The use of genetic technologies within the equine industries has become increasingly common since the horse genome was published in 2009 (Wade et al. 2009). Testing for genes coding for disease in...

This article explores the accounts of Canadian-trained health professionals working in humanitarian and development organizations who considered not treating a patient or group of patients because of resource limitations. In the narratives, not treating the patient(s) was sometimes understood as the right thing to do, and sometimes as wrong. In analyzing participants’ narratives we draw attention to how medications and equipment are represented. In one type of narrative, medications and equipment are represented primarily as scarce resources; in another, they are (...) represented as patient care. In the contexts respondents were working, medications and equipment were often both patient care interventions and scarce resources. The analytic point is that health professionals tend to emphasize one conceptualization over the other in coming to assert that not treating is right, or wrong. Rendering tacit ethical frameworks more explicit makes them available for reflection and debate. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is an integral component of good medical practice. Many researchers have investigated measures to improve the quality of informed consent, but it is not clear which techniques work best and why. To address this problem, we propose developing a core outcome set to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery in adult patients with capacity. Part of this process involves reviewing existing research that has reported what is important to patients and doctors in the (...) informed consent process. Methods This qualitative synthesis comprises four phases: identification of published papers and determining their relevance; appraisal of the quality of the papers; identification and summary of the key findings from each paper while determining the definitiveness of each finding against the primary data; comparison of key themes between papers such that findings are linked across studies. Results Searches of bibliographic databases returned 11,073 titles. Of these, 16 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1996 and 2016 and included a total of 367 patients and 74 health care providers. Thirteen studies collected data using in-depth interviews and constant comparison was the most common means of qualitative analysis. A total of 94 findings were extracted from the primary papers and divided into 17 categories and ultimately 6 synthesised findings related to: patient characteristics, knowledge, communication, the model patient, trust and decision making. Conclusions This qualitative meta-aggregation is the first to examine the issue of informed consent for surgery. It has revealed several outcomes deemed important to capture by patients and clinicians when evaluating the quality of a consent process. Some of these outcomes have not been examined previously in research comparing methods for informed consent. This review is an important step in the development of a COS to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery. Registration The study protocol was registered on the international prospective register for systematic reviews. (shrink)

Humanitarian health care practitioners working outside familiar settings, and without familiar supports, encounter ethical challenges both familiar and distinct. The ethical guidance they rely upon ought to reflect this. Using data from empirical studies, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of two ethical models that could serve as resources for understanding ethical challenges in humanitarian health care: clinical ethics and public health ethics. The qualitative interviews demonstrate the degree to which traditional teaching and values of clinical health ethics seem insufficient (...) for addressing all the realities of health care practice during humanitarian missions. They equally suggest that greater good orientations of public health ethics can thwart the best intentions of health care professionals wanting to attend to the interests of individual patients. Even though neither is complete on its own for helping guide health professionals on field missions, taken together these models have much to offer. At the same time, the narratives of the humanitarian health care workers illustrate how some of the crucial differences between public health ethics and clinical ethics generate tensions in humanitarian health practice. We offer an analysis of some of the complexities this creates for humanitarian health care ethics, and consider ways of adjudicating between the two models. (shrink)

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

When someone encounters an explanation perceived as weak, this may lead to a feeling of deprivation or tension that can be resolved by engaging in additional learning. This study examined to what extent children respond to weak explanations by seeking additional learning opportunities. Seven‐ to ten‐year‐olds (N = 81) explored questions and explanations (circular or mechanistic) about 12 animals using a novel Android tablet application. After rating the quality of an initial explanation, children could request and receive additional information or (...) return to the main menu to choose a new animal to explore. Consistent with past research, there were both developmental and IQ‐related differences in how children evaluated explanation quality. But across development, children were more likely to request additional information in response to circular explanations than mechanistic explanations. Importantly, children were also more likely to request additional information in direct response to explanations that they themselves had assigned low ratings, regardless of explanation type. In addition, there was significant variability in both children's explanation evaluation and their exploration, suggesting important directions for future research. The findings support the deprivation theory of curiosity and offer implications for education. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

