In Stovall v. Confimed.com, the Kansas Supreme Court held that an out-of-state medical doctor who sold a prescription drug to a Kansas minor over the Internet did not commit an unconscionable act under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. The Shawnee Country District Court had enjoined the doctor from prescribing or dispensing prescription medicine within the state of Kansas, and the doctor appealed the injunction to the Kansas Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed the district court's decision to grant injunctive relief, (...) but found no unconscionable conduct under the KCPA.The appellee, Washington physician Dr. Howard J. Levine, sold the sexual enhancement drug Viagra over the Internet through his online pharmacy. Neither the physician nor the online pharmacy was licensed to practice in Kansas. The purchasers were two Kansas residents, one of whom was a minor. Both purchased the drugs in a sting operation conducted by the Kansas Attorney General and received the drugs after completing an online application. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

In “The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice,” Ray and Cooper (2024) lay out compelling arguments to increase attention to environmental health within bioethics. Advocacy is crucial, they argue, co...

Porsdam Mann and colleagues provide an overview of opportunities and risks associated with the use of personalized large language models (LLMs) for text production in bio)ethics (Porsdam Mann et al...

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 128-141, January 2021.

Selective reproductive technologies, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, enable enhanced clinical success rates, create reproductive choices, and produce new commercial opportunities. Drawing upon empirical material acquired during a ten-month period in 2016, this study uses a total of twenty-two in-depth interviews with doctors, CEOs, clinical directors, marketing directors, patient counselors, and embryologists to discuss how traveling for the SRT of gender selection for nonmedical reasons is mediated by fertility clinics and clinicians in Dubai. Multimodal analysis was used to analyze the (...) clinical websites’ key rhetorical and visual features. Meanwhile, interviews and observational studies highlighted the context within which gender selection takes place. Findings revealed that gender selection is promoted as a form of “enhancement” and “family balance,” which, when combined with the ways that Dubai is assembled as a sensory tourist destination, routinize SRTs and lead to an understanding of gender selection as not merely an individualized reproductive journey but an optimization of the family unit. (shrink)

Reproduction has entered a new ice age: the ability to cryopreserve reproductive cells, tissue and embryos are fundamentally changing our understanding of what it means to be a reproductive citizen. This book explores the ways in which opinions of desirable reproductive futures are feared or are being welcomed by advances in freezing technologies, with the authors situating their discussions of cryo-fertility primarily within the Scandinavian region, asking: * How does cryopreservation help mobilize particular understandings of reproductive time, reproductive rights and (...) reproductive autonomy? * What values are embedded within Scandinavian laws that seek to regulate cryotechnologies? * How do men and women who freeze their gamets imagine the preservation of their material? -/- These questions demand a collaborative approach. The authors empirically cut across the areas of bioethics/law, practices/experiences and culture/commerce in order to pin down often comples and far-reaching answers. (shrink)

This article employs the concept of affective assemblage to discuss how fertility travelers make sense of their decision to travel to Spain for oöcyte donation. Motherhood is brought into being through racialized and gendered discourses on ova exchange; idealized and feminized Spanish donor bodies. In their accounts, fertility travelers employ a narrative in which oöcytes become necessary spare parts, yet also, exotic substances with temperament and racialized nationality as well as collective bodies – shaped by the recipient woman’s body, intent, (...) and desire. In this manner, kinship is created through shared blood and space, desire and intent while differences between recipients and donors are minimized. The directionality of desire, hope, and imagination has the effect of naturalizing transnational egg donation and transforming it into a shared western European femininity of sorts. (shrink)

Background Ethical principles behind prioritization in healthcare are continuously relevant. However, applying ethical principles during times of increased need, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, is challenging. Also, little is known about nursing home nurses’ prioritizations in their work to achieve well-being and health for nursing home residents. Aim The aim of this study was to explore nursing home nurses’ priority-setting for older nursing home residents in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design, participants, and research context We conducted a (...) qualitative interview study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews (retrospective self-reports) between February and May 2021 with 21 nursing home nurses. To help respondents to recall their memories, we used the critical incident technique (CIT). We analyzed data within the theoretical framework and the methodological orientation of content analysis. Ethical considerations Written and verbal consent was obtained before the interviews, and information was given to participants informing them that participation was entirely voluntary. The Swedish Ethical Review Agency gave an advisory opinion stating that there were no ethical objections to the research project (Dnr. 2020-05649). Findings We identified an overarching theme—nursing home nurses struggling on multiple fronts, “just do it”—and seven categories: striving for survival and caring about a dignified death; responding sensitively to relatives’ expectations; ranking the urgency of needed care; responding to input from different actors; combating the spread of infection in unconventional ways; taking the lead and doing what is required; and following the ideals of person-centered nursing. Conclusions Nurses’ priority-setting for older nursing homes residents during the COVID-19 pandemic meant strain and struggle. In some cases, nurses had taken responsibility for priorities falling outside their statutory powers. Different demands and interests affected nurses’ priorities. Nursing home nurses need organizational and managerial support to prioritize. (shrink)

