The essay examines local resistance to the New Deal rural electrification program in the United States before World War II as a crucial aspect of sociotechnical change. Large numbers of farm men and women opposed the introduction of the new technology, did not purchase a full complement of electrical appliances, and did not use electric lights and appliances in the manner prescribed by the government modernisers and manufacturers. These acts of 'transformative resistance' helped to shape artefacts and social practices.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.4 (2003) 393-406 [Access article in PDF] U.S. Defunding of UNFPA:A Moral Analysis Ronald M. Green Ethical decisions made inside the Beltway sometimes have global consequences. Nowhere is this more true than with respect to the decision by Secretary of State Colin Powell on 21 July 2002 to halt $34 million in U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Behind this decision (...) lay the forces of America's abortion politics as well as tangled issues in law and bioethics.I became involved in this debate when, in early September 2003, I served as a member of a nine-person delegation of U.S. religious leaders and ethicists that traveled to China to meet with those associated with the UNFPA program there. The delegation was assembled by Frances Kissling, of Catholics for a Free Choice, which also provided support and funding for the necessary travel and administrative services. In China, our contacts included UNFPA administrators, Chinese government officials, and ordinary villagers touched by UNFPA efforts. In the middle of its week-long stay, the delegation left Beijing in three separate groups to travel to remote provincial regions (Hubei, Gansu, and Ningxia). Our goal was to respond to the Bush administration's defunding decision by deepening our understanding of the current Chinese population program and UNFPA's relationship to it. In the course of this enquiry, I encountered challenging questions that drew on my own training in ethics in novel ways. Historical Background UNFPA is the world's largest organization providing family planning and reproductive health services. It was established in 1969 as the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. In 1987, the Economic and Social Council decided to rename it the United Nations Population Fund, but to retain the original abbreviation-acronym. UNFPA works to improve access to and the quality of family planning services in more than 140 of the poorest countries in the world. It is also very active in providing services aimed at preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. It does not provide abortion services, but works to prevent abortion through family planning and to help countries provide services for women suffering from the complications of unsafe abortion. [End Page 393]Although UNFPA is officially an agency of the United Nations, its budget, currently about $200 million per year, comes from voluntary payments by donors, including UN member states. U.S. funding has been irregular. In 1985, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a foreign operations appropriations measure that has come to be known as the "Kemp-Kasten Amendment." This measure, which has been repassed in substantially unchanged form every year since, forbids funding for "any organization or program which, as determined by the President of the United States, supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."1 From 1986 on, the Reagan and Bush administrations halted all U.S. funding for UNFPA activities around the world on the grounds that the agency's activities in China caused it to be involved in supporting or participating in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization, and, hence, put it in violation of Kemp-Kasten.Efforts by the People's Republic of China to slow the increase of its population date from the early 1970s when, in a striking departure from classical Marxist theory, which had insisted on the positive value of added labor power and denied the need for demographic controls, the government imposed a policy of delayed marriage and birth spacing. In 1979, these efforts intensified with the advent of the "one child policy." (In fact, this name is misleading since the number of children allowed a couple varies significantly from urban to rural areas, with rural residents and members of ethnic minorities permitted to have larger families.) To implement this program, the government established a National Family Planning Commission (now National Population and Family Planning Commission) which, among other things, set up a network of family planning service centers around the country, where birth control... (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

This book studies the history of intercultural human rights. It examines the foundational elements of human rights in the East and the West and provides a comparative analysis of the independent streams of thought originating from the two different geographic spaces. It traces the genesis of the idea of human rights back to ancient Indian and Greco-Roman texts, especially concepts such as the Rigvedic universal moral law, the Upanishadic narratives, the Romans' model of governance, the rule of law, and (...) class='Hi'>administration of justice. It also looks at Cicero's concept of rights and duties which focuses on quality of compassion and fair play, and Seneca's expositions on mercy, empathy, justice and checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. An important contribution, this book fills a significant gap in the study of human rights. It will be useful for students and researchers of political science, ancient history, religion and civilizations, philosophy, history, human rights, governance, law, sociology, and South Asian studies. The book also caters to general readers interested in the history of human rights. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs of the Greenbelt Town program in the late 1930s function beyond the goals for which the FSA photographs are typically known.1 The FSA photographs documented scenes of urban and rural poverty during the Great Depression to make the case for supporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. In the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. government planned and built three Greenbelt towns with a utopian (...) vision of modern living for displaced farmers and the urban poor. I argue that within the larger collection of FSA photographs, which typically portray images of American struggle and resilience, exists a group of photographs .. (shrink)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials , which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the (...) accepted baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act. (shrink)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced recently that food products derived from some animal clones and their offspring are safe for human consumption. In response to criticism that it had failed to engage with ethical, social, and economic concerns raised by livestock cloning, the FDA argued that addressing normative issues prior to issuing a final ruling on animal cloning is not part of its mission. In this article, the authors reject the FDA's claim that its mission to (...) protect and advance public health can be accomplished without considering ethical issues or without making value judgments. The authors offer two arguments in support of their position. First, the agency's mission statement presupposes significant normative commitments and judgments. Second, the FDA's risk assessment of food products from cloned animals and their offspring is itself clearly shaped by a variety of normative commitments. (shrink)

BackgroundThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration traditionally has kept confidential significant amounts of information relevant to the approval or non-approval of specific drugs, devices, and biologics and about the regulatory status of such medical products in FDA’s pipeline.ObjectiveTo develop practical recommendations for FDA to improve its transparency to the public that FDA could implement by rulemaking or other regulatory processes without further congressional authorization. These recommendations would build on the work of FDA’s Transparency Task Force in 2010.MethodsIn 2016-2017, we (...) convened a team of academic faculty from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale Medical School, Yale Law School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to develop recommendations through an iterative process of reviewing FDA’s practices, considering the legal and policy constraints on FDA in expanding transparency, and obtaining insights from independent observers of FDA.ResultsThe team developed 18 specific recommendations for improving FDA’s transparency to the public. FDA could adopt all these recommendations without further congressional action.FundingThe development of the Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. (shrink)

Given the profound public health and economic ramifications of decisions made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the degree to which FDA activities should reflect an approach founded on complete transparency versus one focused on preserving confidentiality of information deserves public discussion. On one hand, reasonable requirements for transparency are critical to stimulating effective innovation, knowledge dissemination, and good business practice. On the other, ensuring the vitality of the medical products industry requires protecting legitimately proprietary information. With current (...) standards reflecting a lengthy accumulation of legal, regulatory, and practical precedent, recent significant changes in the environment in which the FDA operates should prompt a critical examination of current practices. In this article, I comment on Sharfstein and colleagues’ “Blueprint for Transparency,” which calls for multiple specific actions to increase transparency at the agency across five key areas, including interactions between FDA and industry, public disclosure of internal FDA analyses, deliberations concerning generics and biosimilars, expanded access to raw study data, and approaches to countering misleading information in the public sphere. I evaluate these recommendations in light of my experience as a clinician, researcher, and former FDA Commissioner, and reflect on possible outcomes that could result from enacting these practices. (shrink)

Legal challenges to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone have destabilized patients’ ability to access controversial medicines like medication abortion. We argue that federal courts’ receptiveness to this litigation undermines the coherence and integrity of prescription drug regulation in the U.S.

Omnipresent calls for more women in university administration assume these women will prioritize using resources and power to increase female representation, especially in STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. However, empirical evidence is lacking for systematic differences in female versus male administrators’ attitudes. Do female administrators agree on which strategies are best, and do men see things differently? To answer this question, we explored United States college and university administrators’ opinions regarding policies, strategies, and structural changes in their (...) organizations designed to increase women professors’ representation and retention in STEM fields. A comprehensive review of past research yielded a database of potentially-effective, recommended policies (e.g., increasing emphasis on teaching, service, and administration during promotion reviews; stopping the tenure clock for childbearing; providing on-campus childcare; couples-hiring; sharing tenure lines; having more women chair search committees; setting gender quotas for promotion). A survey based on these recommended policies was sent to provosts, deans, associate deans, and department chairs of STEM fields at 96 public and private research universities (formerly called R1s) across the U.S. These administrators were asked to rate the quality and feasibility of each recommended policy; 474 provided data, of which 334 contained complete numerical data used in the analyses, so our results are based on a large, geographically diverse group of administrators at research universities. Our data revealed that female administrators perceived the 44 strategies to be higher in quality overall than did male administrators--but not higher in feasibility--with 9 policies perceived differently when rated by women versus men administrators, after imposing conservative statistical controls. There was broad general agreement on the relative rankings of the 44 policies in terms of their perceived quality. Overall, our national survey of U.S. administrators supported the assertion that placing women in administrative roles creates greater emphasis on the importance of enacting policies to attract and retain women in STEM. Topics of disagreement between women and men regarding strategy quality are important focuses of future policy and planning, because female administrators may have insights into how to retain women professors that male administrators do not share. (shrink)

This paper presents some of the basic trends, issues, and questions regarding the last four decades of international development cooperation in agriculture. The impact of technical cooperation tends to account for only a small proportion of change; the bulk of the variance being caused by internal, rather than external, forces and events. The paper reviews both multilateral and bilateral technical cooperation, and then illustrates with the case of U.S. universities in international technical cooperation. It goes on to question the difference (...) between “development” and “merely change,” and asks who are the real beneficiaries? Finally, the paper suggests the following factors affecting continuity and change as forces to be analysed with respect to any attempt at technical cooperation: biological, physical, cultural, social, economic, administrative, political, and diplomatic. The world experience of the past four decades confirms that without consideration of such a human ecology of continuity and change, well-meaning interventions in international technical cooperation are likely to have unintended consequences for both “donors” and “recipients.”. (shrink)

Purpose: to characterize ethics course content, structure, resources, pedagogic methods, and opinions among academic administrators and course directors at U.S. medical schools. Method: An online questionnaire addressed to academic deans and ethics course directors identified by medical school websites was emailed to 157 Association of American Medical Colleges member medical schools in two successive waves in early 2022. Descriptive statistics were utilized to summarize responses. Results: Representatives from 61 (39%) schools responded. Thirty-two (52%) respondents were course directors; 26 (43%) were (...) deans of academic affairs, medical education, or curriculum; and 3 with other roles also completed the survey (5%). All 61 schools reported some form of formal ethics education during the first year of medical school, with most (n = 54, 89%) reporting a formal mandatory introductory course during preclinical education. Schools primarily utilized lecture and small-group teaching methods. Knowledge-based examinations, attendance, and participation were most commonly used for assessment. A large majority regarded ethics as equally or more important than other foundational courses, but fewer (n = 37, 60%) provided faculty training for teaching ethics. Conclusions: Despite a response rate of 39 percent, the authors conclude that medical schools include ethics in their curricula in small-group and lecture formats with heterogeneity regarding content taught. Preclinical curricular redesigns must innovate and implement best practices for ensuring sound delivery of ethics content in future curricula. Additional large-scale research is necessary to determine said best practices. (shrink)

