Kant objects on principle to any duty of moral self-perfection that would aim at the moral self-perfection of another person. Yet, despite the apparent barrier posed by the introspective technique of self-perfecting effort, I argue that such a duty is both possible and desirable as a part of moral friendship. Through mutual sincere efforts at self-disclosure, we escape the prison of mutual distrust which otherwise characterizes social life and consolidate the very sincerity necessary for moral improvement.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 41-43.

Mouse models of human genetic disorders provide a valuable resource for investigating the pathogenesis of genetic disease and for testing potential therapies. The high degree of resolution of linkage mapping in the mouse allows mutant phenotypes to be mapped precisely which, combined with the accurate definition of areas of homology between the mouse and human genomes, greatly facilitates the identification of mouse models. We describe here mouse models of human single gene disorders dividing them into three categories depending on the (...) information available; phenotypic similarities, comparative mapping and identification of the underlying genetic lesion. (shrink)

No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental fnd-ings in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are fndings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers (...) have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed. (shrink)

The problem of incidental findings in human subjects research—findings of potential health importance to the research participant that the researcher stumbles upon while pursuing the aims of the research—may at first seem of minor significance. The number and potential gravity of incidental findings force researchers to face difficult questions. The most fundamental of these is whether researchers have any duty to identify, evaluate, and disclose these findings to the research participant. This is a profound challenge to the structure of bioethics (...) and health law. Both fields approach the world of research and the world of medical care very differently. Neuroimaging research can yield a high number of incidental findings. Bioethics and health law must now reconstitute the traditional vision of researcher duties to bring the researcher back into a relationship with the research participant. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the particularist attack on deductive uses of moral principles, reviewing the critiques of the uniformity of moral reasons and impartiality in ethics, looking principally at arguments from Larry Blum, Jonathan Dancy, and Margaret Walker. I defend the action-guiding-ness of moral principles themselves, but consider various ways to accommodate the objections coming fromparticularism. I conclude that one objection to the impartialist theory of value must be conceded without qualification: generalism is unable to account for the unique (...) and irreplaceable value of individual persons. I present an example which supports my view andshows that, in the context of lived experience, replaceability is contradicted. Indeed there may be few constants of value in the narrative of one’s life, as experiences overlay supposed constants with continual new shading, and create even deeper sorts of transformation in valuing. In the end, both particularized moral judgment and the articulation of fact with principle contribute to moral discernment. (shrink)

This article examines two questions pertaining to the extension of infertility treatment to postmenopausal women. First, what concepts and principles of infertility practice apply to assisted reproduction for the postmenopausal patient? Second, what role should these concepts play in the development of an ethical justification for extending women's reproductive lives past the menopausal boundary? The argument offered here supports their claim to infertility services on the basis of the formal principle of justice, which requires that similar cases be treated similarly. (...) The cases of many postmenopausal patients are argued to be relevantly similar to classes of patients who already receive assistance in reproduction. (shrink)

The Moral Economies of American Authorship argues that the moral character of authors became a kind of literary property within mid-nineteenth-century America's expanding print marketplace, shaping the construction, promotion, and reception of texts as well as of literary reputations.

This research investigates the development of transferable - "adaptive" expertise. The study contrasts problem-solving performance of two kinds of experts (business consultants and restaurant managers) on novel problems at the intersection of their two domains, as well as a group of novices (non-business undergraduates). Despite a lack of restaurant experience, consultants performed better than restaurant managers and undergraduates, even though the problems concerned a restaurant. Process measures suggest this was due to the use of more theoretical reasoning. Analyses show this (...) resulted from differences in work experience and not other factors (e.g., education). We discuss aspects of experience that might be responsible for development of theoretical understanding and, thus, expertise that transfers to novel problems. One possible explanation, consistent with existing research from multiple approaches, is that to transfer to novel problems, experience must include substantive variability. The social context of learning may also play a role. (shrink)

A critical difference between 1978, the first time the U.S. Supreme Court heard on its merits a case involving affirmative action policies (AAPs), and its 2003 revisiting of the issue was that the context for hearing the issue had significantly changed from that of medical education to that of undergraduate and law school programs. This shift in context mattered. I argue here that medicine has particular interests and insights into the problem of race, and in this, its participation in the (...) debate is critical not only for medical education and practice but for the development of sound judicial approaches to AAPs. (shrink)

