Discussion of the ethics of driverless cars has often focused on supposed real-life versions of the famous trolley problem. In these cases, a driverless car is in a position where crashing is unavoidable and all possible crashes risk harm: for example, it can either continue on its current path and crash into five pedestrians or swerve and crash into one pedestrian. There are significant disanalogies between the human versions of the trolley problem and situations faced by (...) class='Hi'>driverless cars which affect the application and moral significance of key deontological distinctions, such as the distinction between doing and allowing harm. The application and moral significance of the doing/allowing distinction in the context of the behaviour of driverless cars depend on (a) our conception of the behaviour of driverless cars; (b) the forms of driverless cars that are developed and used; (c) the background expectations of programmers/manufacturers/owners of driverless cars and the conditions of being able to put those cars on the roads. These are as yet unsettled – and may even be undetermined. Nonetheless, trolley problems may still be useful in thinking about the ethics of driverless cars. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship on the ethics of autonomous vehicles. Yet the ethical discourse has mostly been focusing on the behavior of the vehicle in accident scenarios. This paper offers a different ethical prism: the implications of the autonomous vehicle for human well-being. As such, it contributes to the growing discourse on the wider societal and moral implications of the autonomous vehicle. The paper is premised on the neo-Aristotelian approach which holds that as human beings, our well-being (...) depends on developing and exercising our innate human capacities: to know, understand, love, be sociable, imagine, create and use our bodies and use our willpower. To develop and exercise these capacities, our environments need to provide a range of opportunities which will trigger the development and exercise of the capacities. The main argument advanced in the paper is that one plausible future of the autonomous vehicle—a future of single-rider autonomous vehicles—may effectively reduce the opportunities to develop and exercise our capacities to know, be sociable and use our willpower. It will therefore be bad for human well-being, and this provides us with a moral reason to resist this plausible future and search for alternative ones. (shrink)

To improve the accuracy and timeliness of the trajectory tracking control of the driverless racing car during the race, this paper proposes a track tracking control method that integrates the rear wheel differential drive and the front wheel active steering based on optimal control theory and fuzzy logic method. The model of the lateral track tracking error of the racing car is established. The model is linearized and discretized, and the quadratic optimal steering control problem is constructed. Taking advantage (...) of the differential drive of dual-motor-driven racing car, the dual motors differential drive fuzzy controller is designed and integrated driving with active steering control. Simulation analysis and actual car verification show that this integrated control method can ensure that the car tracks different race tracks well and improve the track tracking control accuracy by nearly 30%. (shrink)

While the value of the extended mind hypothesis for human cognition is disputed, this paper examines the explanatory utility of the extended mind framework in the domain of AI systems, specifically the Google self-driving car. I argue that the cognitive architecture of the Google-car is best explained as an instance of extended cognition. The argument for this claim begins with a description of the Google-car’s cognitive architecture, including the indispensable role of “prior maps” in its performance. I then argue that (...) the hypothesis of extended cognition provides a better explanation of the Google-car’s performance than two rival, non-extended alternatives. Consideration of the Google-car also offers insight into whether driverless vehicles have achieved human-level competency in the cognitive skills required for driving, or instead remain “poor substitutes.”. (shrink)

Driverless automobility presents a “technological sublime” encompassing both promises and perils. The light side of the emerging transportation future lies, for instance, in the newly gained freedom from driving. The dark side of this sublime includes ethical challenges and potential harm resulting from the required socio-technical transformations of mobility. This article explores contemporary visions for the self-driving car future through the lens of the sublime and some of its theoretical variations, such as the natural, technological, electrical, and digital sublime. (...) Nissan’s IDS Concept preview clip and the Chevrolet FNR trailer serve as examples for this analysis, which aims to demythologize the visual rhetoric of the depicted awe-inspiring self-driving systems. The sublime’s inherent dialectic of inducing both pleasure and displeasure is removed in the corporate utopian visions in favor of an exalting partnership between human and machine. This strategy succeeds by setting the mobility future in the context of controlled parameters such as the trustworthy communicative vehicle, the vital and independent protagonists, and the harmless and unharmed environment. Recognizing such recurring strategies and identifying the controlled parameters which allow the sublime object to electrify, not terrify, is key for a sensible engagement with such imagined futures and their social, cultural, political, economic, environmental, and ethical implications. Such premediations of awe-inspiring technological formations and the underlying logics ask to be unpacked toward decision making that considers all potential facets of the sublime future. (shrink)

