During the past several years, numerous studies have been conducted regarding advance directives for health care). Studies have examined how many individuals have executed advance directives, who is more likely to execute such directives, and whether factors such as education, income, race, religiosity, or family status affect the likelihood of having executed an advance directive or one's willingness to do so. Studies have also investigated the effectiveness of different educational strategies aimed at increasing the number of individuals who execute these (...) documents. Finally, a number of researchers have looked at the implementation of advance directives.Although we now have a better understanding of some of these issues, one area that has been virtually ignored is the reliability, validity, and overall user friendliness of the advance directive forms themselves, and, in particular, of the statutory advance directive forms. (shrink)

During the past several years, numerous studies have been conducted regarding advance directives for health care). Studies have examined how many individuals have executed advance directives, who is more likely to execute such directives, and whether factors such as education, income, race, religiosity, or family status affect the likelihood of having executed an advance directive or one's willingness to do so. Studies have also investigated the effectiveness of different educational strategies aimed at increasing the number of individuals who execute these (...) documents. Finally, a number of researchers have looked at the implementation of advance directives.Although we now have a better understanding of some of these issues, one area that has been virtually ignored is the reliability, validity, and overall user friendliness of the advance directive forms themselves, and, in particular, of the statutory advance directive forms. (shrink)

‘Molinism’, in contemporary usage, is the name for a theory about the workings of divine providence. Its defenders include some of the most prominent contemporary Protestant and Catholic philosophical theologians.¹ Molinism is often said to be the only way to steer a middle..

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also (...) draws on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. (shrink)

KEY POINTS In Canada, commercial data brokers collect deidentified patient data from pharmacies, private drug insurers, the federal government and medical clinics without patient consent. Although pharmaceutical companies are the data brokers’ primary customers, academics and nonprofit and public entities also use commercial data sets, given the absence of a coordinated public approach to collecting these data across Canada. Risks of commercialized patient data include loss of anonymity, surveillance and marketing, discrimination and violation of Indigenous data sovereignty. Coordinated infrastructure for (...) the collection and coordination of health data across Canada and updated privacy legislation would protect individuals and communities and enable appropriate data uses. (shrink)

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” (...) or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization. (shrink)

Inside this complete guide you will find: A guide to facilitate conversation with your family; How to create peace when war has been declared on your body; How to alleviate pain and suffering; How to choose your own end; How to use the dying process as a mechanism for personal and family growth. Filled with inspirational and helpful stories, Mortal Dilemmas... is a book that not only will prepare you for the inevitable, but will also give you a sense of (...) satisfaction and control."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

This article explores how ethics and religion interface in everyday life by drawing on a study examining the negotiation of religious and spiritual plurality in health care. Employing methods of critical ethnography, namely, interviews and participant observation, data were collected from patients, health care providers, administrators and spiritual care providers. The findings revealed the degree to which `lived religion' was intertwined with `lived ethics' for many participants; particularly for people from the Sikh faith. For these participants, religion was woven into (...) everyday life, making distinctions between public and private, secular and sacred spaces improbable. Individual interactions, institutional resource allocation, and social discourses are all embedded in social relationships of power that prevent religion from being a solely personal or private matter. Strategies for the reintegration of religion into nursing ethics are: adjusting professional codes and theories of ethics to reflect the influence of religion; and the contribution of critical perspectives, such as postcolonial feminism, to the understanding of lived ethics. (shrink)

