State health departments are at the core of the United States public health infrastructure. Surveillance to monitor trends in disease and injury; the development, coordination, and delivery of services; and public education are some of the core functions health department employees oversee every day. As such, agencies and their employees are well positioned to inform policy decisions that affect the public’s health. However, little is known about the role of health department staff — a sizeable proportion of the public health (...) workforce — as advocates for public health policies, independent of their agency roles. Anecdotally, some health department employees with whom we have spoken expressed reluctance to engage in policy advocacy for fear of violating little known or understood agency or state rules. (shrink)

This book presents views of the concept of intention and its relationship to communication from three perspectives: philosphy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. The book is a record of a workshop held in 1987.

The best-interests standard is a widely used ethical, legal, and social basis for policy and decision-making involving children and other incompetent persons. It is under attack, however, as self-defeating, individualistic, unknowable, vague, dangerous, and open to abuse. The author defends this standard by identifying its employment, first, as a threshold for intervention and judgment (as in child abuse and neglect rulings), second, as an ideal to establish policies or prima facie duties, and, third, as a standard of reasonableness. Criticisms of (...) the best-interests standard are reconsidered after clarifying these different meanings. (shrink)

In the long section of anapaests with which they make their entry, the old men of Argos methodically deliver three essential messages to the audience: 40–71. It is the tenth year of the Trojan War. 72–82. We are men who were too old to go and fight in it. 83–103. Some new situation seems to be indicated by the fact that Clytemnestra is organizing sacrifices throughout the town.

Recalcitrant disputes among health care providers and patients or their families may signal deep cultural differences about what interventions are needed or about clinicians’s professional duties. These issues arose in relation to a mother’s request for hymenoplasty or revirgination for her minor daughter to enable an overseas, forced marriage and protect her from an honor killing. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology committee recommends against members performing a hymenoplasty or other female genital cosmetic surgeries due to a lack of (...) data concerning their safety and efficacy. A key issue in such cases is how to determine what is in the minor’s best interest and the scope of health care moral or professional’s duties. The Best Interests Standard can serve as a powerful moral tool for resolving cross-cultural disputes and identifying needed policy. (shrink)

Background: The search for genetic variants between racial/ethnic groups to explain differential disease susceptibility and drug response has provoked sharp criticisms, challenging the appropriateness of using race/ethnicity as a variable in genetics research, because such categories are social constructs and not biological classifications.Objectives: To gain insight into how a group of genetic scientists conceptualise and use racial/ethnic variables in their work and their strategies for managing the ethical issues and consequences of this practice.Methods: In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with a (...) purposive sample of 30 genetic researchers who use racial/ethnic variables in their research. Standard qualitative methods of content analysis were used.Results: Most of the genetic researchers viewed racial/ethnic variables as arbitrary and very poorly defined, and in turn as scientifically inadequate. However, most defended their use, describing them as useful proxy variables on a road to “imminent medical progress”. None had developed overt strategies for addressing these inadequacies, with many instead asserting that science will inevitably correct itself and saying that meanwhile researchers should “be careful” in the language chosen for reporting findings.Conclusions: While the legitimacy and consequences of using racial/ethnic variables in genetics research has been widely criticised, ethical oversight is left to genetic researchers themselves. Given the general vagueness and imprecision we found amongst these researchers regarding their use of these variables, they do not seem well equipped for such an undertaking. It would seem imperative that research ethicist move forward to develop specific policies and practices to assure the scientific integrity of genetic research on biological differences between population groups. (shrink)

We argue that, under certain plausible assumptions, de Sitter space settles into a quiescent vacuum in which there are no dynamical quantum fluctuations. Such fluctuations require either an evolving microstate, or time-dependent histories of out-of-equilibrium recording devices, which we argue are absent in stationary states. For a massive scalar field in a fixed de Sitter background, the cosmic no-hair theorem implies that the state of the patch approaches the vacuum, where there are no fluctuations. We argue that an analogous conclusion (...) holds whenever a patch of de Sitter is embedded in a larger theory with an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, including semiclassical quantum gravity with false vacua or complementarity in theories with at least one Minkowski vacuum. This reasoning provides an escape from the Boltzmann brain problem in such theories. It also implies that vacuum states do not uptunnel to higher-energy vacua and that perturbations do not decohere while slow-roll inflation occurs, suggesting that eternal inflation is much less common than often supposed. On the other hand, if a de Sitter patch is a closed system with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, there will be Poincaré recurrences and dynamical Boltzmann fluctuations into lower-entropy states. Our analysis does not alter the conventional understanding of the origin of density fluctuations from primordial inflation, since reheating naturally generates a high-entropy environment and leads to decoherence, nor does it affect the existence of non-dynamical vacuum fluctuations such as those that give rise to the Casimir effect. (shrink)

Bioethics is best viewed as both a second-order discipline and also part of public discourse. Since their goals differ, some bioethical activities are more usefully viewed as advancing public discourse than academic disciplines. For example, the “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights” sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization seeks to promote ethical guidance on bioethical issues. From the vantage of philosophical ethics, it fails to rank or specify its stated principles, justify controversial principles, clarify key (...) terms, or say what is meant by calling potentially conflicting norms “foundational.” From the vantage of improving the public discourse about bioethical problems and seeking ethical solutions in the public arena, however, this document may have an important role. The goals and relations between bioethics as a second-order discipline and public discourse are explored. (shrink)

Catalexis was the subject of an important recent article by L. P. E. Parker. There is one particular aspect of it that she does not touch, and that ought not to be left out of account: its presumable Indo-European origins. Consideration of this aspect leads to the drawing of distinctions which otherwise tend to escape notice.