_BMC Medical Ethics_ is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the ethical aspects of biomedical research and clinical practice, including professional choices and conduct, medical technologies, healthcare systems and health policies. _BMC __Medical Ethics _is part of the _BMC_ series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or (...) its likely impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field. Specific criteria for other article types can be found in the submission guidelines. _BMC series - open, inclusive and trusted_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evolution of the Society for the Advancement of American PhilosophyJames Campbelldespite my increasingly decrepit appearance, I can lay no claim to being one of the founders of SAAP. When I joined the Society in the mid-1970s, it was already a well-functioning organization—if a much smaller one than today. After a few years of attending meetings, I began to submit papers, and I first appeared on the program at (...) our sixth annual meeting at John Carroll University in 1979. (See Fig. 1, the complete program, below.) While I was not one of the founders of SAAP, I did know them all. Presiding at the early meetings were, in the order of their presidencies, such elders as John Lachs, John J. McDermott, Darnell Rucker, James Gouinlock, Beth J. Singer, Peter H. Hare, Sandra B. Rosenthal, Thelma Z. Lavine, Joseph Betz, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and Andrew J. Reck. Serving in the background at the same time were such patron saints as Justus Buchler, Douglas Greenlee, Abraham Edel, Max Harold Fisch, Elizabeth Flower, Edward H. Madden, David L. Miller, Frank M. Oppenheim, Evelyn Shirk, John E. Smith, and H. S. Thayer. It was a good time to be coming to American Philosophy, under the guidance of a Society that respected the fundamentals of pluralism and "fallibilism."1IThe brief discussion of the evolution of SAAP that I offer here initially emphasizes what the Society has meant to me over nearly five decades.2 As I was entering graduate school in 1974, I was drawn by the American philosophical tradition. It was, as William James writes, my "dumb conviction" that the best answers were to be found in this philosophical direction and not in the others, and that my job was to pursue these answers.3 What I found in this tradition was a refuge from both the analytic style of philosophy then dominant in America, with what I saw as its obsession with truth4 and its [End Page 1] confusion of cleverness with wisdom, and the alternatives of the various continental traditions that, although they pursued wisdom, seemed to me to rely too strongly on the mysterious or the untranslatable. My own sense of the American philosophical tradition at the time was an amalgam of Puritanism, Deism, Transcendentalism, Pragmatism in its various forms, and a large dose of Columbia Naturalism. Through further study and especially through my interactions at SAAP meetings, I became more grounded in these approaches and more open to other strands within the tradition.5 For me, cooperative interaction with others was essential to further understanding. Just as for Josiah Royce, the secret was "the community."6Among the lessons that I drew from the American philosophical tradition were the following. I knew that it was necessary to resist the human tendency to believe that what works for me will work for everyone else. As George Santayana reminds us, all philosophy is "personal."7 Thus, certain thinkers and certain thoughts will benefit from their initial plausibility to us, and other thoughts and thinkers will be initially suspect. To counter this personal prejudice, we need to partake in careful, long-term study. On a related point, Ralph Waldo Emerson urges us to seek insight from others, to accept what he calls "provocation" while not accepting their answers.8 At the same time, we live among these other individuals, marry them, teach their children, and benefit from their contributions to our social existence. In other words, American Philosophy teaches us that people are social creatures—a point which both Emerson and James were wary of, but not blind to—and that our thinking should focus on the world of shared experience. As Benjamin Franklin writes, our efforts in "Philosophy" make sense only when our pursuit of wisdom is related to human well-being.9 This point is so important that we need to wonder how our efforts were ever allowed to narrow and separate from a broad sense of human welfare to focus upon supposedly more important minutiae. With John Dewey, I saw the job of philosophers to be helping individuals to understand and deal with their philosophical "problems" of living.10 And, perhaps more... (shrink)

— No 1, mars : S. Chollet et D. Valentin, Le degré d’expertise a-t-il une influence sur la perception olfactive ? Quelques éléments de réponse dans le domaine du vin ; G. Molina et J.-M. Fabre, Norme et contexte : influence d’une dichotomisation du matériel et de l’évaluation sur la contextualisation de jugements catégoriels ; S. Nicolas, J. Ségui..

The story of the end of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1783, is linked with that of the founding of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh , both of which were given Royal Charters sealed on 6 May 1783. It is a story which has been admirably told by Steven Shapin. He persuasively argued that the P.S.E. was a casualty of bitter quarrels rooted in local Edinburgh politics, in personal animosities and in disputes (...) about the control of cultural property and intellectual leadership. In all this he was surely correct just as he was in finding the principal actors in this controversy to be: David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan; the Reverend Dr John Walker, Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University; Dr William Cullen, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice-President of the P.S.E.; Mr William Smellie, Printer to the Society of Antiquaries; Henry Home, Lord Kames, S.C.J. and President of the P.S.E.; Sir George Clerk-Maxwell, Vice-President of the P.S.E.; John Robison, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Secretary to the P.S.E.; Edinburgh University's Principal, William Robertson; the Curators of the Advocates Library: Ilay Campbell, Robert Blair, Alexander Abercromby, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Professor of Public Law; Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate and M.P. for Midlothian. In a peripheral way, the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons were probably also involved; so too were Lord Buchan's brothers, Henry and Thomas Erskine, Foxite Whigs who opposed Dundas politically. Henry Erskine displaced Dundas as Lord Advocate in August 1783. After the change of ministry on 18 December 1783 he was ousted, but became Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1785. National as well as burgh politics touched these disputes and gave the parties of the Erskines and Dundas and his friends some leverage in London. (shrink)

Inasmuch as a good many of the Australian philosophers one would like to see included are not represented, and some of the contributors are no longer teaching in Australia, the title of this volume is somewhat misleading. It contains an introduction by Alan Donagan and the following original essays: J. Passmore, "Russell and Bradley"; L. Goddard, "The Existence of Universals"; B. Ellis, "An Epistemological Concept of Truth"; P. Herbst, "Fact, Form, and Intentionality"; M. Deutscher, "A Causal Account of Inferring"; D. (...) M. Armstrong, "Colour-Realism and the Argument from Microscopes"; K. Campbell, "Colours"; C. B. Martin, "People"; M. C. Bradley, "Two Arguments Against the Identity Thesis"; D. H. Monro, "Mill's Third Howler"; G. Schlesinger, "The Passage of Time." Though the essays are original and admirable, there does not seem to be anything distinctively Australian, rather than American or British, about their contents. Perhaps the most enlightening fact about them is that neither the Andersonian tradition of Sydney nor the Wittgensteinian tradition of Melbourne which dominated the Australian philosophical scene in the early 1950's is pre-eminent any longer, or even in evidence.--A. B. M. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that disability is typically a bad thing for those who are disabled. Our purpose in this essay is to critique this view and defend a more nuanced picture of the relationship between disability and well-being. We first examine four interpretations of the above view and argue that it is false on each interpretation. We then ask whether disability is thereby a neutral trait. Our view is that most disabilities are neutral in one sense, though we cannot (...) make simple generalizations about disability's relationship to well-being in other important senses. After defending this view, we discuss its practical implications for selective abortion for disability, nondisabled people's interactions with disabled people, and the use of QALYs in health policy. (shrink)