Background The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice. In this paper we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022. Methods The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health (...) Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, research ethics committee members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. In 2022 the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations, 16 governance presentations, and a series of small group and large group discussions. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. In this paper, we highlight central insights arising from GFBR 2022. Results We describe the significance of four thematic insights arising from the forum: (1) Appropriateness of building AI, (2) Transferability of AI systems, (3) Accountability for AI decision-making and outcomes, and (4) Individual consent. We then describe eight recommendations for governance leaders to enhance the ethical governance of AI in global health research, addressing issues such as AI impact assessments, environmental values, and fair partnerships. Conclusions The 2022 Global Forum on Bioethics in Research illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research. (shrink)

This paper reviews major structural drivers of place-based health disparities in the context of Canada, an industrialized nation with a strong public health system. Likelihood that the COVID-19 pandemic will facilitate rejuvenation of Canada’s northern and remote areas through remote working, advances in online teaching and learning, and the increased use of telemedicine are also examined. The paper concludes by identifying some common themes to address healthcare disparities for northern and remote Canadian residents.

This book discusses the new field of eco-ethica, explores issues arising from a technology-mediated environment and our changing moral consciousness, and presents an ethics that transcends interpersonal ethics so as to also encompass companies and governments.

This is the only work to provide a histori­cal account of Kant’s theory of arith­metic, examining in detail the theories of both his predecessors and his successors. Until his death, Martin was the editor of _Kant-Studien _from 1954_, _of the gen­eral Kant index from 1964, of the Leibniz index from 1968, and coeditor of _Leib­nizstudien _from 1969. This background is used to its fullest as he strives to make clear the historical milieu in which Kant’s mathematical contributions de­veloped. He uses (...) Leibniz, Wolff, and oth­ers whose work was accomplished before Kant was born as well as Lambert, Men­delssohn, and others roughly contempo­rary with Kant; and when a point requires it, he refers to Gauss, Grassman, Frege, Russell, and Hilbert. In her translation Wubnig has ap­proached the original author with an abiding respect. She makes the transla­tion flow in English while preserving as far as possible the flavor of the original. She has added many bibliographical and biographical details to ease the following up of Martin’s allusions and suggestions. (shrink)

The idea that our conscious decisions determine our actions has been challenged by a report suggesting that the brain starts to prepare for a movement before the person concerned has consciously decided to move . Libet et al. claimed that their results show that our actions are not consciously initiated. The current article describes two experiments in which we attempted to replicate Libet et al.'s comparison of participants' movement-related brain activity with the reported times of their decisions to move and (...) also the reported times of their decisions of which hand to move. We also looked at the distribution of participants' reports over time to evaluate an alternative explanation of Libet et al.'s results. Although the Readiness Potential was usually present before all of the decisions to move, consistent with the findings of Keller and Heckhausen and Libet et al. , we found that many reported decision times were before the onset of the Lateralized Readiness Potential, which measures hand-specific movement preparation. The latter finding is consistent with the conclusion that the LRP always started after the conscious decision to move. We conclude that even though activity related to movement anticipation may be present before a conscious decision to move, the cortical preparation necessary for the movement to happen immediately may not start until after the conscious decision to move. (shrink)

in evolutionary theorizing,, marilyn fischer carefully unpacks and analyzes the language in Democracy and Social Ethics, looking at both the final published text as well as Addams's earlier essays and talks that were eventually incorporated into the book. By researching authors that Addams either quotes or relied on, Fischer is able to excavate many layers of historical intellectual meaning and, in doing so, gives us a different picture of Addams than the one I'm familiar with. It's not a picture of (...) Addams that is always flattering. Fischer's unpacking of these early texts shines a light on the sometimes-racist evolutionary thinking of that time. She is doing, as she says, a "close textual analysis" within the... (shrink)

Biobanks for long-term research pose challenges to the legal and ethical validity of consent to participate. Different models of consent have been proposed to answer some of these challenges. This paper contributes to this discussion by considering the meaning and value of consent to participants in biobanks. Empirical data from a qualitative study is used to provide a participant view of the consent process and to demonstrate that, despite limited understanding of the research, consent provides the research participants with some (...) level of control and a form of self determination that they value. Participation is framed as a moral act of a responsible citizen providing reinforcement of self identity. Consent symbolizes the trust invested in researchers and research institutions to use the biobank for the public good. The paper argues that consent continues to play an important role in biobank participation and that a participant view should inform proposals to modify consent processes. (shrink)

The handbook contains more than 50 chapters by leaders from around the world and a broad range of sectors of academia and clinical practice spanning the ...

