Racism against Black people, Indigenous and other racialized people continues to exist in healthcare and academic settings. Racism produces profound harm to racialized people. Strategies to address systemic racism must be implemented to bring about sustainable changes in healthcare and academic settings. This quality improvement initiative provides strategies to address systemic racism and discrimination against Black nurses and nursing students in Ontario, Canada. It is part of a broader initiative showcasing Black nurses in action to end racism and discrimination. We (...) have found that people who have experienced racism need healing, support and protection including trauma-related services to facilitate their healing. Implementing multi-level, multi-pronged interventions in workplaces will create healthy work environments for all members of society, especially Black nurses who are both clients/patients and providers of healthcare. (shrink)

We bear witness to a sweeping social movement for change—fostered and driven by a powerful group of Black nurses and nursing students determined to call out and dismantle anti‐Black racism and discrimination within the profession of nursing. The Black Nurses Task Force, launched by the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) in July 2020, is building momentum for long‐standing change in the profession by critically examining the racist and discriminatory history of nursing, listening to and learning from the lived experiences (...) of the Black nursing community, and shaping concrete, actionable steps to confront anti‐Black racism and discrimination in academic settings, workplaces, and nursing organizations. The Black Nurses Task Force and the RNAO are standing up and speaking out in acknowledgment of the magnitude of anti‐Black racism and discrimination that exist in our profession, health system, justice system, and economic system. This social movement is demonstrating, in actions, how individuals and a collective act as change agents to drive meaningful and widespread change for our present and future Black nurses. We also acknowledge the Black nurses who have gone before us. (shrink)

An argument in the cognitive enhancement literature is that using stimulants in populations of healthy but socially disadvantaged individuals mistakenly attributes pathology to nonpathological individuals who experience social inequalities. As the argument goes, using stimulants as cognitive-enhancing drugs to solve the social problem of poorly educated students in inadequate schools misattributes the problem as an individual medical problem, when it is really a collective sociopolitical problem. I challenge this argument on the grounds that not all types of enhancement have to (...) be explained in medical terms, but rather at least one conception of enhancement can be explained in social terms—opportunity maintenance. Therefore, I propose that as a moral requirement we ought to explore whether stimulants could be a means of remedying underprivileged children's experiences of social inequalities that are borne from inadequate schools for the sake of increasing their chances for opportunities and well-being. (shrink)

There are some long-standing social issues that imperil Black Americans’ relationship with health and healthcare. These issues include racial disparities in health outcomes, provider bi...

Fabi and Goldberg raised important considerations regarding both research and funding priorities in the field of bioethics and, in particular, the field’s misalignment with social justice. W...

People who defend “pragmatic encroachment” about knowledge generally advocate two ideas: you can rationally act according to what you know; knowledge is harder to achieve when more is at stake. In their chapter in this volume, Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne argue that these two ideas may not fit together so well. This chapter extends Anderson and Hawthorne’s argument. By applying some standard decision theory, we can calculate a precise quantity of “how much is at stake” that does fit together (...) with knowledge and action. While this calculated quantity matches intuitions about how much is at stake in certain standard cases, in others it does not.Keywords. (shrink)

Torben Kjærsgaard’s argues that the term “cognitive enhancement substances” is an inappropriate term considering that stimulants do not enhance cognition, but rather only enhance motivation. Therefore, he concludes that stimulants are best described as “performance maintenance” and not “performance enhancement.” I challenge his conclusion on the grounds that both life’s ordinary, daily activities and life’s extraordinary activities are types of performances necessary for living the kinds of lives that we want to live, which can be enhanced, not just maintained, with (...) the effects of cognitive enhancing substances. “Cognitive enhancing substances” may be a misleading term, but referring to the effects of cognitive enhancing substances as “performance maintenance,” rather than “performance enhancing,” misguidedly minimizes the role that motivation plays into our self-determined lives. (shrink)

