Since the early 1980’s, with the clinical advent of in vitro fertilization resulting in so-called “test tube babies,” a wide array of ethical considerations and concerns regarding artificial womb technology (AWT) have been described. Recent breakthroughs in the development of extracorporeal neonatal life support by means of AWT have reinitiated ethical interest about this topic with a sense of urgency. Most of the recent ethical literature on the topic, however, pertains not to the more imminent scenario of a physiologically improved (...) method of neonatal care through AWT, but instead to the remote scenario of “complete ectogenesis” that imagines human gestation occurring entirely outside of the womb. This scoping review of the ethical literature on AWT spans from more abstract concerns about complete ectogenesis to more immediate concerns about the soon-to-be-expected clinical life support of what we term the fetal neonate or fetonate. Within an organizing framework of different stages of human gestational development, from conception to the viable premature infant, we discuss both already identified and newly emerging ethical considerations and concerns regarding AWT and the care of the fetonate. (shrink)

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

Gender, age, and culturally specific beliefs are often considered relevant to observed variation in social interactions. At present, however, the scientific literature is mixed with respect to the significance of these factors in guiding moral judgments. In this study, we explore the role of each of these factors in moral judgment by presenting the results of a web-based study of Eastern (i.e., Russia) and Western (i.e., USA, UK, Canada) subjects, male and female, and young and old. Participants ( n = (...) 659) responded to hypothetical moral scenarios describing situations where sacrificing one life resulted in saving five others. Though men and women from both types of cultures judged (1) harms caused by action as less permissible than harms caused by omission, (2) means-based harms as less permissible than side-effects, and (3) harms caused by contact as less permissible than by non-contact, men in both cultures delivered more utilitarian judgments (save the five, sacrifice one) than women. Moreover, men from Western cultures were more utilitarian than Russian men, with no differences observed for women. In both cultures, older participants delivered less utilitarian judgments than younger participants. These results suggest that certain core principles may mediate moral judgments across different societies, implying some degree of universality, while also allowing a limited range of variation due to sociocultural factors. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

Shortages of new therapeutics to treat coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have forced clinicians, public health officials, and health systems to grapple with difficult questions about how to fairly allocate potentially life-saving treatments when there are not enough for all patients in need (1). Shortages have occurred with remdesivir, tocilizumab, monoclonal antibodies, and the oral antiviral Paxlovid (2) -/- Ensuring equitable allocation is especially important in light of the disproportionate burden experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by disadvantaged groups, including Black, Hispanic/Latino and (...) Indigenous communities, individuals with certain disabilities, and low-income persons. However, many health systems have resorted to first-come, first-served approaches to allocation, which tend to disadvantage individuals with barriers in access to care (3). There is mounting evidence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to medications for COVID-19 (4, 5). -/- One potential method to promote equitable allocation is to use a weighted lottery, which is an allocation strategy that gives all eligible patients a chance to receive the scarce treatment while also allowing the assignment of higher or lower chances according to other ethical considerations (6). We sought to assess the feasibility of implementing a weighted lottery to allocate scarce COVID-19 medications in a large U.S. health system and to determine whether the weighted lottery promotes equitable allocation. (shrink)

The fifth poem in Horace's first book of Epistles takes the form of an invitation to Torquatus to attend a dinner which the poet is preparing for that evening, the eveof the Emperor's birthday. The fare will be simple but Horace will see to it that the furnishings, napkins, vessels and plates will be clean and bright and that the company and the seating-plan will be to Torquatus’ taste. Horace will get Butra and Septicius to be there, and Sabinus, too, (...) as long as he is not kept away by a prior dinner engagement or by a girl he'd rather spend the evening with. With Torquatus and Horace, that makes four or five diners, so that there is room for others before the triclinium is full, although there shouldn't be too many; or, as Horace puts it :locus est et pluribus umbris;sed nimis arta premunt olidae conuiuia caprae. (shrink)

In their article “Moral Hazards in Pediatrics” (2016), Brunnquell and Michaelson remind us that the child's perspective is of utmost importance when making health care decisions and express concern...

D. R. Bell; XI—Imperatives and the Will, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 66, Issue 1, 1 June 1966, Pages 129–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristo.

In this essay I endeavor to provide such an account, and describe at a pretheoretical level an embodied subjectivity at odds with its own state of embodiment, and on the other hand, to explore the limited agency induced by constraints that fall upon an embodied subject who is compelled to live a body which is free to engage the various possibilities of the world in every respect except one, within the context of an intercorporeal social reality. This description will provide (...) a sound ontological foundation where the central place of embodiment in the abortion debate can be re-asserted and properly taken into account. What this description will reveal is the ontological drama of such “aversely pregnant subjectivities” at a time when ever more legislation is being passed that poses ever more restrictions on reproductive rights of women in the United States. This investigation is all the more pertinent in light of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent announcement that he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, which may well put the right to legal abortions in jeopardy. My highest ambition, however, is to convey the significance of these restrictions to those who have never been and never can become pregnant, but who by and large determine the polices that play a substantial role in shaping such subjectivities. (shrink)

Comprehensive work on philosophy of religion and religions in India.

"By combining recent advances in the physical sciences with some of the novel ideas, techniques, and data of modern biology, this book attempts to achieve a new and different kind of evolutionary synthesis. I found it to be challenging, fascinating, infuriating, and provocative, but certainly not dull."--James H, Brown, University of New Mexico "This book is unquestionably mandatory reading not only for every living biologist but for generations of biologists to come."--Jack P. Hailman, Animal Behaviour , review of the first (...) edition "An important contribution to modern evolutionary thinking. It fortifies the place of Evolutionary Theory among the other well-established natural laws."--R.Gessink, TAXON. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

A poetry anthology in which fourteen American poets of varied ethnic backgrounds explore their own origins and the process of assimilation that has helped shape this country.

