As members of the fetal surgery advisory board at a large tertiary care center, we read with great interest Hendriks’ et al. target article proposing a new ethical framework for fetal therap...

In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed changes to the regulations that govern human subjects protection in federally funded research. The proposed changes involve modifying inclusion standards for minimal-risk research and removing the necessity of review from certain categories of noninvasive research. All studies would instead be required to comply with privacy protections as initiated by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act . We argue that relying on HIPAA to protect participants from participation-related risks in noninvasive (...) research is insufficient to protect the autonomy and psychological health of potential research participants. Instead, we suggest a streamlined review format for these categories of research. (shrink)

Efforts to ban Autonomous Weapon Systems were both unsuccessful and controversial. Simultaneously the need to address the detrimental aspects of AWS development and proliferation continues to grow in scope and urgency. The article presents several regulatory solutions capable of addressing the issue while simultaneously respecting the requirements of military necessity and so attracting a broad consensus. Two much stricter solutions – regional AWS bans and adoption of a no first use policy – are also presented as fallback strategies in case (...) achieving AWS’ compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict proved elusive. Together, the solutions presented form an outline of a flexible regulatory strategy able to adjust to different technological outcomes and providing a sensible compromise to solve the current deadlock on the AWS issue. (shrink)

We were interested to read the current target article, given our admiration for the senior author’s comprehensive coverage of these same topics a decade ago (Donley, Hul...

Reputation is often seen as central to the coordination of transactions in sharing economy platforms. Participants perform a double role regarding reputation management: while engaging in exchanges with other peers, they build their individual ‘reputation capital’ and simultaneously execute community oversight. In Couchsurfing (CS), a network often cited as paradigmatic of the sharing economy, there is, however, a clear bias for positive references. In the digital economy literature, participants’ friendly behaviour is understood as motivated by self-interest and an incentive to (...) maintain a positive reputation. Social research on reputation in CS attributes the bias to fear of retaliation, but also hints at norms of reciprocity leading travellers to require positive feedback for hospitality. This article analyses the lived experience of reputation management in CS and argues that participants seek to reconcile direct and general reciprocity. It proposes breaking these practices down into boundary-work and creative avoidance and argues these result in insufficient protection of inexperienced participants against problematic members. (shrink)

If a firm provides incentives by promoting those who have performed well in a job, it may transfer them to a job to which they are not well suited and agents are promoted to their levels of incompetence. Tournaments are an alternative to reputation as a means of ensuring that firms reward good performance when performance is unverifiable.

This book brings together an international collection of experts in reproductive ethics, law, disability studies, and medicine to explore the challenging future of reproduction and children. From the medical to the social and from the financial to the legal, the authors explore the expanding impact of reproductive genetics on our society. New advances in genetic technologies are revolutionizing the practice of reproductive medicine. We have expanded our ability to detect genetic changes in embryos and fetuses in ways that potentially allow (...) to identify, treat, or prevent a growing range of diseases. The development of gene-editing technologies raises questions about the possibility of removing disease-causing variants from embryos before pregnancy implantation. The growing sophistication of prenatal genomic sequencing offers us glimpses into the whole genome of the developing fetus. And, the increasingly sophisticated science of 'gene matching' allows us greater and greater foreknowledge of how the genomes of two individuals will combine in a future child. This is an indispensable book on the newest developments in bioethics caused by the sciences. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. (shrink)

We are grateful to Friesen and colleagues for drawing attention to the tension between the protection of populations that may experience vulnerability with their inclusion in research (Friesen et a...

The ethical Principle of Proportionality requires combatants not to cause collateral harm excessive in comparison to the anticipated military advantage of an attack. This principle is considered a major (and perhaps insurmountable) obstacle to ethical use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). This article reviews three possible solutions to the problem of achieving Proportionality compliance in AWS. In doing so, I describe and discuss the three components Proportionality judgments, namely collateral damage estimation, assessment of anticipated military advantage, and judgment of “excessiveness”. (...) Some possible approaches to Proportionality compliance are then presented, such as restricting AWS operations to environments lacking civilian presence, using AWS in targeted strikes in which proportionality judgments are pre-made by human commanders, and a ‘price tag’ approach of pre-assigning acceptable collateral damage values to military hardware in conventional attritional warfare. The article argues that application of these three compliance methods would result in AWS’ achieving acceptable Proportionality compliance levels in many combat environments and scenarios, allowing AWS to perform most key tasks in conventional warfare. (shrink)

In their target article, Conley et al. (2023) appropriately highlight the ongoing conceptual and practical opacity of public engagement (PE) in the translation of human gene editing (HGE) (Conley e...

Objective The study evaluated patient informed consent for the Quad screen and examined differences in IC between test acceptors and test refusers. A multidimensional model of IC was used. Methods Women seeking prenatal care at nine obstetrics clinics in a large Midwestern city completed surveys between February and December 2006. Surveys contained measures for three dimensions of IC: intention, understanding and controlling influence. Results 56.2% of women did not meet criteria for all three of our dimensions of IC and therefore (...) failed to give it. The failure rate was higher among women who choose to screen than women who choose not screen. Women who met all criteria for IC were over three times less likley to choose to screen ) than women who did not meet criteria for IC. Conclusion The decision to screen for fetal anomalies is less of a deliberated action than the decision not to screen. Women who lack a fundamental understanding of the purpose and nature of the screen may be operating on the belief that the screen is part of standard care and presents no need to deliberate. (shrink)

The Laws of Armed Conflict require that war crimes be attributed to individuals who can be held responsible and be punished. Yet assigning responsibility for the actions of Lethal Autonomous Weapon...