This study draws on Kohlberg''s Cognitive Moral Development Theory and Hofstede''s Culture Theory to examine whether cultural differences are associated with variations in ethical reasoning. Ethical reasoning levels for auditors from Australia and China are expected to be different since auditors from China and Australia are also different in terms of the cultural dimensions of long term orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance and individualism. The Defining Issues Tests measuring ethical reasoning P scores were distributed to auditors from Australia and China (...) including Hong Kong and The Chinese Mainland. Results show that auditors from Australia have higher ethical reasoning scores than those from China, consistent with Hofstede''s Culture Theory predictions. (shrink)

Business and society researchers, as well as practitioners, have been critiqued for ignoring those with less voice and power often referred to as “fringe stakeholders.” Existing methods used in B&S research often fail to address issues of meaningful participation, voice and power, especially in developing countries. In this article, we stress the utility of visual participatory research methods in B&S research to fill this gap. Through a case study on engaging Ghanaian cocoa farmers on gender inequality issues, we explore how (...) VPR methods may be used by researchers to achieve more inclusive, and thus more credible, stakeholder research that can improve decision making within businesses. Furthermore, we argue that ingrained social and environmental problems tackled by B&S research and the unique context in which they occur may open up new opportunities to develop participatory visual methods for social change. (shrink)

In _Sentient Flesh _R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause... us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as (...) music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, _Sentient Flesh _offers a major intervention in the black study of life. (shrink)

Recent advances in the brain sciences have dramatically improved our understanding of brain function. As we find out more and more about what makes us tick, we must stop and consider the ethical implications of this new found knowledge. This ground-breaking book on the emerging field of neuroethics answers many pertinent questions, such as: What makes monitoring and manipulating the human brain so ethically challenging? Will having a new biology of the brain through imaging make us less responsible for our (...) behavior and lose our free will? Should certain brain scan studies be disallowed on the basis of moral grounds? A distinguished group of contributors from a wide range of fields make this an invaluable introduction to neuroethics. (shrink)

On the morning of Friday, June 24, 2022, over half of the population of the United States was stripped of a fundamental constitutional right. And, within minutes, the reverberations of the Supreme...

The growing global prominence of Chinese state-owned enterprises brings new dimensions to our understanding of multi-national corporations and human rights issues. This article constructs a three-level framework that enables the mapping of transnational, national, and intra-organizational human rights pressures, and uses this framework to identify and analyze the human rights that Chinese SOEs report concern with. The analysis provided suggests that while China’s most global SOEs are subject to transnational pressures to respect all human rights, such pressures appear outweighed by (...) those encouraging them to concentrate on only some human rights within their national and intra-organizational environment. The article concludes by identifying a number of ways in which our conceptual framework and empirical findings can inform future research. (shrink)

This article explores how the shift from print to electronic calendars materializes and exacerbates a distinctively quantitative, “spreadsheet” orientation to time. Drawing on interviews with engineers, I argue that calendaring systems are emblematic of a larger design rationale in Silicon Valley to mechanize human thought and action in order to make them more efficient and reliable. The belief that technology can be profitably employed to control and manage time has a long history and continues to animate contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries of (...) what automation will deliver. In the current moment we live in the age of the algorithm and machine learning, so it is no wonder, then, that the contemporary design of digital calendars is driven by a vision of intelligent time management. As I go on to show in the second part of the article, this vision is increasingly realized in the form of intelligent digital assistants whose tracking capacities and behavioral algorithms aim to solve life’s existential problem—how best to organize the time of our lives. This article contributes to STS scholarship on the role of technological artifacts in generating new temporalities that shape people’s perception of time, how they act in the world, and how they understand themselves. (shrink)

Reputation is a commercially valuable asset. This book focuses upon how enhanced reputation can contribute to commercial asset management through increased share price premium and competitive performance, while reputation loss can significantly erode the ability of the business to successfully retain market share, maximize shareholder value, raise finance, manage debt, and remain independent. It provides practical models and checklists designed to plan reputation management and risk communication strategies.