How should driverless vehicles respond to situations of unavoidable personal harm? This paper takes up the case of self-driving cars as a prominent example of algorithmic moral decision-making, an emergent type of morality that is evolving at a high pace in a digitised business world. As its main contribution, it juxtaposes dilemma decision situations relating to ethical crash algorithms for autonomous cars to two edge cases: the case of manually driven cars facing real-life, mundane accidents, on (...) the one hand, and the dilemmatic situation in theoretically constructed trolley cases, on the other. The paper identifies analogies and disanalogies between the three cases with regard to decision makers, decision design, and decision outcomes. The findings are discussed from the angle of three perspectives: aspects where analogies could be found, those where the case of self-driving cars has turned out to lie in between both edge cases, and those where it entirely departs from either edge case. As a main result, the paper argues that manual driving as well as trolley cases are suitable points of reference for the issue of designing ethical crash algorithms only to a limited extent. Instead, a fundamental epistemic and conceptual divergence of dilemma decision situations in the context of self-driving cars and the used edge cases is substantiated. Finally, the areas of specific need for regulation on the road to introducing autonomous cars are pointed out and related thoughts are sketched through the lens of the humanistic paradigm. (shrink)

How should driverless vehicles respond to situations of unavoidable personal harm? This paper takes up the case of self-driving cars as a prominent example of algorithmic moral decision-making, an emergent type of morality that is evolving at a high pace in a digitised business world. As its main contribution, it juxtaposes dilemma decision situations relating to ethical crash algorithms for autonomous cars to two edge cases: the case of manually driven cars facing real-life, mundane accidents, on (...) the one hand, and the dilemmatic situation in theoretically constructed trolley cases, on the other. The paper identifies analogies and disanalogies between the three cases with regard to decision makers, decision design, and decision outcomes. The findings are discussed from the angle of three perspectives: aspects where analogies could be found, those where the case of self-driving cars has turned out to lie in between both edge cases, and those where it entirely departs from either edge case. As a main result, the paper argues that manual driving as well as trolley cases are suitable points of reference for the issue of designing ethical crash algorithms only to a limited extent. Instead, a fundamental epistemic and conceptual divergence of dilemma decision situations in the context of self-driving cars and the used edge cases is substantiated. Finally, the areas of specific need for regulation on the road to introducing autonomous cars are pointed out and related thoughts are sketched through the lens of the humanistic paradigm. (shrink)

Can opium's tendency to induce sleep be explained by appeal to a "dormitive virtue"? If the label merely references the tendency being explained, the explanation seems vacuous. Yet the presence of a label could signal genuinely explanatory content concerning the (causal) basis for the property being explained. In Experiments 1 and 2, we find that explanations for a person's behavior that appeal to a named tendency or condition are indeed judged to be more satisfying than equivalent explanations that differ only (...) in omitting the name. In Experiment 3, we find support for one proposal concerning what it is about a name that drives a boost in explanatory satisfaction: named categories lead people to draw an inference to the existence of a cause underlying the category, a cause that is responsible for the behavior being explained. Our findings have implications for theories of explanation and point to the central role of causation in explaining behavior. (shrink)

An actor's mental states—whether she acted knowingly and with bad intentions—typically play an important role in evaluating the extent to which an action is wrong and in determining appropriate levels of punishment. In four experiments, we find that this role for knowledge and intent is significantly weaker when evaluating transgressions of conventional rules as opposed to moral rules. We also find that this attenuated role for knowledge and intent is partly due to the fact that conventional rules are judged to (...) be more arbitrary than moral rules; whereas moral transgressions are associated with actions that are intrinsically wrong, conventional transgressions are associated with actions that are only contingently wrong. Finally, we find that it is the perpetrator's belief about the arbitrary or non-arbitrary basis of the rule—not the reality—that drives this differential effect of knowledge and intent across types of transgressions. (shrink)