The U.S. relations to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are since the end of the Cold War revolving around achieving a state of nuclear free Korean peninsula. As non-proliferation is a long term of American foreign policy, relations to North Korea could be categorized primarily under this umbrella. However, the issue of North Korean political system also plays role as it belongs to the other important, more normative category of U.S. foreign policy which is the protection of human rights and (...) spreading of democracy and liberal values. In addition, the North Korean issue influences U.S. relations and interests in broader region of Northeast Asia, its bilateral alliances with South Korea and Japan as well as sensitive and complex relations to People’s Republic of China. As the current administration of president Donald J. Trump published its National security strategy and was fully occupied with the situation on Korean peninsula in its first year, the aim of the paper is to analyse the changes in evolution of U.S. North Korean policy under last three administrations, look at the different strategies adopted in order to achieve the same aim, the denuclearization. The paper does not provide a thorough analysis, neither looks at all documents adopted and presented in the U.S. or within the U.N. It more focuses on the general principles of particular strategies, most significant events in mutual relations as recorded by involved governmental officials and also weaknesses of these strategies as none has achieved desirable result. In conclusion, several options for current administration are drawn, however all of them require significant compromises and could be accompanied with series of setbacks dangerous for regional stability and U.S. position in the region. (shrink)

Much media attention has been given to the potentially shifting voting patterns of the U.S. Hispanic population in the 2020 election. However, far less attention has been given to the implications...

This article illustrates how a traditional U.S. pharmaceutical industry supply chain operates, beginning with pharmaceutical compounds and ending at patient‐dispensing hospitals or pharmacies. Furthermore, to place the problem of U.S. drug shortages in historical perspective, a review of the annual volume of such shortages over the last decade is undertaken. Following this review of recent drug shortages is an analysis of the market forces and business decisions that drive the creation of a pharmaceutical gray market, its attendant “price gouging” and (...) product integrity issues, and the alterations in the traditional pharmaceutical industry supply chain model. In response to persistent drug shortages, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently been empowered by the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government to actively address this issue. To reflect these FDA challenges, a thorough review of these new agency charges and responsibilities is undertaken. Lastly, an analysis of the results of recent FDA public policy actions on mitigating drug shortages, as well as recommendations tor market‐based solutions to the gray market problem that pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals and pharmacies could institute as industry‐wide standards of business practice, are discussed in the conclusion. (shrink)

Given certain well-known empirical facts–including the Bush II administration’s motivations and its actions initiating the war – the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and its continuing war of occupation) is not just (i.e., is not morally justified), on any standard interpretation of Just War Theory criteria for jus ad bellum. Since there was no imminent threat of attack by Iraq against the U.S., the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a Preventative or Merely Precautionary War (which is notrecognized by (...) either Just War Theory or international law as a legitimate basis for initiating a war) rather than a Preemptive War (which may sometimes be justified, if there is a real threat of imminent attack) or a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack from an aggressor, which is always justified). Moreover, the neo-conservative program for perpetual U.S. world domination by the weakening of other nations and the invasions of weaker nations for purposes of U.S. economic and geopolitical advantage (behind the facade of “spreading democracy and freedom”) is not morally justified. However, the moral status of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan is much less clear. Many argue that is was morally justified according to both Just War Theory and international law, given certain well-established empirical facts; particularly, al-Qaeda’s involvement with the events of 9-11 and the Taliban government’s protection of al-Qaeda and its terrorist infrastructure within Afghanistan. On this analysis, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was justified as both a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack against primarily civilian targets) and a Preemptive War (to try to make sure that al-Qaeda did not have the opportunity to use its infrastructure in Afghanistan to arrange other attacks on civilian targets in the U.S. or other nations). But the cogency of this analysis depends on whether there were any realistic alternatives fordisrupting al-Qaeda and bringing its leaders to justice; and some argue that such alternatives did exist. Moreover, even if U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was morally justified it is arguable that the amount and type of force used – e.g. intensive, wide-spread bombing campaigns that killed many civilians – were not justified. (shrink)

To design effective strategies to improve ethics consultation (EC) practices, it is important to understand the views of ethics practitioners. Previous U.S. studies of ethics practitioners have overrepresented the views of academic bioethicists. To help inform EC improvement efforts, we surveyed a random stratified sample of U.S. hospitals, examining ethics practitioners’ opinions on EC in general, on their own EC service, on strategies to improve EC, and on ASBH practice standards. Respondents across all categories of hospitals had very positive perceptions (...) of their own ethics consultation service (ECS) and few concerns about quality. Our findings suggest that the ethics-related needs of small, rural, non-teaching hospitals may be very different from those of academic medical centers, and therefore, different approaches to addressing ethical issues might be warranted. (shrink)

The important trial between the U.S. government and Alexander Graham Bell began in June 1885 and ended in November 1897 with neither a winner nor a loser. The proceedings contain a large and authoritative body of evidence in the case for the priority of Antonio Meucci’s invention of the telephone. They are, however, difficult to retrieve, because they were never printed and distributed and because the typewritten or handwritten papers, which are located at the National Archives and Records Administration (...) in the United States, are to this day unorganized and scattered in various files. The author presents some of the evidence of fundamental importance to illustrate how the history of the invention of the telephone is very faulty on this point and demands, therefore, a congruent revision. (shrink)