Recently, Widerker has attacked Fischer’s contention that one could use Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities to show that even from a libertarian viewpoint an agent might be morally responsible for a decision that he could not have avoided. Fischer has responded by: (a) arguing that Widerker’s criticism presupposes the falsity of Molinism and (b) presenting a version of libertarianism which avoids Widerker’s criticism. Here we argue that: (i) Fischer’s first response is unconvincing and undermines Molinism itself; (ii) (...) the version of libertarianism he presents is fallacious, and (iii) even on the version of libertarianism he proposes, avoid ability remains a necessary condition for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Background:Background: In general, qualitative research design often involves merging together various data collection strategies, and researcher’s may need to be prepared to spend longer periods i...

En cent ans, le mouvement évangélique a rallié à sa cause plus d’un quart des chrétiens dans le monde entier. Pour comprendre les mécanismes d’une trans-nationalisation religieuse de telle envergure, l’article suit la trame du pentecôtisme à travers quelques moments et lieux considérés comme des tournants décisifs dans son évolution. L’objectif est d’éclairer l’émergence de son esprit de réveil et, en parallèle, de cette fameuse «compétence caméléon» qui conduit le mouvement évangélique, dans ses variantes les plus récentes, à une conception (...) plus utilitariste de la foi. (shrink)

We show that a complete first-order theory T is distal provided it has a model M such that the theory of the Shelah expansion of M is distal.

During the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the globe have provided unparalleled support to private sector firms. As a result, new oversight mechanisms are urgently needed, to enable society to assess and, if necessary, redress, moves by firms which have taken government aid. Many jurisdictions have seen the introduction of ‘piecemeal’ conditionality on different pots of aid. This paper argues that a better response would be to adopt a more unified approach. In particular, the paper explores the social licence framework as (...) a potential way to ‘build back better’. It is argued that the nature of the implicit social contract between society and the private sector provides the normative force underpinning demands for a social purpose for business, and that this purpose in turn can be used to specify the conditions firms must meet to legitimise their operations. The paper then considers three core elements involved in any introduction of a social licence framework, and surveys the potential benefits and challenges that might emerge in moving towards a social licence framework. (shrink)

Future population growth is uncertain and matters for climate policy: higher growth entails more emissions and means more people will be vulnerable to climate-related impacts. We show that how future population is valued importantly determines mitigation decisions. Using the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, we explore two approaches to valuing population: a discounted version of total utilitarianism (TU), which considers total wellbeing and is standard in social cost of carbon dioxide (SCC) models, and of average utilitarianism (AU), which ignores population size (...) and sums only each time period’s discounted average wellbeing. Under both approaches, as population increases the SCC increases, but optimal peak temperature decreases. The effect is larger under TU, because it responds to the fact that a larger population means climate change hurts more people: for example, in 2025, assuming the United Nations (UN)-high rather than UN-low population scenario entails an increase in the SCC of 85% under TU vs. 5% under AU. The difference in the SCC between the two population scenarios under TU is comparable to commonly debated decisions regarding time discounting. Additionally, we estimate the avoided mitigation costs implied by plausible reductions in population growth, finding that large near-term savings ($billions annually) occur under TU; savings under AU emerge in the more distant future. These savings are larger than spending shortfalls for human development policies that may lower fertility. Finally, we show that whether lowering population growth entails overall improvements in wellbeing—rather than merely cost savings—again depends on the ethical approach to valuing population. (shrink)