BackgroundAs a number of commentators have noted, SARS exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care systems and governance structures. Health care professionals (HCPs) and hospital systems that bore the brunt of the SARS outbreak continue to struggle with the aftermath of the crisis. Indeed, HCPs – both in clinical care and in public health – were severely tested by SARS. Unprecedented demands were placed on their skills and expertise, and their personal commitment to their profession was severely tried. Many were (...) exposed to serious risk of morbidity and mortality, as evidenced by the World Health Organization figures showing that approximately 30% of reported cases were among HCPs, some of whom died from the infection. Despite this challenge, professional codes of ethics are silent on the issue of duty to care during communicable disease outbreaks, thus providing no guidance on what is expected of HCPs or how they ought to approach their duty to care in the face of risk.DiscussionIn the aftermath of SARS and with the spectre of a pandemic avian influenza, it is imperative that we (re)consider the obligations of HCPs for patients with severe infectious diseases, particularly diseases that pose risks to those providing care. It is of pressing importance that organizations representing HCPs give clear indication of what standard of care is expected of their members in the event of a pandemic. In this paper, we address the issue of special obligations of HCPs during an infectious disease outbreak. We argue that there is a pressing need to clarify the rights and responsibilities of HCPs in the current context of pandemic flu preparedness, and that these rights and responsibilities ought to be codified in professional codes of ethics. Finally, we present a brief historical accounting of the treatment of the duty to care in professional health care codes of ethics.SummaryAn honest and critical examination of the role of HCPs during communicable disease outbreaks is needed in order to provide guidelines regarding professional rights and responsibilities, as well as ethical duties and obligations. With this paper, we hope to open the social dialogue and advance the public debate on this increasingly urgent issue. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have long recognized the extraordinary influence of action on learning (Held & Hein, 1963; Piaget, 1952). Action experiences begin to shape our perception of the world during infancy (e.g., as infants gain an understanding of others’ goal-directed actions; Woodward, 2009) and these effects persist into adulthood (e.g., as adults learn about complex concepts in the physical sciences; Kontra, Lyons, Fischer, & Beilock, 2012). Theories of embodied cognition provide a structure within which we can investigate the mechanisms underlying action’s (...) impact on thinking and reasoning. We argue that theories of embodiment can shed light on the role of action experience in early learning contexts, and further that these theories hold promise for using action to scaffold learning in more formal educational settings later in development. (shrink)

There has been broad interest in the so-called rise of women farmers in United States (US) agriculture. Researchers have elucidated the diverse ways farmers ‘perform’ gender, while also examining how engaging in a masculine-coded industry like agriculture shapes individuals’ gendered identities as well as their social and mental wellbeing. While illuminating, this work is mostly focused on sustainable or direct-market farmers, with surprisingly little research examining women on conventional row crops operations. This paper works to fill this empirical gap and (...) further theorize gender-agriculture intersections through analyzing interviews with Iowa women row-crop farmers to understand the ways they perceive their gendered identities, and how they see them shaping their farming experience and mental wellbeing. Deploying a conceptual understanding of gender as both discursive and embodied as well as relational and fluid, I find respondents see themselves operating in a somewhat liminal gender identity, where they feel adept at moving between masculinized spaces of agriculture and more feminized domains of homes and office jobs. Critically, while women rarely expressed stress about doing “masculine” coded agricultural labor, they had more complex feelings towards either disliking or imperfectly completing feminized care and reproductive labor. Younger women expressed particular ambivalence about assuming the identity of farmer while also fulfilling gendered norms around (heterosexual) marriage and childbearing. The liminality of women’s gender performance also cut both ways, and while they feel able to access different gendered spaces some feel they are not fully accepted in either. I conclude by reflecting on what these particular forms of gendered subjectivity might mean for women’s mental wellbeing and how agencies might better support gender equity in agriculture. (shrink)

We discuss recent work on bounded rationality and learning in relation to Soros' principle of reflexivity and stress the empirical importance of non-rational, almost self-fulfilling equilibria in positive feedback systems. As an empirical example, we discuss a behavioral asset pricing model with heterogeneous expectations. Bubble and crash dynamics is triggered by shocks to fundamentals and amplified by agents switching endogenously between a mean-reverting fundamental rule and a trend-following rule, based upon their relative performance. We also discuss learning-to-forecast laboratory experiments, showing (...) that in positive feedback systems individuals coordinate expectations on non-rational, almost self-fulfilling equilibria with persistent price fluctuations very different from rational equilibria. Economic policy analysis may benefit enormously by focusing on efficiency and welfare gains in correcting mispricing along almost self-fulfilling equilibria. (shrink)