Environmental health remains a niche topic in bioethics, despite being a prominent social determinant of health. In this paper we argue that if bioethicists are to take the project of health justice as a serious one, then we have to address environmental injustices and the threats they pose to our bioethics principles, health equity, and clinical care. To do this, we lay out three arguments supporting prioritizing environmental health in bioethics based on bioethics principles including a commitment to vulnerable populations (...) and justice. We also highlight and advocate for environmental law efforts that align with these priorities, focusing specifically on the need for a right to a healthy environment. Our intention is to draw attention to the legal and ethical concepts that underlie the importance of a healthy environment, and urge bioethicists to prioritize both legal and ethical advocacy against environmental injustices in their practice. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is negatively impacting people’s mental health worldwide. The current study examined the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on adult women’s eating, body image, and social media habits. Furthermore, we compared individuals with and without signs of orthorexia nervosa, a proposed eating disorder. Participants were 143 women, aged 17–73 years, recruited during a COVID-19 lockdown in Canada from May-June 2020. Participants completed self-report questionnaires on their eating, body image, and social media habits during the pandemic. The Eating Habits Questionnaire (...) assessed symptoms of orthorexia nervosa. Compared to the period prior to lockdown, women with higher total orthorexia nervosa scores reported eating a lot more than usual, feeling greater pressure to diet and lose weight, thinking about food more often than usual, experiencing greater weight gain, and perceiving more pressure from social media specifically to lose weight and to exercise, compared to their healthy counterparts. We examined associations between individual EHQ subscales and perceived changes to eating and weight. Women who scored high on EHQ-Problems reported seeing more weight loss content on their social media than those who reported fewer orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Conversely, those who scored low on EHQ-Feelings reported feeling a lot less pressure to lose weight, somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight or to exercise from social media specifically, and trended toward less laxative use during lockdown, compared to those who scored higher on orthorexia nervosa. And those who scored low on EHQ-Knowledge reported feeling somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight than those who reported more orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Together, the findings suggest that women with symptoms of orthorexia nervosa are experiencing an exacerbation of disordered eating thoughts and behaviors during COVID-19, and that social media may be a contributing factor. (shrink)

One common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources. Profit, in short, is a mechanism that serves the market’s purpose of producing Pareto superior outcomes for society. This discussion examines whether such a justification, if correct, requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm’s operation impacts the market’s purpose. In particular, it is argued (...) that the value of efficiency, despite views to the contrary, cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion. This position is inspired by, and serves as a supportive clarification of Joseph Heath’s so-called “market failures approach” to business ethics. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S3-S11, March‐April 2022.

ABSTRACT:Does effective moral judgment in business ethics rely upon the identification of a suitable set of moral principles? We address this question by examining a number of criticisms of the role that principles can play in moral judgment. Critics claim that reliance on principles requires moral agents to abstract themselves from actual circumstances, relationships and personal commitments in answering moral questions. This is said to enforce an artificial uniformity in moral judgment. We challenge these critics by developing an account of (...) principle-based moral judgment that has been widely discussed by contemporary Kantian scholars. In so doing we respond to some basic problems raised by so-called “moral particularists” who voice theoretical objections to the role of principles as well as to contemporary business ethicists who have criticized principle-based moral judgment along similar lines. We conclude with some future areas of research. (shrink)

What is it like to live with the label “Disability?” NIB editorial staff and narrative symposium editors, Jeffery Bishop and Naomi Sunderland developed a call for stories, which was sent to several list serves, shared with the 1000 Voices Project community and posted on Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics ’ website. The request for personal stories from people who identify with the label “disabled” asked them to: consider how the label “disability” interacts with other aspects of their life in health care (...) settings; does the term “disability” reflect their actual embodied experiences of impairment or does it fail to do justice to their particular experience of impairment; describe the kind of experiences that are possible because of the impairment(s); discuss how the label has affected their “authentic voice”; and many other concepts about what effects the label has on their lives. These authors share deeply personal experiences that will help readers understand their world, challenges, and joys. Thirteen stories are found in the print version of the journal and an additional five supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. The stories are complemented by four commentary articles by Elizabeth R. Schiltz; Lorna Hallahan; Nicole Matthews, Kathleen Ellem, and Lesley Chenoweth; and Jeffery Bishop, Rachelle Barina, and Devan Stahl. These scholars come from the disciplines of law, social work, media studies, medicine, and bioethics from Australia and the United States. Together, the symposium’s storytellers and commentators offer striking and informative insights into the everydayness of living with disabilities. (shrink)

