Access to abortion services in the United States continues to decline. It does so not because of significant changes in legislation or court rulings but because fewer and fewer physicians wish to perform abortions and because most states now have "conscientious objection" legislation that makes it easy for physicians to refuse to do so. We argue in this paper that physicians have an obligation to perform all socially sanctioned medical services, including abortions, and thus that the burden of justification lies (...) upon those who wish to be excused from that obligation. That is, such persons should have to show how requiring them to perform abortions would represent a serious threat to their fundamental moral or religious beliefs. We use current California law as an example of legislation that does not take physicians' obligations into account and thus allows them too easily to declare conscientious objection. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article critiques contemporary applications of the computational metaphor, popular among Silicon Valley technologists, that views individuals and culture through the lens of computer and information systems. Taken literally, this metaphor has become entrenched as a quasi-religious ideology that obscures the moral and political-economic gatekeeping power of technology elites. Through an examination of algorithmic processing applications and life-logging devices, the authors highlight the inequitable consequences of the tendency, in popular media and marketing rhetoric, to collapse the distinctions between processing and (...) judgment, storage and memory. Such distinctions are necessary for an ethical development of more equitable digital environments. (shrink)

Genetic research into ageing, longevity and late-onset disease is becoming increasingly common. Yet, there is a paucity of knowledge related to clinical actionability and the return of pathogenic variants to otherwise healthy elderly individuals. Whether or not genetic research in the elderly should be managed differently from standard practices adapted for younger populations has not yet been defined. In this article, we provide an overview of ethical and practical challenges in preparing for a genetic study of over 14 000 healthy (...) Australians aged 70 years or older enrolled in the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly Healthy Ageing Biobank. At the time of consent, all participants in this study were free of life-threatening illness, cardiovascular disease or cognitive impairment. ASPREE is thus a cohort of healthy elderly individuals with seemingly minimal burden of genetic disease recruited without ascertainment bias. The cohort presents a unique opportunity to address the penetrance of known pathogenic variants in a population without disease symptoms; however, it also raises a number of ethical concerns regarding the interpretation and disclosure of variants with known clinical actionability. Some of the challenges include how to manage the interpretation, disclosure and actioning of pathogenic variants found in otherwise healthy elderly adults without disease symptoms, whether or not to disclose findings for the benefit of family members rather than elderly consented donors themselves, how to manage the return of genetic findings to the elderly individuals who are now in severe cognitive decline or terminal illness, how to ensure quality of information and clinical service upon disclosure of results to this demographic and how to prepare for the insurance implications of disclosing genetic information under Australian law. We discuss these and other dilemmas and propose a defensible plan of management. Trial registration number ISRCTN83772183. (shrink)

This article discusses the various problems associated with the derivation of mortality measures for ancient Greece and Rome. It outlines two new sets of high mortality model life tables that describe the experiences of such populations more effectively than existing models. The issue of 'demographic borrowing' is also considered, particularly the use of early modern Europe and East Asia as sources for analogies, together with the ways in which the mortality component of historical demographic regimes has been represented and interpreted.

I M M Gregory, R G Woods; Indoctrination, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 4, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 77–105, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.

Despite much research on the relationship between awareness and dementia little can be concluded concerning their relationship and the role of other factors. It is likely that studies capture different phenomena of awareness. This study aimed at identifying and delineating such variation by analysing data from three questionnaires obtained during the longitudinal study of awareness in 101 people with early-stage dementia. The data concerned awareness in relation to memory, activities of daily living and socio-emotional function. Significant differences in patterns of (...) discrepancies were obtained. This suggests that the awareness phenomena involved were structurally different; and that, in turn, this may reflect variation in the intrinsic linking between awareness and its ‘object’ . The identification of such differences is necessary so that appropriate methodologies can be applied to the study of awareness in different contexts. (shrink)

F.A. Hayek studied at the University of Vienna, where he became both a Doctor of Law and a Doctor of Political Science. After several years in the Austrian civil service, he was made the first diector of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. In 1931 he was appointed Tooke Professor of Economics and Statistics at the London School of Economics, and in 1950 he went to the University of Chicago as Professor of Social and Moral Sciences. He returned to (...) Europe in 1962, to the chair of Economics at the University of Freiburg, where he became Professor Emeritus in 1967. The holder of numerous honorary doctorates, and a member of the British Academy, Hayek was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974. He was created Companion of Honour in 1984. He is the author of some fifteen books, including _Prices and Production, The Pure Theory of Capital, The Road to Serfdom, The Counter-Revolution of Science, The Sensory Order, The Constitution of Liberty, _ _Law, Legislation and Liberty_, and _The Fatal Conceit_. (shrink)

Sir John Hicks is one of the highest-regarded contemporary economists, and it is fitting that the new series of _Critical Assessments of Contemporary Economists_ should commence with his work. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1972, Sir John Hicks’ work is extremely wide-ranging, with the list of topics reading almost like an agenda for the whole of modern economics: general equilibrium theory, welfare economics, problems of index numbers, trade cycles, wages and many others. He may, however, be best known (...) to present day economists for having introduced IS-LM curves, now a standard means of Keynesian analysis. A comprehensive, scholarly work, this four-volume set gives students of economics and economic thought immediate access to Sir John Hicks' contributions and shows how his work has been received and modified by others. (shrink)

In accounts of the western Christian religious tradition over the last century, the existence of a positive connection between mysticism and social action has generally been denied or largely dismissed by scholars as an epiphenomenon resulting from the heightened compassion flowing out of the culminating experience of union with God. Relying on the philosophical analysis of western religious mysticism by William Ernest Hocking and more recent writers, I propose that the connection between mystical experience and social action is not only (...) a necessary one but manifests a reciprocal individual and social process by which communities recover, refine, and renew their primary ethical and religious goals and the appropriate means of achieving them. Although motivated by love, the mystic's calling, development, and subsequent activity constitute structurally integral phases of a social process involving a withdrawal from the world, a systematic re-evaluation of the beliefs, goals, and values of the originating society, and the mystic's return to the world intent on and equipped to contribute significantly to social reform. This dialectical process can be interpreted in traditional and indeed equivalent ‘Catholic’ categories of contemplation and action and more ‘Protestant’ concepts of mysticism and prophecy. (shrink)