The nutrition transition—a process of dietary change that describes the shift to calorie-dense, higher fat and protein diets from cereal based ones—is happening in India. This paper argues that relatively little is known about the nature of nutrition transition in India. This is a result of both a lack of adequate and timely data and a consequence of national and state-level statistics, which render an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of how these processes are unfolding in local contexts. This may (...) be especially true in India where very little ethnographic research has documented the dual edges of nutrition transitions. Analyzing data collected from the Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand in 2013, this paper suggests the ways in which aspects of the nutrition transition have developed unevenly over space and time. In particular, while new types of calorie dense foods have infiltrated these rural, remote areas, the process has been uneven and fraught with contestation due to preexisting social practices. More troubling is the evidence that though incomes are rising, the predicted increases in high value, protein rich foods may actually be declining. This paper concludes by arguing that the widely influential nutrition transition literature needs look to ethnographic and in-depth qualitative methods to form better policies relevant to the contingencies of dietary and epidemiological change. (shrink)

This article addresses the development of an online residency platform Floating Reverie, for artists who work in and around digital media. The particular focus of this article is on the methodology used by the curator of the residencies and the artists as a form of networked curation within a South African creative digital art context.

This scoping review maps research ethics and integrity challenges and best practices encountered by research actors in the DACH countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), including researchers, funders, publishers, research ethics committees, and policymakers, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic brought research and, in turn, research ethics and integrity, into public focus. This review identified challenges related to changing research environments, diversity in research, publication and dissemination trends, scientific literacy and trust in science, recruitment, research redundancy and study termination, placebo (...) and human challenge studies, data management, and informed consent. These challenges are linked to two crucial factors: first, actors in the DACH research ecosystem lacked a sound knowledge base to assess the risks and benefits of research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, researchers in the DACH region faced pressure from policymakers, funders, and the public to generate relevant, timely, and consistent findings to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this review highlights best practices to mitigate the effects of future crises on research ethics and integrity, including enhanced cooperation among actors, continuous ethics assessments, and support for public scientific literacy. (shrink)

Emerging genomic technologies promise more efficient infectious disease control. Whole genome sequencing is increasingly being used in tuberculosis diagnosis, surveillance, and epidemiology. However, while the use of WGS by public health agencies may raise ethical, legal, and socio-political concerns, these challenges are poorly understood. Between November 2017 and April 2018, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 key stakeholders across the fields of governance and policy, public health, and laboratory sciences representing the major jurisdictions currently using WGS in national TB programs. (...) Thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted using NVivo 11. Respondents identified several ethical and practical challenges associated with WGS in TB care and surveillance, all related to issues of trust, including: 1) the power of public health; 2) data sharing and profits derived from surveillance efforts; and 3) concerns regarding who has access to, and can benefit from, the technology. Additional challenges included: the potential utility that WGS adds to a public health program, the risks associated with linking necessary epidemiological metadata to the genomic data, and challenges associated with jurisdictional capacity to implement the technology. Successful implementation of WGS is dependent on fostering relationships of trust between those working with genomics technology and those directly impacted by it, including clinicians. Building trust between the public and the public health agencies and within public health agencies themselves is critical due to the inherent complexity of WGS and its implementation for communicable disease control purposes. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the ideologies that emerge when disability and LGBTQ rights advocates' ubiquitous calls for visibility collide. I argue that contemporary visibility politics encourage the production of post-racial and post-spatial ideologies. In demanding visibility, disability and LGBTQ rights advocates ignore, ironically, visible markers of difference and assume that being “out, loud, and proud” is desirable trans-geographically. I bring together disability studies and queer rural studies—fields that have engaged in remarkably little dialogue—to analyze activist calls for LGBTQ and (...) disability visibility. The discourses evident in such calls transcend movements and virtual spaces and emerge as some of the LGBTQ women in the rural Midwest whom I interviewed discuss their relations to LGBTQ sexuality and disability. I analyze several cases to illustrate how visibility discourses compel the erasure of material bodies, and in the process, render certain experiences obsolete. I close by considering how my critique of visibility discourses might influence critical discussions of identity politics more broadly. (shrink)

Medical tourism is international travel with the intention of receiving medical care. Medical tourists travel for many reasons, including cost savings, limited domestic access to specific treatments, and interest in accessing unproven interventions. Medical tourism poses new health and safety risks to patients, including dangers associated with travel following surgery, difficulty assessing the quality of care abroad, and complications in continuity of care. Online resources are important to the decision-making of potential medical tourists and the websites of medical tourism facilitation (...) companies are an important source of online information for these individuals. These websites fail to address the risks associated with medical tourism, which can undermine the informed decision-making of potential medical tourists. Less is known about patient testimonials on these websites, which can be a particularly powerful influence on decision-making. (shrink)

La propuesta de esta narrativa es, por un lado, exponer una forma posible de la experiencia de dar talleres de filosofía por fuera del espacio académico y, por otro lado, acercar la experiencia particular del taller Filosofía y Poesía, a través de consideraciones en torno al abordaje de la noción de ‘sujeto’. Este taller surge a partir de la necesidad de armar un espacio de experimentación en torno a una subjetividad que aparece en/a través de la escritura, al cual lo (...) convoca dar una respuesta posible a la búsqueda de un hábitat propicio para pensar en torno al ‘sujeto’, teniendo que preguntarnos, inevitablemente, quién es aquel de quien estamos hablando e inclusive quién es ‘yo’. Echando mano de producciones de Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, val flores, entre otres, pretendemos, además de contextualizar los modos de nuestro hacer en su carácter compartido, brindar materiales para pensar/nos y pensar una vinculación posible entre Filosofía y Poesía como disparador de otro pensar, de un pensar poético. (shrink)

Review of:Val Flores, Una lengua cosida de relámpagos. Buenos Aires, Hekht, 2019.

Language sample analysis is an important practice for providing a culturally sensitive and accurate assessment of a child's language abilities. A child's usage of literate language devices in narrative samples has been shown to be a critical target for evaluation. While automated scoring systems have begun to appear in the field, no such system exists for conducting progress-monitoring on literate language usage within narratives. The current study aimed to develop a hard-coded scoring system called the Literate Language Use in Narrative (...) Assessment, to automatically evaluate six aspects of literate language in non-coded narrative transcripts. LLUNA was designed to individually score six literate language elements. The interrater reliability of LLUNA with an expert scorer, as well as its' reliability compared to certified undergraduate scorers was calculated using a quadratic weighted kappa. Results indicated that LLUNA met strong levels of interrater reliability with an expert scorer on all six elements. LLUNA also surpassed the reliability levels of certified, but non-expert scorers on four of the six elements and came close to matching reliability levels on the remaining two. LLUNA shows promise as means for automating the scoring of literate language in LSA and narrative samples for the purpose of assessment and progress-monitoring. (shrink)

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture has emerged as a major development paradigm that works to diversify crops and diets throughout the Global South in order to improve nutritional outcomes. Drawing on a conceptual framework from political ecologies of health that looks at political economic factors, social discourse, and embodied, material experiences of food, I analyze qualitative and ethnographic data from an integrated NSA intervention in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, India. The analysis shows that while embodied experiences of differing rice varieties were central to (...) research participants’ conceptions of bodily health, mainstream NSA metrics had trouble ‘seeing’ these relations in meaningful ways. Moreover, although material experiences of rice cultivation and consumption anchored participants’ rice preferences, structural economic realities along with notions of social identity were always interwoven. Yet, while villagers expressed divergent perceptions around how the different rice cultivars shaped their bodily health, agricultural officers tended to view rice experiences as a product of culture, rather than as material and socio-ecological food-body interactions. In sum, this paper argues more deeply engaging with the political economic, socially symbolic, and embodied ways that communities relate to food production and consumption would allow NSA research to develop more grounded and inclusive understandings of agriculture-nutrition linkages. (shrink)

Despite decades of action to reduce global malnutrition, rates of undernutrition remain stubbornly high and rates of overweight, obesity and chronic disease are simultaneously on the rise. Moreover, while volumes of robust research on causes and solutions to malnutrition have been published, and calls for interdisciplinarity are on the rise, researchers taking different epistemological and methodological choices have largely remained disciplinarily siloed. This paper works to open a scholarly conversation between “mainstream” public health nutrition and “critical” nutrition studies. While critical (...) nutrition scholars collectively question aspects of mainstream nutrition approaches, they also chart a different way to approach malnutrition research by focusing on politics, structural conditions, and the diverse ways people make sense of food and malnutrition. In this paper, we highlight the key research agendas and insights within both mainstream and critical nutrition in order to suggest spaces for their potential conversation. We ultimately argue that global public health nutrition interventions might achieve greater success in more equitable ways if they are informed by critical nutrition research. We aim for this intervention to facilitate more substantial crossing of disciplinary boundaries, critical to forging more socially and environmentally just dietary futures in the global South and beyond. (shrink)

The United States is in its fifth year of what is now widely referred to as “the new medical malpractice crisis.” Although some professional liability insurers have begun to report improvements in their overall financial margins, there are few signs that the trend toward higher costs is reversing itself - particularly for doctors and hospitals. In 2003-2004, the presidential election and tort reform proposals in Congress brought heightened public attention to the need for some type of policy intervention to ease (...) the effects of the crisis.The darling of tort reformers at both the federal and state levels has been legislation to limit, or “cap,” damages awarded to plaintiffs in malpractice cases. Health care provider groups, liability insurers, and the Bush Administration have all seized on the example of California's MICRA law, which since 1975 has capped noneconomic damages in malpractice cases at a flat $250,000, as the path to financial recovery. (shrink)

The United States is in its fifth year of what is now widely referred to as “the new medical malpractice crisis.” Although some professional liability insurers have begun to report improvements in their overall financial margins, there are few signs that the trend toward higher costs is reversing itself - particularly for doctors and hospitals. In 2003-2004, the presidential election and tort reform proposals in Congress brought heightened public attention to the need for some type of policy intervention to ease (...) the effects of the crisis.The darling of tort reformers at both the federal and state levels has been legislation to limit, or “cap,” damages awarded to plaintiffs in malpractice cases. Health care provider groups, liability insurers, and the Bush Administration have all seized on the example of California's MICRA law, which since 1975 has capped noneconomic damages in malpractice cases at a flat $250,000, as the path to financial recovery. (shrink)

In Pacificare Health Systems, Inc. v. Jefrey Book, the US. Supreme Court ruled that the mandatory arbitration clause in an HMO contract should be enforced to compel a physician to arbitrate his RICO charges against the health plan, even though the clause could be construed to limit the arbitrator’s authority to award full damages under the RICO statute. The ruling could prevent physicians with health plan arbitration agreements from taking future reimbursement claims against insurance companies directly to court, even when (...) the allegations involve a potential statutory breach outside of the explicit scope of the provider contract.Dr. Book’s arbitration claim was part of a larger class action lawsuit filed in August of 2000 by a group of physicians and patients seeking reimbursement from eight managed care companies for unpaid health insurance claims. (shrink)

In Pacificare Health Systems, Inc. v. Jefrey Book, the US. Supreme Court ruled that the mandatory arbitration clause in an HMO contract should be enforced to compel a physician to arbitrate his RICO charges against the health plan, even though the clause could be construed to limit the arbitrator’s authority to award full damages under the RICO statute. The ruling could prevent physicians with health plan arbitration agreements from taking future reimbursement claims against insurance companies directly to court, even when (...) the allegations involve a potential statutory breach outside of the explicit scope of the provider contract.Dr. Book’s arbitration claim was part of a larger class action lawsuit filed in August of 2000 by a group of physicians and patients seeking reimbursement from eight managed care companies for unpaid health insurance claims. (shrink)

Background As a number of commentators have noted, SARS exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care systems and governance structures. Health care professionals (HCPs) and hospital systems that bore the brunt of the SARS outbreak continue to struggle with the aftermath of the crisis. Indeed, HCPs – both in clinical care and in public health – were severely tested by SARS. Unprecedented demands were placed on their skills and expertise, and their personal commitment to their profession was severely tried. Many (...) were exposed to serious risk of morbidity and mortality, as evidenced by the World Health Organization figures showing that approximately 30% of reported cases were among HCPs, some of whom died from the infection. Despite this challenge, professional codes of ethics are silent on the issue of duty to care during communicable disease outbreaks, thus providing no guidance on what is expected of HCPs or how they ought to approach their duty to care in the face of risk. Discussion In the aftermath of SARS and with the spectre of a pandemic avian influenza, it is imperative that we (re)consider the obligations of HCPs for patients with severe infectious diseases, particularly diseases that pose risks to those providing care. It is of pressing importance that organizations representing HCPs give clear indication of what standard of care is expected of their members in the event of a pandemic. In this paper, we address the issue of special obligations of HCPs during an infectious disease outbreak. We argue that there is a pressing need to clarify the rights and responsibilities of HCPs in the current context of pandemic flu preparedness, and that these rights and responsibilities ought to be codified in professional codes of ethics. Finally, we present a brief historical accounting of the treatment of the duty to care in professional health care codes of ethics. Summary An honest and critical examination of the role of HCPs during communicable disease outbreaks is needed in order to provide guidelines regarding professional rights and responsibilities, as well as ethical duties and obligations. With this paper, we hope to open the social dialogue and advance the public debate on this increasingly urgent issue. (shrink)

Awareness of the risks posed by excess nitrogen is low beyond the scientific community. As public understanding of scientific issues is partly influenced by news reporting, this article is the first to study how the British press has discussed nitrogen pollution. A corpus-assisted frame analysis of newspaper articles highlighted five frames: Activism, where environmental charities and organizations are portrayed as having an active role in fighting pollution; Government Responsibility, where privatization is presented as central and positioned as one of the (...) main causes of pollution; Industry Responsibility, in which industries’ actions are depicted as causing pollution to increase; Pollutions as Politics, in which pollution is not discussed as a problem to be solved but rather as a means to increase votes; and Risk, where readers are warned about the possible effects of pollution on human health, flora and fauna. The analysis also points to the absence of named scientists and sources with the coverage being dominated by politicians. (shrink)

International and UK legislation and policy development in childcare is placing more emphasis on children's participation rights. This continues to present ethical dilemmas for childcare workers who also have the responsibility to ensure the protection and well-being of children. In Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government has made a commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the ?Rights to Action? child welfare policy. In England, the government introduced five aims and outcomes of children's well-being in the (...) ?Every Child Matters? child welfare policy. This paper identifies three barriers to children accessing participation rights, and critically discusses the ethical implications of the English and Welsh child welfare policies for children's participation rights. Family Group Conferences are discussed to highlight dilemmas of participation. (shrink)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists and researchers agree that print media discourses surrounding First Nations people in Australia remain negative and stereotypical. However, how these discourses are constructed in language – and therefore linguistic practices which should be avoided – has so far received minimal attention. Analysing a purpose-built corpus of Australian newspaper articles, this study uses the corpus linguistic technique of collocation analysis to identify relevant discourses and examines the linguistic construction of one discourse that had not yet (...) been identified: cooperation. It finds that although notions of cooperation are ostensibly positive, this is often undermined by syntagmatic processes which demote agential Aboriginal participants to prepositional phrases. Prepositions are often neglected in corpus linguistics and in critical discourse analysis, making this an important finding. (shrink)

The traditional concern of the academic literature on the ethics of humor is to determine whether ethical considerations influence comic amusement or, in other words, judge the impact of ethics over aesthetics. For some, ethically questionable dimensions bear no implication for the effectiveness of jokes; for others, they do, but this group disagrees on whether ethical problems make jokes less or more funny. This article attempts an alternative approach and explores the occurrences in which the aesthetic reaction to humor reveals (...) a more profound ethical commitment. It asks: What are the conditions under which laughter resulting from comic amusement reflects the moral stance of an individual? Or, more simply: Can one judge a person's character based on what this person is laughing at? The article starts by showing how humor can legitimately be taken as representative of the individual spirit, continues by identifying the subsection of humor that can offer an affirmative answer to the posed questions, highlights the power dynamics at play within this subsection of humor to justify its characterization as “fascist,” and concludes by offering guidance on identifying fascist laughter. (shrink)