A Skeptical View of the Liberal Peace reflects on the place of democracy in the global community. The article pays particular attention to the widespread assumption that there is an inherent relationship between democracy and peace, and that peace most assuredly is derived from democracy itself. I find these assertions to be highly questionable and overstated. Reflection on the philosophy which underpins these claims can only be helpful for international relations. In particular, given the United States’ apparent imperialistic urge to (...) force democracies on other nations as Iraq, the article seems especially timely. (shrink)

In museum settings, caregivers support children's learning as they explore and interact with exhibits. Museums have developed exhibit design and facilitation strategies for promoting families' exploration and inquiry, but these strategies have rarely been contrasted. The goal of the current study was to investigate how prompts offered through staff facilitation vs. labels printed on exhibit components affected how family groups explored a circuit blocks exhibit, particularly whether children set and worked toward their own goals, and how caregivers were involved in (...) children's play. We compared whether children, their caregivers, or both set goals as they played together, and the actions they each took to connect the circuits. We found little difference in how families set goals between the two conditions, but did find significant differences in caregivers' actions, with caregivers in the facilitation condition making fewer actions to connect circuits while using the exhibit, compared to caregivers in the exhibit labels condition. The findings suggest that facilitated and written prompts shape the quality of caregiver-child interactions in distinct ways. (shrink)

Using 452 letters sent in 1990 to Wellesley College over a student petition objecting to the choice of Barbara Bush as the graduation speaker, this article explores how an attempt to expand the boundaries of elite women's political behavior created a cultural and symbolic battle that centered upon the content of education, women's “manners” and civility, and their implications for elite women's participation in the broader Hobbesian social contract for citizenship. The article demonstrates that social class in its gendered form (...) is essential to understanding the construction of citizenship. (shrink)

The phenotype of some spontaneous mutations in Drosophila can be modified by mutations at unlinked loci. The affected alleles are caused by the insertion of retroviral transposable elements. The idiosyncratic functional and structural properties of these elements play a key role in determining the expression characteristics of the genes into which they are inserted. These phenotypes are reversed or intensified by the allelic state of suppressor and enhancer loci through changes in the transcriptional properties of the transposable elements.

Given their heterogeneity and lack of defining markers, it is surprising that multipotent mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) have attracted so much translational attention, especially as increasing evidence points to their predominant effect being not by donor differentiation but via paracrine mediators and exosomes. Achieving long-term MSC donor chimerism for treatment of chronic disease remains a challenge, requiring enhanced MSC homing/engraftment properties and manipulation of niches to direct MSC behaviour. Meanwhile advances in nanoparticle technology are furthering the development of MSCs as (...) vehicles for targeted drug delivery. For treatment of acute injuries, systemic cell-free exosome delivery may ultimately displace current emphasis on empiric donor-cell transplantation for anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and repair-promoting effects. Exploration of potential clinical sources of MSCs has led to increased utilisation of perinatal MSCs in allogeneic clinical trials, reflecting their ease of collection and developmentally advantageous properties. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show that Callahan's reasons for withholding life extending care cannot be made out exclusively in terms of contemporary notions of distributive justice and fair allocation. I argue that by relying on a notion of justice which links the merit of the individual with the fairness of a social pattern of shares, Callahan imputes vice to the elderly as he denies them eligibility for life-prolonging care. Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is a useful tool (...) for character evaluation. One can speak meaningfully of a proper disposition of a person of a certain type (an elderly person) with respect to the good of continued life. I claim that the mean of one's disposition with respect to the good of continued life would be relative to one's age group, and would be determined by that principle by which an elderly person of practical wisdom would determine it. This leads to very different conclusions than those drawn by Callahan. (shrink)

This paper examines Hutcheson’s moral sense theory’s attack on internalism and his defense of an innovative version of externalism. I show that Hutcheson’s distinction between exciting and justifying reasons supports a type of externalist theory not anticipated by Brink, Smith, or McDowell. In Moral Sense Externalism, moral judgment relies upon the perceptions of a moral sense, and the felt quality of these perceptions introduces to judgment an affective dimension. Thus feeling is a constituitive part of what it is to have (...) a justifying reason for a moral act even when it is not the direct motive to action. (shrink)

Hutchesonʹs theories offer an objective referent for beauty linked with a subjective determination to be pleased. As Kenneth Winkler’s terminology suggests, Hutcheson is an eighteenth‐century aesthetic realist, a beauty realist, because the aesthetic object need not be identified with the natural object. I argue that this aesthetic realism helps to settle key disputes concerning moral qualities in the moral sense theory. The natural and automatic operation of the aesthetic and moral senses allows a role for new experiences of beauty and (...) virtue beyond their root forms, and permits a cultural refinement that remains true to a widely held, even if not universal, set of moral parameters for virtuous motivation. (shrink)

Is the lower rate of kidney transplantation into African Americans medically and ethically justifiable? Or is it a form of racial discrimi nation comparable to if not worse than denial of employment opportunities, housing, and educational opportunities? This essay focusses on the medical problems associated with matching antigens in donors and recipients, and the implications of those problems for social justice.1 Racially discriminatory practices in bank lending, education, and hiring provide a context for understanding how medical criteria treat black recipients (...) unfairly. Although antigen matching is only one aspect of the general problem of finding medically suitable black recipients, it presents an especially interesting challenge for theories of justice, as well as for medical research. (shrink)

How could it happen that the very processes intended to assure ethical research in Australia might, themselves, undermine good research practice?This paper describes one PhD candidate’s recent experiences of multicentre review for a Human Research Ethics Committee approved, low/negligible risk, qualitative study, at the crossroad of health services research and organisational research.A retrospective review of international literature about multi-centre review processes revealed that many of these experiences were not unique and might have been expected, notwithstanding Australian efforts at harmonisation of (...) multi-centre review. This paper examines not only the burden of red-tape that was applied to a small doctoral study, but also the way in which the red-tape threatened the anonymity of potential study participants and risked exposing them to undue pressure and distress.These experiences support the view that harmonisation initiatives have not yet developed as the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council may have hoped and that further attention is needed to harmonise research governance processes. (shrink)

The spring I first offered a graphic medicine graduate seminar, I wasn't sure what to expect. Every class meeting included one hour in which the students, from fields that stress rigorous verbal and written achievement, were required to embrace the position of the amateur by learning to create comics. They experimented with putting images and words together in sequential drawn panels in order to tell a story of their own devising. Of course, they did more than draw; the other two (...) hours of the seminar introduced them both to the medium of comics and to graphic medicine in particular.What happened surprised me. Not only did the students, none of whom were medical students, explore illness, disability, and medical treatment in their comics, but they also often articulated bioethics issues as well. (shrink)

The myelin basic proteins are a set of peripheral membrane polypeptides which play an essential role in myelination. Their most well‐documented property is the unique ability to ‘seal’ the cytoplasmic aspects of the myelin membrane, but this is probably not the only function for these highly charged molecules. Despite extensive homology, the individual myelin basic proteins (MBPs) exhibit different expression patterns and biochemical properties, and so it is now believed that the various isoforms are not functionally equivalent in myelinating cells. (...) We now think that while the major MBPs are intracellular adhesion molecules, some of the quantitatively less abundant isoforms that are expressed very early in development may have regulatory effects on the myelination program. (shrink)

Debate over the proper use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research has raged in recent years. With the Human Genome Project showing that human beings are overwhelmingly alike genetically, exhibiting more genetic variation within supposed “races” than between them, many have come to doubt the scientific utility of such categories. Yet federal authorities use Directive 15 from the Office of Management and Budget to mandate the continued use of such categories in research. Moreover, researchers studying health disparities argue (...) that data collection using racial and ethnic categories is necessary to determine whether conditions and care vary by race and ethnicity. Epidemiologists also defend the use of racial and ethnic categories to understand contributors to disease such as the stress of experiencing racial prejudice and reduced access to care because of bias. (shrink)

Museums and collecting is now a major area of cultural studies. This selected group of key texts opens the investigation and appreciation of museum history. Edward Edwards, chief pioneer of municipal public libraries, chronicles the founders and early donors to the British Museum. Greenwood and Murray provide informative pictures of the early history of the museum movement. Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), takes a pioneering philosophical approach to the sphere of natural history in relation to (...) museums. Similarly, Acland and Ruskin discuss and explore the relationships of art and architecture to museums. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIII, Number 2, November 1997, pp. 195-212 The Moral Self and the Indirect Passions SUSAN M. PURVIANCE David Hume1 and Immanuel Kant are celebrated for their clear-headed rejection of dogmatic metaphysics, Hume for rejecting traditional metaphysical positions on cause and effect, substance, and personal identity, Kant for rejecting all judgments of experience regarding the ultimate ground of objects and their relations, not just judgments of (...) cause and substantiality. Nevertheless, each argues that practical activity is not compromised by the rejection of metaphysical claims that others had taken to be crucial. Kant and Hume thought that political and moral life did not depend upon theoretical knowlege of the nature of the self, free will, or knowledge of the true motives of actions or the character of the agent. Because the grounds of morality and politics were too important to leave to the mercies of speculative metaphysics, each moved their foundations to higher ground, insulating the grounds of practical activity from the threat of metaphysical turmoil and skepticism. Contemporary philosophers have generally followed Hume and Kant in this regard, but often select very different strategies. Some think that the best way to avoid the problems associated with contemporary scientific ontologies is to separate ethics from the factual domain entirely. Some give moral and political language a noncognitivist interpretation, and others have interpreted values as a projection of the passions and affections of the subject or as the constructions of suitably situated practical reasoners.2 At the same time there has been a resurgence of interest in moral realism. Moral realists think that the objectivity of moral discourse, and hence the Susan M. Purviance is at the Department of Philosophy, The University of Toledo, Toledo OH 43606-3390 USA. 196 Susan M. Purviance possibility of moral truth, depend upon the existence of moral facts.3 Moral realists have tended to concentrate on the role of facts in establishing the truth of general moral principles, or the Tightness or moral value of particular individual actions. For moral realists, moral facts are the states of affairs that make general moral principles or particular moral judgments true. Whether these facts are of a naturalistic sort or not, whether they are literally on a par with natural facts, or whether they simply play the same role in practical knowledge that natural facts play in theoretical knowledge, is an open question. Moral realists often are naturalists, like David O. Brink and Jonathan Dancy, but they may be nonnaturalists, like G. E. Moore.4 Ethical naturalism accounts for moral motivation and the cultivation of good character in terms of moral qualities, and many hope to ground it in (or at least show that it is compatible with) the scientific understanding of objects and their relations and qualities. Naturalism is only one option, but realism has received support because it is not clear that antirealists have developed a convincing alternative to the grounding of concepts of moral agency and moral judgment in some sort of moral facts. Questions abound about what it means to ascribe responsibility to a moral self and how we can defend a notion of enduring character. Although moral realists have paid less attention to the ontological status of virtues and character traits than to moral principles, their status is equally important. Here the concern is with the sort of metaphysics of the self thought to be necessary to account for moral agency, responsibility, praise, and blame. I shall argue that there is a class of moral facts that justify or perhaps merely vindicate the ascription of moral powers to agents, and that these are the sorts of facts another sort of theorist is interested in, whereas the states of affairs that make moral judgments true are the sorts of facts that moral realists have been interested in. In order to distinguish this use of moral facts I shall call this sort of theory a Fact of Agency Theory, and it is a version of this theory that can be found in Hume's discussion of the problem of the self and the indirect passions. A realist metaphysics of morals needs to address two questions, the question of the reality of the... (shrink)

It is argued that the key to understanding the Doctrine of the Fact of reason lies in clarifying what Kant meant by a fact for moral practice. It is suggested that the facticity of the Fact of Reason must be understood in both a noetic and a performative aspect. Dietrich Henrich's interpretation is discussed, and it is argued that it risks reducing the Fact of Reason exclusively to its noetic function in moral ontology, and that it ignores the fact that (...) this is a doctrine of self-discovery, not of self-constitution. (shrink)

In confronting the insalubrious ramifications of globalization, human rights scholars and activists have argued for greater national and international responsibility pursuant to the human right to health. Codified seminally in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the right to health proclaims that states bear an obligation to realize the “highest attainable standard” of health for all. However, in pressing for the highest attainable standard for each individual, the right to health has been ineffective in (...) compelling states to address burgeoning inequalities in underlying determinants of health, focusing on individual medical treatments at the expense of public health systems. This article contends that the paradigm of individual health, focused on a right to individual medical care, is incapable of responding to health inequities in a globalized world and thereby hampers efforts to operationalize health rights through public health systems. While the right to health has evolved in international discourse over time, this evolution of the individual right to health cannot address the harmful societal ramifications of economic globalization. Rather than relying solely upon an individual right to medical care, envisioning a collective right to public health – a right applied at the societal level to address underlying determinants of health – would alleviate many of the injurious health inequities of globalization. (shrink)