When health professions learners’ primary pedagogical experience of Black people and how they become patients is through statistics, it becomes very easy for learners to think of Black people as data points rather than as individuals whose health is often at the mercy of racist institutions. When the human dimension of Black people’s health is ignored, specifically the ways that poor health affects individual wellbeing, one of the barriers to proper health for Black patients is how to be seen and (...) considered as a part of a larger problem of systemic racism and institutional injustices as well as individuals whose personal lives are affected by such larger problems. I propose an approach to health professions pedagogy—the experiential race testimonies approach—that can change the way health professions learners understand and treat Black patients, thus changing the future of Black health. The ERT approach pairs population data analysis with analysis of personal testimonies and the experiences they convey. (shrink)

After giving the name “burnout” to the experience of being overworked and undervalued and the physician and patient suffering that comes from it, many clinicians have sought to elucidate further wh...

This is the first volume compiling English translations of Leibniz's journal articles on natural philosophy, presenting a selection of 26 articles, only three of which have appeared before in English translation. It also includes in full Leibniz's public controversies with De Catelan, Papin, and Hartsoeker. The articles include work in optics, on the fracture strength of materials, and on motion in a resisting medium, and Leibniz's pioneering applications of his calculus to these issues by construing them as mini-max and inverse (...) tangent problems. Other topics covered by the articles include: criticisms of the Cartesian estimate of motive force and Leibniz's proposal of a different way of estimating force to replace it; a proposed theory of celestial motions and gravitation, and derivation of the inverse square law; challenge problems concerning the isochronous curve and the catenary; a sample of work on gaming theory; and Leibniz's critique of atomism. (shrink)

In this vast and ambitious tome, Michael Nylan aims to "trace the evolution of pleasure theories in early China over the course of a millennium and a half", roughly from 400 BCE to 1100 CE. This involves dissecting the discourse surrounding a single graph, le 樂, which Nylan translates as pleasure, and actively distinguishes from other states such as happiness and joy. Nylan understands such pleasure as "deeper satisfactions" realized in long-term commitments and often relational in nature. In texts, pleasure (...) is often associated with "objects of consequence" such as intimate friends, Heaven, graceful and charismatic acts and family profession or heritage (p.... (shrink)

Despite the belief that metaphors are thought to be powerful persuasive devices, little empirical evidence exists to support this claim. A first step in examining the persuasive impact of metaphors is to measure recall and production variables concerning the persuasive message. This study examined recollections regarding the Iran-Contra hearings among honors introductory psychology students. Recall of the hearings appeared heavily influenced by externally imposed (i.e., media, politicians) metaphors. Moreover, metaphors used typically expressed an attitude about the Iran-Contra affair, particularly about (...) Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North's involvement. (shrink)

Facilities that emit hazardous toxins, such as toxic landfills, oil refineries, and chemical plants, are disproportionately located in predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous neighborhoods. Environmental injustices like these threaten just distribution of health itself, including access to health that is not dependent on having the right skin color, living in the right neighborhood, or making the right amount of money. Facilities that emit environmental toxins wrongly make people's race, ethnicity, income, and neighborhood essential to who is allowed to breathe clean (...) air and drink clean water, and thus, who is allowed to be healthy. This can be seen in the environmental crises in Louisiana; Mississippi; Houston, Texas; and Flint, Michigan. Since bioethics purports to concern itself with the principle of justice as applied to individuals and increasingly to populations, the field ought to concern itself more with environmental injustice. (shrink)

Jeffery Aubin ,Marie Chantal ,Dianne Cole ,Julio Chaves ,Cathelyne Duchesne ,Christel Freu ,Steve Johnston ,Brice Jones ,Amaury Levillayer ,Stéphanie Machabée ,Paul-Hubert Poirier ,Philippe Therrien ,Jonathan von Kodar ,Martin Voyer ,Jennifer Wees ,Eric Crégheur.