In his recent JME article Daniel Restrepo argues that both legal and ethical rules should protect the so-called Naked Soldiers, combatants engaged in activity unrelated to military operations and unaware of the imminent danger threatening them. I criticize this position from several angles. I deny the existence of any link between vulnerability and innocence, and claim ignorance of deadly threats does not give rise to a morally distinguished type of vulnerability. I argue that actions not contributing to the war effort (...) are nevertheless an inherent part of fighting a war, and that combatants do not signal intention to abandon their commitment to the war effort by undertaking these. I show that by granting hors de combat status to Naked Soldiers, we would unjustly disadvantage their opponents and engender significant and manifold practical difficulties that the proponents of the view fail to solve or even anticipate. Finally, I demonstrate that Restrepo’s general project of “making killing in war difficult to legitimately justify” regardless of why, how and by whom the killing is done is incompatible with just war theory’s basic assumptions. That project is in fact pacifist in nature and as such redundant in light of pacifism’s broader and stronger implications. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 283-298, Spring 2022.

Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates (...) the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior. (shrink)

BackgroundLow-stakes crimes related to alcohol and/or drugs are common around the world, but research is lacking on police–suspect interactions of such crimes. A large proportion of these suspects are intoxicated during interrogations, and many may have substance use disorder, making them potentially vulnerable to interrogative pressure.MethodsTo address this lack of knowledge, the taxonomy of interrogation methods framework and a common classification of question types were applied in the coding of written police interrogations. Two archival studies, one pilot and one main (...) study analyzed police interrogations with suspects of alcohol- and drug-related crimes in Sweden.ResultsFor both Study 1 and 2, suspects showed signs of alcohol and/or drug intoxication, hangover or withdrawal in more than 50% of all interrogations. In Study 2, additional coding indicated that suspects displayed signs of substance use disorder in 57% of the interrogations. The main results from both studies revealed a large number of direct questions asked by the police across all interrogations, and relatively little use of the strategic interrogation techniques from the taxonomy of interrogation methods framework. In fact, when it came to interrogation techniques, law enforcement used more confrontational techniques in their interactions with intoxicated suspects compared to sober suspects. Furthermore, suspects displaying signs of substance use disorder were significantly more cooperative and prone to confess than suspects without indicators of substance use disorder.ConclusionAs the first novel study on low-stakes crime interrogations related to alcohol and/or drugs, the present study provides useful information about current Swedish interrogation practices and areas for improvement. The study results indicate that suspects displaying signs of intoxication or substance use disorder may be more vulnerable during police interrogations. This may in turn have the potential to inform the development of new interrogation policies. Due to the novelty of this research, more studies are needed, both on a national and international level, to examine interrogations in low-stakes crimes further. (shrink)

While the 2022 Supreme Court of the United States decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization may bring the contingent rights of pregnant people to refuse interventions into sharper foc...

Arguments from human dignity feature prominently in the Lethal Autonomous Weapons moral feasibility debate, even though their exists considerable controversy over their role and soundness and the notion of dignity remains under-defined. Drawing on the work of Dieter Birnbacher, I fix the sub-discourse as referring to the essential value of human persons in general, and to postulated moral rights of combatants not covered within the existing paradigm of the International Humanitarian Law in particular. I then review and critique dignity-based arguments (...) against LAWS: argument from faulty targeting process, argument from objectification, argument from underappreciation of the value of human life and the argument from the absence of mercy. I conclude that the argument from the absence of mercy is the only dignity-based argument that is both valid and irreducible to another class of arguments within the debate, and that it offers insufficient justification for a global ban on LAWS. (shrink)

In this article I consider a certain characteristic of our times as a “secular age,” namely, a series of complications in our understanding of transgression. Transgression implies the presence of some rules and laws which can be violated. As long as the rules and laws are perceived as right, as a way of protecting the values which would otherwise perish, transgression appears to be a wrong thing to do, a misdeed, a criminal act. Needless to say, the very conceptual structure (...) makes sense only provided that the distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, lawful and lawless are not arbitrary, which, in turn, depends on the presence of the concept of truth. In the secular age, though, the concept of truth becomes not only difficult to handle, since it is incompatible with the modern frame of mind, but also assumes some derogatory connotations, up to the point when to insist on the distinction between (truly) right and (truly) wrong is in itself a wrong thing to do. That is the state of contemporary societies which G. K. Chesterton examines in his work Heretics. The effect of Chesterton’s reflections is a new map of right/wrong, good/evil, lawless/lawful permutations. After Chesterton, I comment on the character of a new heretic, one for whom transgression, understood as the attack on buried-for-long orthodoxy, is too easy a thing to do. To illustrate the mentioned changes of perspective, I refer to an exemplary criminal figure of the West, that is, the biblical serpent, and its criticism. (shrink)