The surprise announcement in November 2018 that a Chinese researcher had implanted and brought to term two gene-edited embryos, resulting in the birth of twin girls, had the effect of galvanizing a debate that goes back decades. Should we make heritable changes in our children's DNA? Until recently, this was hypothetical only, and the easy response was to say it is too uncertain and too unnecessary to be tolerated. Suddenly, however, the possibility that there might be real uses for mitochondrial (...) DNA replacement or for germline editing has led to a more nuanced debate, ranging from calls to double-down on prohibiting this technology to discussions of how to permit it for a... (shrink)

Este artículo se postula como un aporte valioso para acercar el cine centroamericano a todas las personas que habitan la región y a los foráneos que sienten un interés particular por el cine que se realiza en Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica y Panamá. ¿Es el cine centroamericano realizado en el siglo xxi un espacio de reflexión sociopolítica?, ¿el tratamiento de sus temáticas conduce a los directores a reivindicar causas?, ¿cómo abordan los directores de cine centroamericano la ética (...) y la estética en sus producciones artísticas? En la respuesta a dichas preguntas se basa la investigación del cine centroamericano. Una importante carga de denuncia acompaña a películas que contemplan las migraciones en sus dos vertientes, forzosa y voluntaria, en búsqueda de una mejor calidad de vida. Las maras son la columna vertebral de la violencia junto a la recreación de las guerras civiles y los desaparecidos. La memoria colectiva, las persecuciones a los pueblos indígenas, la diversidad sexual, el poder de la religión en su versión evangélica y la maternidad como únicarespuesta a los embarazos no deseados, constituyen algunas de estas nuevas miradas. (shrink)

This article presents the findings of an audience research conducted with 86 young Spanish people aged 15 to 29 years. The investigation examines the modes of reception of television fiction, and the impact of the shows on the viewers. Friends’ influence on the choice of program, and the tendency to use social networks to comment on the shows and to talk about themselves, underline the crucial role played by TV fiction and new technologies in socialization processes. While most participants criticized (...) the propensity of television fiction to build extreme stereotypes, they also showed a clear predilection for Spanish programs, and admitted that their characters often offer inspiration to face everyday problems. (shrink)

Positive family functioning during adolescence is usually studied analyzing parents' competences and children's relationship abilities. We present an instrument for the assessment of parental competence, which encompasses both educational style and transmission of values. The objective of the study was to analyze its factor structure and to assess its value in predicting adolescent outcomes. We recruited 2,459 high school students, aged 12–15, in 40 schools from Spain, Peru, Mexico, and Chile. They responded to the instrument and to other questions regarding (...) lifestyles. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out in order to assess the internal structure of the instrument, and internal consistency of the resulting dimensions was calculated. Finally, regression analyses were performed to establish associations between the parenting dimensions and adolescent outcomes. Factor analyses showed a consistent structure, with good fit indices in the four countries. The final four factors include parenting styles and education in values. Regression analyses showed associations with adolescent outcomes. For example, adolescents' life satisfaction was best predicted by Warmth and Education in fortitude. Practical implications are suggested. (shrink)

This essay focuses on possible nonhuman applications of CRISPR/Cas9 that are likely to be widely overlooked because they are unexpected and, in some cases, perhaps even “frivolous.” We look at five uses for “CRISPR Critters”: wild de-extinction, domestic de-extinction, personal whim, art, and novel forms of disease prevention. We then discuss the current regulatory framework and its possible limitations in those contexts. We end with questions about some deeper issues raised by the increased human control over life on earth offered (...) by genome editing. (shrink)