Jeffery Aubin,Dianne Cole,Julio Cesar Dias Chaves,Jonathan von Kodar,Anne-France Morand,Timothy Pettipiece,Paul-Hubert Poirier,Martin Voyer,Eric Crégheur.

Jeffery Aubin,Julio Cesar Dias Chaves,Steve Johnston,Louis Painchaud,Anne Pasquier,Paul-Hubert Poirier,Jennifer Wees,Eric Crégheur.

Jeffery Aubin | : Les Diuinae institutiones de Lactance sont souvent citées lorsqu’il s’agit d’analyser le passage du mot religio de la langue latine à la pensée du christianisme. On ne doit toutefois pas lire ce texte du ive siècle de notre ère avec la conception moderne du mot religion. Les sociologues du xxe siècle ont élaboré des définitions de la religion à partir de l’opposition sacré/profane, mais cette dichotomie n’est toutefois pas une catégorie interprétative valide dans l’ouvrage de Lactance. (...) Non seulement il oppose ces deux notions que très rarement, mais la conception de sacer et de profanus diffère des définitions qui se sont imposées depuis un siècle. L’utilisation de concepts modernes pour l’analyse des Diuinae institutiones constitue dès lors un frein à la compréhension des notions de religion, sacré et profane dans l’ouvrage de Lactance. | : The Diuinae institutiones of Lactantius are often referred to when analyzing the transition of the word religio from Latin to Christian thought. However, one should not read this fourth century A.D. text with the modern definition of religion in mind. Twentieth century sociologists put forth definitions of religion based on the sacred-profane opposition, but this dichotomy is not a valid category for the interpretation of religio in the book of Lactantius. Not only does he scarcely oppose these two terms, but also the very notion of sacer and profanus differ from the received definitions of the last century. Therefore, the use of modern concepts is a stumbling block for the understanding of the terms religion, sacred and profane in the Diuinae institutiones of Lactantius. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address I argue that different perspectives on the normative foundations of corporate responsibility reflect underlying disagreements about the ideal arrangement of tasks between market and state. I initially recommend that scholars look back to the “division of moral labor” inspired by John Rawls’ seminal work on distributive justice in order to rethink why, and to what extent, corporations take on responsibilities normally within the purview of government. I then examine how this notion is related to recent theoretical work (...) in the field of business ethics. I thereafter turn to provide a brief outline of an alternative view that sees corporations as having responsibilities in so far as markets are sites of delegated oversight over the production of social goods that might otherwise be administered by the state. (shrink)

Folk experiments in agriculture are often inspired by new ideas blended with old ones, motivated by economic and environmental change. They tend to save labor or capital. These notions are illustrated with nine short case studies from Nicaragua and El Salvador. The new ideas that catalyze folk experiments may be provided by development agencies, but paradoxically, the folk experiments are so common that the agencies that inspire them usually pay little attention to them. Some folk experiments are original, but others (...) simply copy innovations that farmers have seen somewhere else. Unlike formal scientific research, in which results are consistently written, folk experiments are rarely “inscribed,” because the results are for use by individual farmers and need not be shared with an audience. (shrink)

This article defends a new model of personal privacy. Privacy should be understood as demarcating culturally defined aspects of an individual's life in which he or she is granted immunity from the judgment of others. Such an analysis is preferable to either of the two favorite models of privacy in the current literature. The judgment of others model preserves all of the insights of the liberty and information models of privacy, But avoids the obvious problems and counterexamples. In addition, This (...) model allows us to better see the normative importance of privacy. A final section discusses the notion of sexual privacy in connection to the proposed model. (shrink)

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers' intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this 'Ethical Purchasing Gap' through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, (...) together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several consumers manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area. (shrink)