued that the Oregon system is insensitive to inter-individual variations within each diagnosis-treatment pair. This objection is a severe one, since the system might end up treating patients unfairly on the individual level. To overcome this problem, we suggest a selection rule that should be more capable of dealing with the problem of rigidity. (shrink)