Although modern texts of Propertius have generally inclined to conservatism, there remains a number of cases where editors have chosen, in Housman's phrase, timidly to alter what they might without rashness have defended; or where the arguments so far advanced in favour of the best attested reading leave room for supplement. Thus: I. 6. 25 f. me sine, quem semper uoluit fortuna iacere, hanc animam extremae reddere nequitiae. extrema … nequitia Fonteine.

In the best Menippean tradition theDe Consolatione Philosophiaeof Boethius is peppered with quotations from different authors, most notably from the works of Homer. The quotations are generally spoken by Philosophy, and are used to articulate the narrative, e.g. at 1. 4 we find a line fromIliad1. 363 whose application to the f present situation is immediately comprehensible, and would have been appreciated by the average reader. Another similar quotation is that ofIliad12. 176: ⋯ργαλ⋯oν δ⋯ με ταȗτα Өε⋯ν ὣς π⋯ντ' ⋯γoρε⋯ειν (...) at 4. 6. 53. Such uses are very simiar to what one, finds in theApocolocyntosisof Seneca, albeit there used for comic effect. There are also snippets of popular wisdom in the form of an old proverb – though it is one with Menippean associations – and a Pythagorean maxim. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl’s conception of “world” and connecting this notion to education conceived as a “world-disclosing” activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to “de-world” the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be (...) human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this “de-worlding of world”: the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well. (shrink)

In recent years a burgeoning bicycle culture has reanimated the city of Detroit. The following essay analyzes this reanimation through the themes of embodiment, mobility, spatiality, and the intersubjective creation of place, using the techniques of phenomenology. The description that emerges is an evolving social ontology with implications for cities like Detroit. In such cities any plan for re-urbanization must re-conceptualize both transportation schemas and public space on terrain once dominated by the automobile. The provisional phenomenological description on offer here (...) should be thought of as just one tool in this project, as Detroit and cities like it negotiate the reconstitution of their communities. (shrink)

A detailed account is given of the development of the Archaean Controversy in Caernarvonshire and Anglesey. Sedgwick had found no base for his Cambrian in North Wales, but had intimated that some of the unfossiliferous rocks of the Lleyn Peninsula and Anglesey might be older than his Cambrian. He also described two ‘ribs’ of igneous rock: one running from Caernarvon to Bangor; the other inland, parallel to the first and crossing the Llanberis Pass at Llyn Padarn. The early Surveyors supposed (...) that these ‘ribs’ had altered the surrounding rocks, and the resulting ‘Altered Cambrian’ could be traced across the Menai Strait to Anglesey, where it formed the various metamorphic rocks of that island. This view was challenged by the usual coalition of ‘amateurs’ with attempts being made to recognize a sequence of Archaean rocks in North Wales similar to that in Pembrokeshire. However, vigorous debate occurred amongst the ‘Archaean’ geologists themselves, especially about a rock at Twt Hill, Caernarvon, and about a claimed unconformity at the base of the Cambrian in the Llanberis Pass, perhaps adjacent to the Llyn Padarn ‘rib’. Vigorous debate took place about the location of the claimed Llanberis unconformity, but the ‘Archaeans’ were united in regarding the metamorphic rocks of Anglesey as Precambrian. Eventually, the greywackes of Anglesey, and around Bangor and Caernarvon, were identified as Ordovician, not Cambrian. Very detailed map-work in Anglesey was carried out privately by Edward Greenly, and his results were published by the Survey in the form of a map and a high-quality Memoir. Greenly utilized for Anglesey tectonic ideas derived from his earlier fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands, so that although his mapping and stratigraphical divisions have proved to be of permanent value it is believed that his structures for Anglesey were mistaken and his stratigraphic sequence inverted. The Survey eventually abandoned its earlier model of Anglesey without too much difficulty; and the igneous ‘rib’ of Llyn Padarn is now construed as an ignimbrite. However, a definite base for the Cambrian has still not been found in Caernarvonshire, and the stratigraphical evidence for the Precambrian age of the Anglesey rocks remains incomplete. The study reveals the great difficulty experienced by early geologists when working in unfossiliferous rocks, the evidence from included fragments proving particularly uncertain. The paper also examines further the community of nineteenth-century British geologists, with their various factions and competing interests. (shrink)

R. Renehan's ingenious solutions to the problems of Symphosius 42. 1 and Anth. Lat. 207 in this journal, 471 f.) are much to be welcomed. On the other hand, I do not think that his defence of the manuscript reading in Anth. Lat. 24. 3 marcent post rorem violae, rosa perdit odorem holds water. Taking rorem as = rorem marinum he explains that ‘the poet is not presenting us with a piece of botanical information about the relative seasons of the (...) violet and rosemary; he means rather that all flowers wither and fade’. Actually, however, the poet on this showing does present information; and whether the information is botanically correct or not, that is an odd way to make his point. Stranger still is his choice of rosemary out of all the fading flowers of field and garden. It was bound to be I misunderstood. As Renehan indicates, ros = ros marinus is supported only by Virg. Georg. 2. 212–13, where the identity has been doubted, and Plin. HN 24. 100, where ex rore supra dicto refers back to ros marinum in 99. Renehan may well be the first reader not to take rorem as dew. And an evergeen shrub makes a singularly unfortunate illustration of floral decay, even though the shrub does produce a flower. Pliny classes it with herbs. (shrink)