Benjamin Libet has argued that electrophysiological signs of cortical movement preparation are present before people report having made a conscious decision to move, and that these signs constitute evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously. This controversial conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the electrophysiological signs recorded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl are associated only with preparation for movement. We tested that assumption by comparing the electrophysiological signs before a decision to move with signs present before a decision (...) not to move. There was no evidence of stronger electrophysiological signs before a decision to move than before a decision not to move, so these signs clearly are not specific to movement preparation. We conclude that Libet’s results do not provide evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously. (shrink)

From a twenty-first century partnership between bioethics and neuroscience, the modern field of neuroethics is emerging, and technologies enabling functional neuroimaging with unprecedented sensitivity have brought new ethical, social and legal issues to the forefront. Some issues, akin to those surrounding modern genetics, raise critical questions regarding prediction of disease, privacy and identity. However, with new and still-evolving insights into our neurobiology and previously unquantifiable features of profoundly personal behaviors such as social attitude, value and moral agency, the difficulty of (...) carefully and properly interpreting the relationship between brain findings and our own self-concept is unprecedented. Therefore, while the ethics of genetics provides a legitimate starting point - even a backbone - for tackling ethical issues in neuroimaging, they do not suffice. Drawing on recent neuroimaging findings and their plausible real-world applications, we argue that interpretation of neuroimaging data is a key epistemological and ethical challenge. This challenge is two-fold. First, at the scientific level, the sheer complexity of neuroscience research poses challenges for integration of knowledge and meaningful interpretation of data. Second, at the social and cultural level, we find that interpretations of imaging studies are bound by cultural and anthropological frameworks. In particular, the introduction of concepts of self and personhood in neuroimaging illustrates the interaction of interpretation levels and is a major reason why ethical reflection on genetics will only partially help settle neuroethical issues. Indeed, ethical interpretation of such findings will necessitate not only traditional bioethical input but also a wider perspective on the construction of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In this article we explore the role of data custodians in establishing and maintaining social licence for the use of personal information in health research. Personal information from population‐level data collections can be used to make significant contributions to health and medical research, but this use is dependent on community acceptance or a social licence. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with data custodians across Australia to better understand data custodians’ views on their roles and responsibilities. This inductive, thematic analysis of the (...) interview data focuses on three factors that contribute to social licence – reciprocity, non‐exploitation and the public good. While the data custodians interviewed did not explicitly frame their role in the context of social licence, their descriptions of their roles and responsibilities clearly indicated that they did have some role to play in building and maintaining social licence. (shrink)

There is little doubt that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now a global concept and a prominent feature of international business, with its practice localised and differing across countries. Despite the growing body of research focussing on CSR in developing countries, there is dearth research on CSR institutionalisation in African countries. Drawing on institutional theory (IT), this article examines the focus and form of CSR practice of companies in Kenya. It is evident from our findings that the nature and orientation (...) of CSR differ across companies with operations only in Kenya and those headquartered abroad or with international operations. Significantly, firm-related drivers such as public relations and performance, as well as global institutional pressures explain the focus and form of CSR in Kenya. This article concludes that for the institutionalisation of CSR in Kenya, attention must be paid to conditions that stifle CSR uptake such as lack of government regulations, and the government's capacity and commitment to enforce regulation. The establishment of functional CSR institutions and a vibrant civil society that advance civil regulation ought to be encouraged. (shrink)

Very young children occasionally commit scale errors, which involve a dramatic dissociation between planning and control: A child's visual representation of the size of a miniature object is not used in planning an action on it, but is used in the control of the action. Glover's planning–control model offers a very useful framework for analyzing this newly documented phenomenon.

The question of how psychoanalysts are affected by their patients is of perennial interest. Edward Glover posed the question in an informal survey in 1940, but little came of his efforts. Now, more than half a century later, Judy Kantrowitz rigorously explores this issue on the basis of a unique research project that obtained data from 399 fully trained analysts. These survey responses included 194 reported clinical examples and 26 extended case commentaries on analyst change. Kantrowitz begins _The Patient's (...) Impact on the Analyst_ by documenting how the process of analysis fosters an interactional process out of which patient and analyst alike experience therapeutic effects. Then, drawing on the clinical examples provided by her survey respondents, she offers a detailed exploration of the ways in which clinically triggered self-reflection represents a continuation of the analyst's own personal understanding and growth. Finally, she incorporates these research findings into theoretical reflections on how analysts obtain and integrate self-knowledge in the course of their ongoing clinical work. This book is a pioneering effort to understand the therapeutic process from the perspective of its impact on the analyst. It provides an enlarged framework of comprehension for recent discussions of self-analysis, countertransference, interaction, and mutuality in the analytic process. Combining a wealth of experiential insight with thoughtful commentary and synthesis, it will sharpen analysts' awareness of how they work and how they are affected by their work. (shrink)