International agricultural development as practiced by U. S. sponsored research groups in developing countries has emphasized technical questions of production, ignoring more fundamental social and economic issues that underline rural poverty and hunger. Rethinking the role of U. S. development assistance will require transcending the view that the only way to impact agriculture in the Third World is by increasing the intensity of land use in high potential agricultural areas. The challenge is to find ways of how to further (...) increase agricultural productivity so that the rural poor significantly benefit, while at the same time conserving and regenerating the resource base. U. S. scientists must realize that this is only possible by improving the access of resource-poor farmers to land, water, other natural resources, as well as to equitable credit, markets, appropriate technologies, etc. Solidarious collaboration will emerge from the U. S. siding with progressive governments and/or community-based initiatives that promote political change aimed at securing farmers' control over resources and inputs, and changing the structural conditions and policies that perpetuate poverty. (shrink)

The annual volume of ethics consultations (ECs) has been a topic of interest in the bioethics literature, in part because of its presumed relationship to quality. To better understand factors associated with EC volume, we used multiple linear regression to model the number of case consultations performed in the last year based on a national survey. We found that hospital bed size, academic affiliation, and urban/rural location were all associated with EC volume, but were not the primary drivers. Instead, (...) these variables affected EC volume through three other variables, all of which relate to ethics staffing: the percentage of case consultations performed by a single individual; whether the survey respondent’s main role at the hospital contained the word “ethics”; and especially, the number of full-time ethics program staff. We conclude that EC is an example of supply-sensitive care, and further research is needed to determine the optimal level of EC activity. (shrink)

The emergence of nanotechnology, and specifically nanobiotechnology, raises major oversight challenges. In the United States, government, industry, and researchers are debating what oversight approaches are most appropriate. Among the federal agencies already embroiled in discussion of oversight approaches are the Food and Drug Administration , Environmental Protection Agency , Department of Agriculture , Occupational Safety and Health Administration , and National Institutes of Health . All can learn from assessment of the successes and failures of past oversight efforts (...) aimed at emerging technologies. This article reports on work funded by the National Science Foundation aimed at learning the lessons of past oversight efforts. The article offers insights that emerge from comparing five oversight case studies that examine oversight of genetically engineered organisms in the food supply, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, chemicals in the workplace, and gene therapy. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, the authors present a new way of evaluating oversight. (shrink)

The growth of high-stakes testing in state accountability systems necessitates further examination of their impact on stakeholders. Prompted by broader state-level reform in Kentucky, this evaluation aims to provide insight into a new accountability system's effect on social studies teachers. Using a goal-free evaluation model and case study design, the researchers examined the content and instructional decisions made by a group of U.S. history teachers in response to a new end-of-course exam designed by ACT-QualityCore. The evaluation incorporated a content analysis (...) of teacher materials, observation of a professional learning community meeting, and teacher interviews. The results of this evaluation indicate that teachers generally support the changes in the new assessment system but find specific elements frustrating and hesitate to completely revamp their instructional practices. Considering these assessment system changes occurred to advance Kentucky's goal of college and career readiness for all, this evaluation provides insight into what is actually happening in classrooms and should assist teachers and administrators as they assess the impact of these reforms on classroom practice. (shrink)

Focusing on the U.S. military as a gendered and raced institution and using 33 in-depth interviews with U.S. servicewomen, this study identifies tactics and consequences of workplace harassment that occur through administrative channels, a phenomenon I label bureaucratic harassment. I identify bureaucratic harassment as a force by which some servicemen harass, intimidate, and control individual, as well as groups of, servicewomen through bureaucratic channels. Examples include issuing minor infractions with the intention of delaying or stopping promotions, threatening to withhold military (...) benefits for reporting sexual abuse/harassment, and revoking servicewomen’s qualifications in order to remove them from positions or units. The manipulation of administrative rules and regulations is made possible by the interplay between a gendered and raced organizational climate and bureaucratic features such as discretion, hierarchy, and the blending of work and personal life. I show that bureaucratic harassment has both raced and gendered implications. Ultimately, harassment that is enacted through bureaucratic means is often overlooked but carries distinct consequences for the professional careers and workplace experiences of the victims. (shrink)

Although the first human embryonic stem cells were produced in 1998, the direction of U.S. policy on stem cell research was set nearly 20 years earlier when the recommendations of a congressionally established Ethics Advisory Board were ignored by the Reagan administration. Thus began an unprecedented and unparalleled 30-year-long history of political intrusions in an area of scientific and biomedical research that has measurable impacts on the health of Americans. Driving these intrusions were religiously informed public policy positions that (...) have usually escaped critical ethical analysis. Here I record my own encounters with this history of intrusions and the thinking behind them.My most abrupt encounter with the politics of stem cell research occurred on September 6, 2006, at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Agencies, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Just a week before, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts biotech company, had published a paper in the journal Nature in which they described a method for extracting stem cells from early human embryos while leaving the embryos intact and viable. As head of ACT’s Ethics Advisory Board, I had supported this research. (shrink)

Emergency medicine research requires the enrollment of subjects with varying decision-making capacities, including capable adults, adults incapacitated by illness or injury, and children. These different categories of subjects are protected by multiple federal regulations. These include the federal Common Rule, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) regulations for pediatric research, and the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Final Rule for the Exception from the Requirements of Informed Consent in Emergency Situations. Investigators should be familiar with the relevant (...) federal research regulations to optimally protect vulnerable research subjects, and to facilitate the institutional review board (IRB) review process. IRB members face particular challenges in reviewing emergency research. No regulations exist for research enrolling incapacitated subjects using proxy consent. The wording of the Final Rule may not optimally protect vulnerable subjects. It is also difficult to apply conflicting regulations to a single study that enrolls subjects with differing decision-making capacities. This article is intended as a guide for emergency researchers and IRB members who review emergency research. It reviews the elements of Federal Regulations that apply to consent, subject selection, privacy protection, and the analysis of risks and benefits in all emergency research. It explores the challenges for IRB review listed above, and offers potential solutions to these problems. (shrink)