IVF as lottery or investment: contesting metaphors in discourses of infertilityThis paper reports an aspect of a poststructural feminist study in which I explored the discursive formations within which women for whom in vitro fertilisation (IVF) was unsuccessful constitute themselves. In my exploration I draw on data from interviews with women who discontinued infertility treatment, print media material and infertility self‐help books. Specifically, I highlight a metaphor of lottery in discourses of infertility, arguing that it is hegemonic and showing how (...) when women are situated as gamblers, the metaphor is instrumental in polarising them into ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ in relation to the subjectivity of motherhood. I further deconstruct these subjectivities, showing how ‘winners’ are valorised and ‘losers’ are pathologised. But importantly, I show how infertile women who are not mothers resisted locating themselves as ‘losers’ in a metaphor of lottery and instead situated themselves in a contesting metaphor of investment as diligent ‘workers’ and as active agents in choosing the best employment of their bodily and monetary resources. This paper therefore amplifies the marginalised perspective of infertile women who are not mothers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:One Parable, Two Interpretations:Pope Francis and William Langland on the Good Samaritan*Sheryl OvermyerInterpretations of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) focus on its theology, ethics, ecclesiology, and even moral psychology. The parable has much to say regarding holiness. It treats how to become holy and distinct acts of holiness, the exemplar of holiness, and the reality and effects of sin. In the history of interpretation, the (...) parable is taken to offer a model of the relationship between the fallen man and grace, the devil and the garment of virtue, the law and love, Christ and the Church. In short, the parable allegorizes salvation history.1I focus conversation about this parable through two interpretations-Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti [FT], promulgated October 3, 2020, and William Langland's Piers Plowman [PP] circulating circa 1380. Some might hold that Francis's interpretation of the parable is ethical while Langland's is theological.2 Both interpretations of the parable are works of moral theology that intimate distinct understandings of what it means to embody [End Page 541] the Gospel and answer the universal call to holiness. In this essay, I outline the parable of the Good Samaritan as treated in Fratelli Tutti and Piers Plowman (first section), compare the major figures of the parable (second section), and compare their visions of charity (third section). In sum, I argue the encyclical sidelines crucial elements in the medieval figuration of the parable. Pope Francis elides critical issues of sin, agency, Christology, and the Church traditionally associated with this parable—all center on the Samaritan as Christ.Two Interpretations in OutlineFratelli Tutti's Parable of the Good SamaritanPope Francis's third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is unique in its genre. The encyclical includes all brothers and sisters in its scope of fraternity and social friendship and is addressed to all (§1). The inspiration for the encyclical includes St. Francis's visit to the Sultan some eight hundred years ago and the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, a statement signed by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. Indeed, the joint document plays a critical role in the encyclical, sharing a common framework of a doctrine of creation and doctrine of God (FT §5). Because Pope Francis includes all of humanity in the audience of this encyclical and its sources of inspiration are broadly humanitarian, it is fair to raise a question about distinctively Catholic elements to the encyclical.The encyclical chapter devoted to the parable of the Good Samaritan (chapter 2 [§§56–86], treating Luke 10:25–37) intensifies these theological questions. Just as the encyclical is "addressed to all people of good will, regardless of religious convictions," likewise the parable is of universal relevance as it "is one that any of us can relate to and find challenging" (§56). Francis's interpretation of the parable encapsulates Fratelli Tutti's themes.The subject of the parable is, according to Pope Francis, the age-old problem of neighborly love (§57).3 The parable involves several figures: the wounded man lying on the wayside, the robbers, the passers-by, and the Samaritan.4 The wounded are the subject of the encyclical's first chapter. Francis characterizes the wounded as those members of weaker and poorer regions whom the global economy exploits; the poor, disabled, and elderly [End Page 542] who seem no longer useful; children, women, and men of all ages who live under contemporary forms of slavery such as trafficking; and victims of economically driven violence including war, terrorist attacks, and racial and religious persecution (§§§ 12, 18, 24–25). Francis admits that we feel like the wounded, "helpless because our institutions are neglected and lack resources, or simply serve the interests of a few" (§76). However, the primary identification of the wounded focuses on those pushed to the margins by profit-driven economic, technologically progressive, politically divisive, dehumanizing global forces (§76 briefly suggests our identification with the injured man).The parable of the Good Samaritan brings these vast forces to bear our everyday relationships—we all experience an interior struggle when we encounter anyone who suffers (§69... (shrink)

Today's conversations in virtue ethics are enflamed with questions of “pagan virtues,” which often designate non-Christian virtue from a Christian perspective. “Pagan virtues,” “pagan vices,” and their historied interpretations are the subject of Jennifer Herdt's book Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (2008). I argue that the questions and language animating Herdt's book are problematic. I offer an alternative strategy to Herdt's for reading Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. My results are twofold: (1) a different set of conclusions (...) and questions regarding the moral life that lend a fresh perspective to “pagan virtues” and (2) corresponding methodological suggestions for improving Herdt's project that would, to my mind, reaffirm her normative conclusions regarding the most viable ways forward for contemporary discussions of virtue. (shrink)

This essay reviews recent feminist scholarship, autobiographical narrative and fiction which explores nurses' engagement with empire in Africa and elsewhere in this century. Such literature suggests that while nursing work may have improved native health in colonized regions, it also contributed significantly to the establishment and stabilization of the racialized order of colonial rule. Of particular significance was colonial nursing's intervention into the reproductive practices of native women, resulting in the loss of local knowledges and autonomy, the disruption of complex (...) social links and indigenous health strategies, and the expansion of markets for western capitalism. (shrink)

This anthology introduces advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students to today's debates in metaphysics. The book consists of essays by contemporary metaphysicians, and all but one appear here for the first time. For each of nine topics, there are two essays, one "pro-" and one "con-".

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (shrink)

frey Rosen, The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age New York: Random House, 2004, pp. 260.

This paper challenges the traditional account of vulnerability in healthcare which conceptualizes vulnerability as a list of identifiable subpopulations. This list of ‘usual suspects’, focusing on groups from lower resource settings, is a narrow account of vulnerability. In this article we argue that in certain circumstances middle-class individuals can be also rendered vulnerable. We propose a relational and layered account of vulnerability and explore this concept using the case study of cord blood (CB) banking. In the first section, two different (...) approaches to ‘vulnerability’ are contrasted: categorical versus layered. In the second section, we describe CB banking and present a case study of CB banking in Argentina. We examine the types of pressure that middle-class pregnant women feel when considering CB collection and storage. In section three, we use the CB banking case study to critique the categorical approach to vulnerability: this model is unable to account for the ways in which these women are vulnerable. A layered account of vulnerability identifies several ways in which middle-class women are vulnerable. Finally, by utilizing the layered approach, this paper suggests how public health policies could be designed to overcome vulnerabilities. (shrink)

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the propaganda power of Madison’s Solidarity Sing-Along. To do so, I will modify the Epistemic Merit Model of propaganda so that it can account for a broader spectrum of propaganda. I will show how this is consistent with other accounts of musical pragmatics and the potential political function of songs and music. This will provide the ground for a robust interpretation of the political meanings of the Solidarity Sing-Along. I will assume (...) the Madison protests and the Solidarity Sing-Along can be considered a paradigm case of peaceful protest as it has been claimed that the Madison protest and the role of art within those protests set the stage for the Occupy Movement protests later in the same year. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics offers the most authoritative and compelling guide to this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. Twenty-four of the world's most distinguished specialists provide brand-new essays about 'what there is': what kinds of things there are, and what relations hold among entities falling under various categories. They give the latest word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness. The Handbook's unrivaled breadth and depth make it the definitive reference work (...) for students and academics across the philosophical spectrum. (shrink)