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion (...) of the state. —Galileo, in the margin of his own copy of Dialogue on the Great World Systems1. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. (...) We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. (...) We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and PragmatismR. Alta Charo (bio)Openly, privately, or implicitly, every public ethics committee struggles with its mandate. Is its job to identify a moral ideal?; a morally acceptable minimum that, realistically, could be adopted as policy?; or an optimal political compromise that can arguably meet ethical analysis? The answer appears to be different for each committee, depending upon its subject matter, its sponsoring political body, and the details of (...) its legal mandate. What is universal, however, is that even the most well-intentioned committee is likely to experience dissension over the interpretation of its task and that this dissension will often be played out in debates over particular policy recommendations.Ruth Macklin’s description of disagreement and moral integrity in the context of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments demonstrates this phenomenon quite clearly (Macklin 1996). The epistemological debates concerning the evidence of past practices illuminate differing visions of the Committee’s mandate. For some it was to render moral judgment on past acts, without necessarily concluding that, if the acts were immoral, the individuals involved were themselves immoral. For others it was to use moral judgments to determine appropriate forms of restitution, thus balancing the reputational risks to past actors against the need for and feasibility of restitution to the victims. Still others appeared to focus on crafting specific political responses, and the historical data needed only be sufficient to bolster the policy recommendations.In this respect, the composition of any advisory committee becomes crucial. As fact-finders, committee members must determine the kind of evidence they will find persuasive. This determination, in turn, depends upon whether the committee sees itself primarily as (1) informational, in which case the standards employed by professional historians are probably the most appropriate, or (2) judgmental, in which case something closer to legal standards of proof might be better. The dilemma is not limited to committees looking at history; those rendering advice on science policy need to determine if they will use standards of proof prevalent in the scientific community (consensus following peer review) or the public (scientific consensus coupled with credibility of the scientific community as a whole). [End Page 319]When a committee is asked to base its judgments on ethical analysis, the conflicts only deepen. The “ethics” of policy recommendations are invariably balanced against the desire to see one’s work yield a concrete political response, the perception of political constraints on implementing an ethically “ideal” solution, and the subtle pressures exerted by the sponsoring political body to respond to the specific committee mandate, which was written with the needs of the sponsoring body in mind, not the needs of a wide-ranging ethics discussion.Another complication arises because ethics committees derive their credibility from the perception that moral truth is discoverable and unassailable. To horse trade among these moral truths undermines the credibility of their entire endeavor and can render bioethics advisory committees not only ineffective but even offensive. After all, if a moral truth exists, how ethical is it for “ethicists” to abandon it in the name of strategic concerns? If, on the other hand, no moral truth exists, then by what right do these “ethics” committees claim persuasive authority beyond that of any citizen advisory committee?This is a deep dilemma that relates to the discipline of bioethics itself. Lacking a core methodology or doctrine, bioethics has yet to justify itself to either its proponents or to the public. Bioethics scholars acknowledge that there are a variety of theories drawn from moral philosophy that could be used to guide the resolution of dilemmas that arise in the context of medical care and biomedical research. Such theories include utilitarianism, deontology, teleology, virtue theory, and justice theory, with no one theory being universally adopted by bioethics scholars and no one methodology being available to resolve conflicts among their respective conclusions. While deductivism is the predominant analytical style in the field, “[t]he central difficulty with deductivism is that there is no single comprehensive moral theory, nor even theories or principles of more limited scope, which is agreed to be true or correct” from which defensible conclusions will flow (Brock 1995).But if public ethics bodies cannot... (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement on abortion rights resembles the dieter’s dilemma: one knows exactly how to get where one is going but lacks the willpower to follow through. In an opinion filled with exceptionally progressive, equality-based arguments for reproductive freedom, the Court nonetheless manages to back away from its own ineluctably drawn conclusions. In the end it not only ignores its own best arguments but eviscerates its previous analyses of fundamental rights and judicial protection of personal liberties (...) from the excesses of the polity. (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement on abortion rights resembles the dieter’s dilemma: one knows exactly how to get where one is going but lacks the willpower to follow through. In an opinion filled with exceptionally progressive, equality-based arguments for reproductive freedom, the Court nonetheless manages to back away from its own ineluctably drawn conclusions. In the end it not only ignores its own best arguments but eviscerates its previous analyses of fundamental rights and judicial protection of personal liberties (...) from the excesses of the polity. (shrink)