The U.S. turn toward torture tested the moral resources of all faiths, but perhaps especially of Christianity, which has the greatest number of adherents in the United States. This moral crucible revealed that American Christian scholars and leaders were generally blind to the resources available in relation to the resources available to address torture in a study of scripture, early Christian experience under empire, Christian abuses of suspected heretics, and the just war theory, all of which are considered here. Uses (...) of just war theory have revealed a fracture in that theory between deontological/virtue orientations and consequentialist reasoning, the latter proving susceptible to exploitation in defense of torture. Just war theory also revealed a lacuna of explicit reasoning about torture through the centuries, in a world where torture has so often been an instrument of state power. (shrink)

This study tests the hypothesis that university professors (lecturers) (in the U.S. and Spain) with different money profiles (based on Factors Success, Budget, Motivator, Equity, and Evil of the Love of Money Scale) will differ in work-related attitudes and satisfaction. Results suggested that Achieving Money Worshipers (with high scores on Factors Success, Motivator, Equity, and Budget) had high income, Work Ethic, and high satisfaction with pay level, pay administration, and internal equity comparison but low satisfaction with external equity comparison. (...) Careless Money Admirers (high Success but low Budget) had low intrinsic job satisfaction and low satisfaction with pay level and life. Apathetic Money Managers (low Evil and low Motivator) had the highest intrinsic job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Money Repellent Individuals (high Evil and low Success) had low income, work experience, Work Ethic, and low satisfaction with pay administration. Money does not provide the same motivation for people in all four money profiles. Results are discussed in light of the effectiveness of using money to reward people with different money profiles, intrinsic motivation, and unethical behavior. (shrink)

Land tenure relations have both social and environmental implications, ranging from potential power issues to land stewardship. Drawing upon survey data of landowners collected in the Great Lakes Basin of the U.S., this study builds upon existing research by examining absentee landlords of agricultural land—a vastly understudied but growing category of landowners. By furthering analysis on gender dynamics in the landlord-tenant relationship, the study findings augment Gilbert and Beckley’s (Rural Sociology, 1993) suggestion that subordinate landlord-dominant tenant relationships may be (...) a pattern and contribute to understanding the nuances that co-ownership potentially plays in these relationships. (shrink)

U.S. regulations do not afford consistent protections to human research subjects. One complaint is that they focus on federally sponsored research, with private research covered only if it falls under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration. This paper examines a deeper problem: Even when the regulations do apply, they still do not afford consistent standards of protection. The U.S. Common Rule and related FDA regulations lack a workable regulatory control mechanism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 106-125 [Access article in PDF] Leopold's NovelThe Land Ethic in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer Peter S. Wenz Introduction Like many good novels, Prodigal Summer's 1 account of love, tragedy, conflict, and choice in human relationships conveys an overall message about how life should be lived. In this case the message corresponds to Aldo Leopold's call for "a land ethic [that] changes the role (...) of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." People should "respect... fellow-members and also... the community as such." 2 Barbara Kingsolver explains Leopold's key ideas and updates the Land Ethic by showing how it might guide people today. The present paper selectively displays this relationship, and then suggests some pedagogical advantages of fiction.Prodigal Summer tells three interconnected stories that take place from May through July one year in contemporary rural Kentucky. One story features Deanna Wolfe, who has spent the last 25 months working for the U.S. Forest Service in a wilderness area on Zebulon Mountain where she restores trails and impedes illegal hunting. She has just discovered that coyotes have arrived, but so has Eddie Bondo, a handsome man from the West who hates coyotes because they sometimes kill livestock. [End Page 106]Another story features Lusa Landowski and her husband Cole Widener. Lusa is an entomologist who taught at the University of Kentucky before marrying Cole and moving to his family's tobacco farm that adjoins the national forest where Deanna works. Cole dies early in the novel and Lusa tries to save the family farm.Finally, Nannie Rawley is a senior citizen who grows organic apples nearby and has conflicts with her more senior neighbor, Garnett Walker, who wants to kill weeds with chemicals to keep his property looking neat. Garnett's goal is to cross-fertilize chestnut trees to create an American chestnut that is immune to chestnut blight. Ecocentrism, Hunting, the Biotic Pyramid, and Exotic Species Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic is famously holistic and ecocentric. The ecosystem, a holistic entity, has value over and above, and in most cases more than, the value of its individual components. This ecocentric perspective is summed up in the maxim: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (1970, 262).Ecocentrism explains Leopold's attitude toward hunting. In many passages, such as the October account of hunting ruffed grouse (58-62) and partridge (62-69), Leopold describes the hunt with approval. However, he disapproves of programs to eradicate keystone predators because their elimination impoverishes ecosystems. His classic account, "Thinking Like a Mountain," concerns wolf eradication. He writes, "I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise" (138). But he found that wolf eradication harms mountains, that is, ecosystems. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddle horn.... In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers. (139-40) Leopold's concept of a biotic pyramid explains why wolf eradication harms ecosystems. According to Leopold, the energy that plants absorb from the sun: [End Page 107]... flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers. The bottom layer is the soil. A plant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on up through the various animal groups to the apex layer, which consists of the larger carnivores.... Proceeding upward, each successive layer decreases in numerical... (shrink)