In 2020, the BSHS hosted two major online events, the first of their kind in our collective experience. The first, a Twitter conference, was planned and accomplished before COVID-19 had quite been established as a serious global issue. The conference was planned, rather, as an innovation in travel-free conferencing, something that has been on the BSHS agenda since the IPCC report of 2018, calling for net-zero-carbon activity in all areas by 2050. As we discussed the Twitter conference, and watched the (...) amazing energy, intellect and resourcefulness of its planners and hosts, we quickly saw that online delivery offered other advantages too – chiefly, wider participation. The pandemic offered the society a chance to take these lessons very boldly into the most important event of our scholarly calendar, which usually takes the form of an in-person annual conference, but this time was executed as an online festival. (shrink)

How much should the present generations sacrifice to reduce emissions today, in order to reduce the future harms of climate change? Within climate economics, debate on this question has been focused on so-called “ethical parameters” of social time preference and inequality aversion. We show that optimal climate policy similarly importantly depends on the future of the developing world. In particular, although global poverty is falling and the economic lives of the poor are improving worldwide, leading models of climate economics may (...) be too optimistic about two central predictions: future population growth in poor countries, and future convergence in total factor productivity (TFP). We report results of small modifications to a standard model: under plausible scenarios for high future population growth (especially in sub-Saharan Africa) and for low future TFP convergence, we find that optimal near-term carbon taxes could be substantially larger. (shrink)

The health co-benefits of CO2 mitigation can provide a strong incentive for climate policy through reductions in air pollutant emissions that occur when targeting shared sources. However, reducing air pollutant emissions may also have an important co-harm, as the aerosols they form produce net cooling overall. Nevertheless, aerosol impacts have not been fully incorporated into cost-benefit modeling that estimates how much the world should optimally mitigate. Here we find that when both co-benefits and co-harms are taken fully into account, optimal (...) climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally, overturning previous findings from cost-benefit models that omit these effects. The global health benefits from climate policy could reach trillions of dollars annually, but will importantly depend on the air quality policies that nations adopt independently of climate change. Depending on how society values better health, economically optimal levels of mitigation may be consistent with a target of 2 °C or lower. (shrink)

With their landmark architectures, exhibitions and museums of science and technology partake in the spatial inscription of science in twentieth century landscapes. Unlike other beacons of progress, exhibitions and museums of science and technology double up, inside, as material arrangements of objects, visuals and texts aiming to confer meaning onto the modern world. They both embody and seek to order the spectacle of modernity while often being deployed with the aim of promoting particular visions of social and material progress. An (...) approach sensitive to the material, spatial, and experiential dimensions of displaying science and technology suggests that exhibitions and museums were in the twentieth century crucial sites for reflecting upon and promoting particular futures. (shrink)

For us, narrative care is grounded in pragmatist philosophy and focused on experience. Narrative care is not merely about acknowledging or listening to people's experiences, but draws attention to practical consequences. We conceptualize care itself as an intrinsically narrative endeavour. In this article, we build on Lugones' understanding of playfulness, particularly to her call to remain attentive to a sense of uncertainty, and an openness to surprise. Playfulness cultivates a generative sense of curiosity that relies on a close attentiveness not (...) only to the other, but to who we each are within relational spaces. Generative curiosity is only possible if we remain playful as we engage and think with experiences and if we remain responsive to the other. Through playfulness, we resist dominant narratives and hold open relational spaces that create opportunities of retelling and reliving our experiences. Drawing on our work alongside older adults, as well as people who work in long‐term care, we show the possibilities of playfulness in the co‐composition of stories across time. By intentionally integrating playfulness, narrative care can be seen as an intervention, as well as a human activity, across diverse social contexts, places and times. (shrink)

We reflect, using a vignette, on conceptual tensions and the value judgements that lie behind difficult decisions about whether or not the older person with dementia should return home or move into long-term care following hospital admission. The paper seeks, first, to expose some of the difficulties arising from the assessment of residence capacity, particularly around the nature of evaluative judgements and conceptual tensions inherent in the legal approach to capacity. Secondly, we consider the assessment of best interests around place (...) of residence, which demonstrates significant conceptual tensions. In addition, ‘best interests’ raise issues around the perception of risk and the perceptions of the family and crucially involve the notions of autonomy and trust. Finally, we not only gesture at some practical considerations based on insights from values-based medicine, but also make the suggestion that we require tighter functional assessments of residence capacity coupled with broader judgements about best interests. (shrink)