This research aims to gain insight on the perception that minors have of viral challenges as an entertainment format and the motivations behind their participation in this digital entertainment phenomenon. A qualitative study was performed by way of twelve focus groups with sixty-two minors aged between eleven and seventeen years from Spain. For minors, viral challenges represent a form of entertainment in an interactive context, perceived as innocuous, ephemeral content from which nothing more is required than for the user to (...) have a good time. This appears to lead the minors interviewed to ignore the meaning and origin of the viral challenges they visualise and share, neither do they regard this to be necessary. It is also important to underline the relativisation of risk and danger in favour of spectacularisation and virality. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução da hermenêutica sobre a unicidade de Deus de um capítulo (sura) do Alcorão, de acordo com o pensamento de Avicena (Ibn Sῑnā). É o capítulo denominado capítulo do Monoteísmo, cujo número é 112 no Alcorão. Antes, porém, há uma introdução sobre o que representou o Alcorão nos primórdios do Islã e a sua influência no desenvolvimento da filosofia e da teologia em terras do Islã. Nesse texto, pode ser constatado que, na doutrina islâmica, o primeiro (...) fundamento e o mais rigoroso é a unicidade de Deus. É sobre isso que este artigo discorre. This paper presents a translation of the hermeneutics of the oneness of God from chapter (sura) 112 of the Qur'an (the Chapter on Monotheism), according to the thought of Avicenna (Ibn Sῑnā). First, however, there is an introduction which presents the Qur'an in the early days of Islam, as well as its influence on the development of philosophy and theology in Islamic lands. It may be noted in this text that the first and most rigorous foundation is Islamic doctrine is the oneness of God. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução da hermenêutica sobre a unicidade de Deus de um capítulo (sura) do Alcorão, de acordo com o pensamento de Avicena (Ibn Sina). É o capítulo denominado capítulo do Monoteísmo, cujo número é 112 no Alcorão. Antes, porém, há uma introdução sobre o que representou o Alcorão nos primórdios do Islã e a sua influência no desenvolvimento da filosofia e da teologia em terras do Islã. Nesse texto, pode ser constatado que, na doutrina islâmica, o primeiro (...) fundamento e o mais rigoroso é a unicidade de Deus. É sobre isso que este artigo discorre. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação conceitual entre a obra De anima, de Aristóteles, e a concepção das faculdades da alma no Kitáb al-Nafs – edição árabe – (Livro da Alma, De anima), de Ibn Sina (Avicena), com o intuito de mostrar similitudes e in#uências de Aristóteles sobre o pensamento de Ibn Sina, nessa temática. Destaca, ainda, como e a época em que o estagirita foi recebido em terras do Islã, indicando o seu primeiro receptor, o &lósofo Al-Kindi, assim como, de (...) modo pormenorizado, uma comparação sobre a de&nição de alma dada pelos dois &lósofos, e as três espécies de alma, com ênfase para o conceito de alma racional. Apresenta, também, a estrutura de cada uma das obras. (shrink)

This article examines resistance discourses created and disseminated by a religious minority in Indonesia called Gerakan Ahmadiyah Indonesia (GAI) to counter any negative portrayals and religious-based discriminations. Ahmadiyah is a self-defined sect of Islam that has been the target of physical attacks and discursive discrimination in Indonesia. This analysis focuses on identifying discourse topics raised and strategies employed by one of the Ahmadiyya groups in the country called GAI to reveal their resistance and defend their ‘Islamic’ faith. Various texts produced (...) in different genres namely statements and comments published in media, books, speeches and various articles published online in GAI’s official websites are used as the data which were collected during field research in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The analysis found that, in order to counter discriminatory discourses, the GAI Ahmadis present various resistance discourse themes such as distinguishing themselves from Jemaat Ahmadiyah Indonesia, justifying their Islamic understanding by highlighting religious freedom discourse, including themselves as Muslims and presenting themselves as peaceful movement. (shrink)

Religious teachings express the fact that a human is a social being and associates with various people. In order to have a successful and safe life, we should refrain from any selfishness, harming others, malice and humiliating people and should always be forgiving, selfless and humble in relationships. Interpersonal relationships are one of the most important components of human life from birth to death; none of the potential capabilities of humans grow except in the shadow of interpersonal relationships. Learning correct (...) interpersonal relationships is very important in creating mental health, personality development, identity finding, increasing job productivity, increasing quality of life, increasing adaptability and self-fulfilment. The current research was conducted with the aim of explaining the relationship between communication skills based on Islamic teachings and students’ life skills. In this research, Ayats [verses] from the Holy Quran that are related to communication skills and relationships between people in Islamic society have been discussed, and then the components of effective communication and its role in students’ life skills have been explained. This research discusses the following factors: human dignity and self-esteem, tolerance and compromise skills, forgiveness skills, accountability skills, justice orientation skills and individual behaviour skills. Contribution: The results of this research indicate that according to students’ imitation of teachers, paying special attention to the components of communication skills according to Islamic teachings in schools can affect students’ life skills. Therefore, by improving the mental health of the youth, and consequently the health of the society will be affected and it will bring excellence to the society. (shrink)