By 20 October 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had amended its Emergency Use Authorizations for immunocompetent adults who previously received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. For the 2-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for adults aged 65 years or older and adults aged 18 to 64 years at high-risk for severe COVID-19 or at high risk for occupational or institutional COVID-19 exposure. For the single-dose Johnson & (...) Johnson vaccine, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for all adults aged 18 or older. These eligibility schemes were endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortly after FDA approval. (shrink)

The U.S.-led military incursion in Iraq and the subsequent occupation has been filled with myriad examples of the Bush Administration using misleading statements in an effort to win the support of American citizens, and in a secondary sense, the international community and the Iraqis. This situation provides many opportunities to analyze the use of sophistry and linguistic sleight of hand. In this paper, I draw upon the insights offered by Hannah Arendt in the earlier context of her critiques of (...) totalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s, and her later critique of the United States upon the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the midst of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Her insights regarding truth and lying in politics shed light on what is wrong with U.S. approaches today. Similar methods continue to be used today since people have continued to be gullible to these methods. (shrink)

In analysing Lester Beall's posters for the U.S. government between 1937-1941, Michael Golec demonstrates the twofold character of facts in art and design appearing even when they are applied to guarantee distinct messages. Commissioned by the governmental agencies to develop a series of posters to increase the electrification of rural farms, Beall introduces pictograms in his first series to represent electrification as “facts of the future.” Its simple forms facilitate the travelling of this facts without loss of their integrity. (...) The same holds true for the use of photographic images for the second campaign of 1939. Following the revaluation of photography as a means for the documentation of social reality, as represented by the FSA photographers under the guidance of Roy Stryker, the medium served here as the authentication of facts. Golec holds, that Beall by reducing the complexity of the photographic images, to create a pictorial integrity of his posters, even despite of the use of a seemingly documentary medium, reinforces the ambivalent factual character of the pictures. So, paradoxically by heightening the communicative character of the design and hence stressing the idea of facts as integral realities outside of artworks, Beall's posters reveal the ambiguous character of pictorial facts creating their own specific qualities. Golec concludes, that facts in works of art and design have a twofold character resulting from their belonging to different spaces, which although meant to accomplish and address different facts, inevitably travel, overlap and bleed into each other. Thus oddly these facts refer or represent reality and simultaneously are a thing made (factum) that present and hold their own pictorial reality. (shrink)

In the forty‐year history of U.S. bioethics commissions, these government‐sanctioned forums have often demonstrated their power to address pressing problems and to enable policy change. For example, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, established in 1974, left a legacy of reports that were translated into regulations and had an enormous practical impact. And the 1982 report Splicing Life, by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and (...) Behavioral Research, became the basis for the National Institutes of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee as well as for the Food and Drug Administration's developing “Points to Consider” when contemplating the introduction of recombinant DNA into human beings. Some efforts of bioethics commissions, however, are not tightly connected to policy change or to outcomes directly linked to a specific report. While direct policy impact is indeed a useful metric for government bioethics commissions, it is not their only legitimate utility. For instance, bioethics commissions can also be incubators for deliberation on a hot topic, giving policy‐makers time to think through options while the political heat has some time to dissipate. Or a bioethics commission may stake out a position that enables a politician to take action while not necessarily following its recommendations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 97-114 [Access article in PDF] Stem Cell Research in the U.S. after the President's Speech of August 2001 Cynthia B. Cohen On 9 August 2001, in a nationally televised speech, President Bush addressed the contentious question of whether to provide federal funds for human embryonic stem cell research (White House 2001).1 This research involves taking the primordial cells found in embryos and (...) transforming them into certain specialized cells, such as those of the heart, nerves, and muscles, with the ultimate goal of transferring these cells into patients to repair damaged cells and tissues. In his remarks, the President authorized funding for research only on stem cells already harvested from remaining embryos at in vitro fertilization (IVF) centers as of 9 August 2001, the date of the speech. In a "Fact Sheet" about embryonic stem cell research, he added the ethical requirements that (1) the donors of embryos gave informed consent to the derivation of stem cells from their embryos, (2) the embryos were created solely for reproductive purposes, and (3) no financial inducements were given to the embryo donors. The President also prohibited federally funded research on embryonic stem cells derived from embryos after 9 August 2001, as well as the creation of embryos for research purposes and the cloning of human embryos for both reproductive and research purposes. He did not seek to ban the pursuit of embryonic stem cell research with private funds. "This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem-cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of embryos," the President stated (White House 2001).The President's speech stirred intense controversy. Many applauded the new policy because it allowed some embryonic stem cell research to proceed, thereby raising hope that treatments might be developed for those suffering from such conditions as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes. Others supported it on grounds that it would discourage the future destruction of embryos in stem cell research. They maintained that although it was wrong to have derived stem cells from embryos, this wrong was no longer remediable and it therefore was justifiable to allow research using such embryos to proceed. Some, however, objected to the new policy because they held that it unduly limited the [End Page 97] number of embryonic stem cells available for federally funded research. Still others opposed it on grounds that it made the federal government complicit in what they took to be the wrongful destruction of human embryos that had taken place prior to 9 August 2001. The President established the President's Council on Bioethics by executive order in November 2001 and charged it, among other tasks, with monitoring stem cell research and recommending guidelines and regulations for biomedical innovations.Questions about the moral status of human embryos have so captured public attention since the President issued his remarks that other significant ethical and policy issues raised about stem cell research inside the Beltway have remained in the shadows. A number of individuals and organizations—legislators, scientists, patient groups, the President's Council on Bioethics, ethicists, religious task forces, and social commentators—have attempted to bring these other issues to legislative and public attention. They also have revisited the more publicly prominent question of what sorts of protections we owe to human embryos. In response, Congress has attempted to address several of these newly emerging issues at hearings and in legislation. I review these efforts, consider developing issues and arguments, and conclude by exploring possible future directions for federal and private sector stem cell policy. The Availability of Embryonic Stem Cell Lines to Federally Funded Researchers President Bush, in developing his stem cell research policy, accepted a distinction between the "derivation" and the "use" of embryos enunciated by the General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services toward the end of the Clinton administration. This distinction was adopted to avoid contravening the Dickey-Wicker Amendment (added... (shrink)

In 2013, controversy sparked student protests, campus debates, and national attention when Smith College denied admittance to Calliope Wong—a trans woman. Since then, eight women’s colleges have revised their admissions policies to include different gender identities such as trans women and genderqueer people. Given the recency of such policies, we interrogate the ways the category “woman” is determined through certain alignments of biology-, legal-, and identity-based criteria. Through an inductive analysis of administrative scripts appearing both in student newspapers and in (...) trans admittance policies, we highlight two areas U.S. women’s colleges straddle while creating these policies: inclusion/exclusion scripts of self-identification and legal documentation, and tradition-/activism-speak. Through these tensions, women’s college admittance policies not only construct “womanhood” but also serve as regulatory norms that redo gender as a structuring agent within the gendered organization. (shrink)

Industry-funded religious liberty legal groups have sought to undermine healthcare policy and law while simultaneously attacking the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Whereas past scholarship has tracked religiously-affiliated healthcare providers’ growing political power and attendant transformations to legal doctrine, our account emphasizes the political donors and visionaries who have leveraged religious providers and the U.S. healthcare system’s delegated structure to transform social policy and bureaucratic agencies more generally.

For more than 30 years, beginning with the Reagan administration's refusal to support and provide oversight for embryo research, and continuing to the present in congressionally imposed limits on funding for such research, progress in infertility medicine and the development of stem cell therapies has been seriously delayed by a series of political interventions. In almost all cases, these interventions result from a view of the moral status of human embryo premised largely on religious assumptions. Although some believe that (...) these interventions are valid expressions of religious values in the public sector, it is argued here that they, in fact, contradict Rawls's conception of public reasoning. Both the prohibition of research involving the human embryo as well as bans on federal funding for embryo-related research place the particular religious views of some citizens above the pressing health needs of almost all, and thus violate the ideal of civility implicit in the Rawlsian standard. (shrink)

The 2003 Iraq war was a major global media event constructed very differently by varying broadcasting networks in different parts of the world. While the U.S. networks framed the event as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (the Pentagon concept) or "War in Iraq," the Canadian CBC used the logo "War on Iraq," and various Arab networks presented it as an "invasion" and "occupation." In this study, I provide critique of the U.S. broadcasting network construction of the war that I interpret as providing (...) a conduit for Bush administration and Pentagon propaganda. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 106-125 [Access article in PDF] Leopold's NovelThe Land Ethic in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer Peter S. Wenz Introduction Like many good novels, Prodigal Summer's 1 account of love, tragedy, conflict, and choice in human relationships conveys an overall message about how life should be lived. In this case the message corresponds to Aldo Leopold's call for "a land ethic [that] changes the role (...) of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." People should "respect... fellow-members and also... the community as such." 2 Barbara Kingsolver explains Leopold's key ideas and updates the Land Ethic by showing how it might guide people today. The present paper selectively displays this relationship, and then suggests some pedagogical advantages of fiction.Prodigal Summer tells three interconnected stories that take place from May through July one year in contemporary rural Kentucky. One story features Deanna Wolfe, who has spent the last 25 months working for the U.S. Forest Service in a wilderness area on Zebulon Mountain where she restores trails and impedes illegal hunting. She has just discovered that coyotes have arrived, but so has Eddie Bondo, a handsome man from the West who hates coyotes because they sometimes kill livestock. [End Page 106]Another story features Lusa Landowski and her husband Cole Widener. Lusa is an entomologist who taught at the University of Kentucky before marrying Cole and moving to his family's tobacco farm that adjoins the national forest where Deanna works. Cole dies early in the novel and Lusa tries to save the family farm.Finally, Nannie Rawley is a senior citizen who grows organic apples nearby and has conflicts with her more senior neighbor, Garnett Walker, who wants to kill weeds with chemicals to keep his property looking neat. Garnett's goal is to cross-fertilize chestnut trees to create an American chestnut that is immune to chestnut blight. Ecocentrism, Hunting, the Biotic Pyramid, and Exotic Species Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic is famously holistic and ecocentric. The ecosystem, a holistic entity, has value over and above, and in most cases more than, the value of its individual components. This ecocentric perspective is summed up in the maxim: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (1970, 262).Ecocentrism explains Leopold's attitude toward hunting. In many passages, such as the October account of hunting ruffed grouse (58-62) and partridge (62-69), Leopold describes the hunt with approval. However, he disapproves of programs to eradicate keystone predators because their elimination impoverishes ecosystems. His classic account, "Thinking Like a Mountain," concerns wolf eradication. He writes, "I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise" (138). But he found that wolf eradication harms mountains, that is, ecosystems. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddle horn.... In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers. (139-40) Leopold's concept of a biotic pyramid explains why wolf eradication harms ecosystems. According to Leopold, the energy that plants absorb from the sun: [End Page 107]... flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers. The bottom layer is the soil. A plant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on up through the various animal groups to the apex layer, which consists of the larger carnivores.... Proceeding upward, each successive layer decreases in numerical... (shrink)