BackgroundConcerns about decision making related to resuscitation have led to two important challenges in the courts resulting in new legal precedents for decision-making practice. Systematic research investigating the experiences of doctors involved in decisions about resuscitation in light of the recent changes in law remains lacking.AimTo analyse the practice of resuscitation decision making on hospital wards from the perspectives of doctors.DesignThe data presented in this paper were collected as part of a wider research study of end-of-life care in an acute (...) hospital setting. Data collection comprised ethnographic non-participant observation on two acute hospital wards and individual interviews with patients, relatives and healthcare professionals caring for patients thought to be approaching the end of life. Data were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach.ResultsDiscussions and decision making about resuscitation present many challenges for those involved on acute medical wards. The data highlight the potential for multiple interpretations of legal precedents, creating misunderstandings that may impact patient care in less positive ways.ConclusionsThis paper provides unique insights into how doctors respond to the changing medico-legal culture and the subsequent effects on patient care. It demonstrates how the juridification of medical practice can occur. It highlights the potential benefit of a structure to support clinicians, patients and relatives in discussing and navigating decisions around care at the end of life in line with the patient’s wishes and preferences. Recommendations for future research are made and legal ramifications are discussed. (shrink)

Individual differences in children's talk about inner states are striking, but how should they be interpreted? This study used transcripts of preschoolers’ conversations with siblings and best friends to address this question in two ways. Our first aim was to elucidate the exact nature of individual differences by contrasting categories (emotion/desire vs. cognitive state) and referents (own vs. other/shared) of inner state talk. Our second aim was to compare performance vs. competence views of inner state talk by exploring (i) the (...) stability of individual differences in inner state talk across different relationships and (ii) the cognitive correlates of inner state talk. A sample of 44 children (mean age = 4 years 3 months) was observed for 20 minutes at home playing with a sib and for 20 minutes at school playing with a best friend. Videos were transcribed and coded for the frequency and form of inner state talk (e.g., talk about different categories of inner state, or about own vs. others’ inner states). During the school visits, children completed a set of tasks tapping theory-of-mind skills and verbal ability. Individual differences in inner state talk (especially reference to others’ inner states) were stable across relationships. There was no association between individual differences in talk about cognitive vs. emotion/desire states, although both categories of inner state talk were significantly associated with individual differences in children's theory-of-mind skills. (shrink)

Parents, after learning of a life-limiting fetal condition (LLFC), experience emotional distress and must consider options that impact the remainder of the pregnancy, their future lives, and family members. For those who continue, little is known about their longterm presence or absence of regret about their choice, the reasons for this feeling, or its impact on their life. The aim of this research was to examine the concept of decision regret in parents who opted to continue a pregnancy affected by (...) an LLFC. The contextual factors, conditions, and consequences surrounding the presence or absence of regret were analyzed.Data were retrieved from a cross-sectional study using the Quality of Perinatal Palliative Care and Parental Satisfaction Instrument. Participants were parents (N = 405) who experienced a life-limiting prenatal diagnosis and opted to continue their pregnancy. Secondary data analysis examined qualitative responses (121/402) to an item addressing regret. Dimensional analysis was “I Would Do It All Over Again”: Cherishing Time and the Absence of Regret in Continuing a Pregnancy after a Life-Limiting Diagnosis Charlotte Wool, Rana Limbo, and Erin M. Denney-Koelsch used to examine data, identifying context, conditions, and consequences associated with the presence or absence of regret.Absence of regret was articulated in 97.5 percent of participants. Parents valued the baby as a part of their family and had opportunities to love, hold, meet, and cherish their child. Participants treasured the time together before and after the birth. Although emotionally difficult, parents articulated an empowering, transformative experience that lingers over time. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, we have improved our understanding of the health impacts of climate change.1 Although many public health researchers have contributed to this knowledge, relatively few are aware of how their work may relate to the social cost of carbon. The social cost of carbon is a core economic concept in climate policy and one that can—and should—benefit directly from research produced by the public health community. The concept’s importance was recently highlighted by this past year’s Nobel (...) Prize in Economic Sciences, which was awarded to William Nordhaus in part for his pioneering work developing models to estimate the social cost of carbon. Below we describe this concept, explain how it is calculated, and provide some brief guidance on how health research can improve its estimation. (shrink)

In this book, Anthony R. D'Augelli and Charlotte J. Patterson bring together top experts to offer a comprehensive overview of what we have discovered--and what we still need to learn--about lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities.