Sickle cell disease is a debilitating illness that affects quality of life and life expectancy for patients. In Cameroon, it is now possible to opt for termination of an affected pregnancy where the fetus is found to be affected by SCD. Our earlier studies found that, contrary to the views of Cameroonian physicians, a majority of parents with their children suffering from SCD would choose to abort if the fetuses were found to be affected. What have not yet been investigated (...) are the views of people suffering from/living with SCD. We used a quantitative sociological method, with administered structured questionnaires, to study the attitudes of adult patients suffering from SCD on prenatal genetic diagnosis and possible TAP. The majority of the 89 participants were urban dwellers , women , Christian and single , with a secondary/tertiary education . The majority would consider PND for SCD; almost half would reject TAP while 40.9% would consider it. Respondents who rejected TAP claimed mostly ethical reasons while those who found TAP acceptable cited fear of having an affected child and the poor quality of the affected child's health . Cameroonian patients with SCD are generally supportive of PND and a remarkably high number of patients living with SCD reported that they would consider terminating a pregnancy based on their assessment of the future well-being of the child. Research is required to investigate the burden of SCD on families and their quality of life. (shrink)

Lawyers and the legal system have been much criticized in recent years. Despite popular perceptions, the legal system contains numerous mechanisms and rules designed to ensure fair results. This paper shows how the legal system tries to implement, in commercial transactions, the ethical principles of truthfulness and fairness. The Anglo-American development of Equity Courts is reviewed briefly. Several examples of the Law's enforcement of ethical principles are presented, in four different legal areas: Contracts, Securities, Goods, and Real Estate. The intent (...) here is to present an overview of the problem, with area-specific illustrations, rather than a comprehenisve examination of the cases in just one area. (shrink)

The paper interprets Nietzsche’s description of authentic human person.Based on the works of Nietzsche, commentaries and philosophical interpretationsof various authors, authentic human person evolves into a superman by usingthe principles of discipline and mastery of oneself. His authenticity, however,requires persistence, courage and strength to endure many forms of sufferingsand to overcome alienation brought about by his environment. Otherwise,man would become slave of his desires or alien to his own powers, talents andcapacities. Thus, Nietzsche’s thought of superman is an invitation to (...) overcomeoneself, the self that is influenced by the non-self or factors outside one self. Itis only possible by using the will to power. The will to power of man overcomesthe influences of the world’s modernization and industrialization that alienateshim to his true self, and this true self is best expressed by his will to power. Onthis note, the author suggests that the readers must use their potentials to face up to challenges of this new era. Keywords: Philosophy, language and literature, emergence, authentic human person,philosophy of the superman, authenticity, alienation, morality, descriptivedesign, Philippines. (shrink)

Wilderness valued as mere resource for human?interest satisfaction is challenged in favor of wilderness as a productive source, in which humans have roots, but which also yields wild neighbors and aliens with intrinsic value. Wild value is storied achievement in an evolutionary ecosystem, with instrumental and intrinsic, organismic and systemic values intermeshed. Survival value is reconsidered in this light. Changing cultural appreciations of values in wilderness can transform and relativize our judgments about appropriate conduct there. A final valued element in (...) wildness is its idiographic historical particularity, and most surprising is the emergence of a novel morality when humans learn to let values go wild. (shrink)

v. 1. A-I -- Bd. 2. U-Pū -- Bd. 3. Pra-H.

This study examines the use of a video news release in a specific story. Press coverage and editorial criticism in the case showed that journalists do not articulate sufficiently how the news owners' sway, through institutional controls, can lead to a hegemony of expedient action in the newsroom. Critical self-reflection by news workers will better enable journalists to ethically deliberate news choices that balance their responsibilities to owners, peers, and the public.

Many Christians treat marriage as a covenant. An influential group of contemporary Christians argues that covenant marriage provides a response to what they regard as the social ills of high divorce rates and the ‘breakdown’ of the traditional family. These Christians often look to John Calvin's marriage theology for inspiration because he linked treating marriage as a covenant to regarding marriage as sacred and indissoluble. In this article I cast doubt on the wisdom of treating marriage as a covenant. I (...) develop a critical genealogy that shows Calvin's marriage theology oppressed women by reinforcing their subordination to men and trapping women in abusive marriages. I then argue that recent social science suggests covenant marriage functions similarly among contemporary Christians. I consider whether a non-oppressive form of covenant marriage can be developed, before suggesting that we cannot yet know whether covenant marriage is salvageable. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr (1980) provided an influential picture of the nature of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and of the debate and changes occurring prior to its completion. Mayr intended his account to be applicable to comparable cases. Sociobiology should be evaluated both as a comparable case, an attempt to produce a synthesis which undergoes development of the sort Mayr described, and as an extension of the Modern Synthesis itself. Examination of what the explanatory goals and development of the New Sociobiological Synthesis (...) would be, if it is to achieve a fruitful synthesis which fits Mayr's account, undermines Richard Lewontin's critique of sociobiology. Although Lewontin speaks for many in viewing sociobiology as the latest historical manifestation of social Darwinism, genetic determinism, biological reductionism, and vulgar adaptationism, sociobiology's effort to produce a synthesis does not entail commitment to those positions. (shrink)

When Donna Rice, who was brought into the public limelight as a companion to ex-presidentiaI candidate Gary Hart, appeared at a university ethics seminar, her statement, and the subsequent coverage, raised three troubling questions for journalists: the nature of academic inquiry, journalistic practices, and the right of people to define themselves.

A set of constraints forces trade-offs which prevent us from achieving the best possible definitions of the ‘level’ and ‘unit’ of natural selection. This set consists in decisions concerning conflicting pre-analytic intuitions in problematic cases, the relative roles of various conceptual resources in the definitions, which facts need to be accounted for using the definitions, how the relation between selection and evolution orients the definitions, and the relation between the level and unit concepts. Systematic reconstruction and evaluation of leading analyses (...) along these dimensions favors a new functional analysis over Williams’ consequentialist analysis, Sober’s causal analysis, and Dawkins’ teleological analysis. (shrink)

On the scale of decades and centuries, ongoingscience is reconfigured into human history that must be interpreted. So I concluded two decades back: "Progressively reforming and developing theories are erected over observations.... This leads at a larger scale to progressively reforming and developing narrative models.... The story is ever reforming" (pp. 338 — 39). I faced the future with hopes and fears about the escalating powers of science for good and evil, finding it simultaneously powerless for the meaningful guidance of (...) life, the classical province of religion. So now„having turned the millennium, what's new in the story? If I had to give a sound-bite answer (as we now must do with the media), my reply would be: increasing concern about human uniqueness and human respon-. (shrink)

Both science and ethics are embedded in cultural traditions where truths are shared through education; both need competent critics educated within such traditions. Education in both ought to be directed although moral education demands levels of responsible agency that science education does not. Evolutionary science often carries an implicit or explicit understanding of who and what humans are, one which may not be coherent with the implicit or explicit human self-understanding in moral education.

Few discussions of environmental conservation continue long without reaching the question "Why?", and the answers are seldom elaborated for long without reaching the question of values. What we wish to conserve depends on what we value. What we ought to conserve depends on what we ought to value. Environmental ethics is entwined with values carried by nature. What is of value there? How are values to be discovered and judged? That is a philosophical question.