Bicycle helmets protect against head injury. Mandatory helmet laws likely increase their use. Although 21 states and Washington, DC have mandatory helmet laws for youth bicyclists, no U.S. state has a mandatory helmet law that applies to all ages; however, some localities have all-age helmet laws for bicyclists. This study abstracted local helmet laws applicable to all-ages to examine their elements.

Purpose. Based on the study of philosophical anthropological concepts, to highlight the project of personality in different historical periods, to reveal the meaning of humanistic issues in the postmodern epoch, to identify the essential features of the image of human of the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the principles of historicism, integrity, objectivity regarding the mastery of the issue of person’s image in postmodernism. The research (...) applied comparative-historical, culturological, analytical, axiological approaches to reveal the problem of individuality in the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. The theoretical basis of the article consists of scientific works in the field of philosophical anthropology, history, cultural studies, and aesthetics. Originality. The author revealed the peculiarities of transformation of the personality model from antiquity to postmodernism, specified the image of man of the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. Conclusions. The analysis of anthropological ideas of Western philosophy of different ages shows the variety of views about understanding the nature of the person, its complexity and ambiguity. In the epoch of postmodernism humanistic issues are of particular relevance, which is connected with social and political uncertainty, domination of mass consciousness, loss of national and cultural identity. The image of a person of this period is deprived of a solid foundation, it is blurred and relative. The destruction of faith in the absolute in the context of the second half of the twentieth century contributed to the formation of confidence in the interdependence of all things, raised the problem of the personality image to a new ontological level. Orientation in the achievements of European civilization, perception of its anthropological experience, intercultural dialogue contribute to the productive use of the achievements of mankind in order to understand the modern person and to form its adequate image. In its essence, postmodernism does not set the goal to realize a retrospection of subject type. However, separating from the cultural memory the excerpts of ideas about a person, by certain styles and directions, it builds on their formations its own eclectic image of the individual. (shrink)

Mishel Fuco not only influenced the consciousness of modern West, but changed the modus of thinking, the way of perception of many traditional notions, transformed the opinions about the reality, history, person. Philosopher’s principle research programme which attaches the entirety to his works is “archeology of knowledge” programme, the search of human knowledge’s original layers. Let us mark that all Fuco’s works in 1960s are devoted to main aim: to clear up the conditions of historical origin of different mental aims (...) and social institutions in the culture of the Modern Time. Though in the whole this common aim remained for Fuco invariable, but the level on which he realizes his research search is changing constantly and rather logically. Relations of power, and to be more exact,accumulations of power and knowledge, social and cognitive which define all the aggregate of specific possibilities of culture in each given historical period. More than that the philosopher offers the particular prospects of sight of modern society and precisely totality of power relations, its ubiquitous nature and specific productivity which produces itself in each moment in any point or rather in any attitude from one point to another. From Fuco’s point of view the power is everywhere and not because it involves everything but because it comes from everywhere. The power is productive in that degree in which it is not associated with one definite imperious instance but pierces all kinds of activity in society, putting on its indelible stamp, developing under definite angle and due to this factit causes products, produced by them. The power induces and at the same time determines the fact which appears as a result of its inducement. The thirst of supremacy, which surrounds the individual and is focused on it as on the center of its use of force, comes out as a defining sign. It should be noticed that Fuco’s conception of power is not reduced to the understanding it as anonymous impersonal net of relations, piercing all society. It is supplemented by power treatment,coming out in “designed” look of definite imperious structure or imperious institute. (shrink)

By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis, De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear (...) to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together. (shrink)

Misattributed paternity or ‘false’ paternity is when a man is wrongly thought, by himself and possibly by others, to be the biological father of a child. Nowadays, because of the progression of genetics and genomics the possibility of finding misattributed paternity during familial genetic testing has increased. In contrast to other medical information, which pertains primarily to individuals, information obtained by genetic testing and/or pedigree analysis necessarily has implications for other biologically related members in the family. Disclosing or not a (...) misattributed paternity has a number of different biological and social consequences for the people involved. Such an issue presents important ethical and deontological challenges. The debate centres on whether or not to inform the family and, particularly, whom in the family, about the possibility that misattributed paternity might be discovered incidentally, and whether or not it is the duty of the healthcare professional to disclose the results and to whom. In this paper, we consider the different perspectives and reported problems, and analyse their cultural, ethical and legal dimensions. We compare the position of HCPs from an Italian and British point of view, particularly their role in genetic counselling. We discuss whether the Oviedo Convention of the Council of Europe can be seen as a basis for enriching the debate. (shrink)

This paper focuses on natural dualities for varieties of bilattice-based algebras. Such varieties have been widely studied as semantic models in situations where information is incomplete or inconsistent. The most popular tool for studying bilattices-based algebras is product representation. The authors recently set up a widely applicable algebraic framework which enabled product representations over a base variety to be derived in a uniform and categorical manner. By combining this methodology with that of natural duality theory, we demonstrate how to build (...) a natural duality for any bilattice-based variety which has a suitable product representation over a dualisable base variety. This procedure allows us systematically to present economical natural dualities for many bilattice-based varieties, for most of which no dual representation has previously been given. Among our results we highlight that for bilattices with a generalised conflation operation. Here both the associated product representation and the duality are new. Finally we outline analogous procedures for pre-bilattice-based algebras. (shrink)