Thousands of U.S. parents choose to refuse or delay the administration of selected vaccines to their children each year, and some choose not to vaccinate their children at all. While most physicians continue to provide care to these families over time, using each visit as an opportunity to educate and encourage vaccination, an increasing number of physicians are choosing to dismiss these families from their practice unless they agree to vaccinate their children. This paper will examine this emerging trend (...) along with the reasons given by those who advocate such an approach. I will argue that the strategy of refusing to allow families into a clinic unless they agree to vaccinate their children is misguided, and the arguments for doing so fail to stand up to close scrutiny. Such a strategy does not benefit the child or the health of the community, and may have a negative impact on both. Furthermore, some of the arguments in support of dismissal policies ignore the importance of professional obligation and appear to favor self-interest over the interest of the patient. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 106-125 [Access article in PDF] Leopold's NovelThe Land Ethic in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer Peter S. Wenz Introduction Like many good novels, Prodigal Summer's 1 account of love, tragedy, conflict, and choice in human relationships conveys an overall message about how life should be lived. In this case the message corresponds to Aldo Leopold's call for "a land ethic [that] changes the role (...) of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." People should "respect... fellow-members and also... the community as such." 2 Barbara Kingsolver explains Leopold's key ideas and updates the Land Ethic by showing how it might guide people today. The present paper selectively displays this relationship, and then suggests some pedagogical advantages of fiction.Prodigal Summer tells three interconnected stories that take place from May through July one year in contemporary rural Kentucky. One story features Deanna Wolfe, who has spent the last 25 months working for the U.S. Forest Service in a wilderness area on Zebulon Mountain where she restores trails and impedes illegal hunting. She has just discovered that coyotes have arrived, but so has Eddie Bondo, a handsome man from the West who hates coyotes because they sometimes kill livestock. [End Page 106]Another story features Lusa Landowski and her husband Cole Widener. Lusa is an entomologist who taught at the University of Kentucky before marrying Cole and moving to his family's tobacco farm that adjoins the national forest where Deanna works. Cole dies early in the novel and Lusa tries to save the family farm.Finally, Nannie Rawley is a senior citizen who grows organic apples nearby and has conflicts with her more senior neighbor, Garnett Walker, who wants to kill weeds with chemicals to keep his property looking neat. Garnett's goal is to cross-fertilize chestnut trees to create an American chestnut that is immune to chestnut blight. Ecocentrism, Hunting, the Biotic Pyramid, and Exotic Species Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic is famously holistic and ecocentric. The ecosystem, a holistic entity, has value over and above, and in most cases more than, the value of its individual components. This ecocentric perspective is summed up in the maxim: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (1970, 262).Ecocentrism explains Leopold's attitude toward hunting. In many passages, such as the October account of hunting ruffed grouse (58-62) and partridge (62-69), Leopold describes the hunt with approval. However, he disapproves of programs to eradicate keystone predators because their elimination impoverishes ecosystems. His classic account, "Thinking Like a Mountain," concerns wolf eradication. He writes, "I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise" (138). But he found that wolf eradication harms mountains, that is, ecosystems. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddle horn.... In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers. (139-40) Leopold's concept of a biotic pyramid explains why wolf eradication harms ecosystems. According to Leopold, the energy that plants absorb from the sun: [End Page 107]... flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers. The bottom layer is the soil. A plant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on up through the various animal groups to the apex layer, which consists of the larger carnivores.... Proceeding upward, each successive layer decreases in numerical... (shrink)

The pressure on companies to practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained momentum in recent times as a means of sustaining competitive advantage in business. The pharmaceutical industry has been acutely affected by this trend. While pharmaceutical product recalls have become rampant and increased dramatically in recent years, no comprehensive study has been conducted to study the effects of announcements of recalls on the shareholder returns of pharmaceutical companies. As product recalls could significantly damage a company's reputation, profitability and brand (...) integrity, this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth and the extent to which the adoption of CSR practices by pharmaceutical companies in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the United States (U.S.), the two largest markets for pharmaceutical products in the world, affected market reactions surrounding product recall announcements. The analysis of product recall announcements from 1998 to 2004 compiled from The Pharmaceutical Journal and U.S. Food and Drug Administration enforcement reports revealed marked differences in the way market participants in the two countries responded to news of product recalls. U.S. investors penalised firms according to the severity of product defects while U.K. investors were indifferent. While U.K. investors rewarded product recalls by firms which were not usually CSR-active, U.S. investors punished non-CSR active firms that performed recalls. These observations could pose strategic challenges to pharmaceutical firms operating in both countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay examines the role that entomological workers played in U.S. public health efforts during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904–1914). Entomological workers were critical to mosquito control efforts aimed at the reduction of tropical fevers such as malaria. But in the process of studying vector mosquitoes, they discovered that many of the conditions that produced mosquitoes were not intrinsic to tropical nature per se but resulted from the human‐caused environmental disturbances that accompanied canal building. This realization did (...) not mesh well with an American ideology of tropical triumphalism premised on the notion that the Americans had conquered unalloyed tropical nature in Panama. The result, however, was not a coherent counternarrative but a set of intra‐administrative tensions over what controlling nature meant in Panama. Ultimately, entomological workers were loyal not just to the U.S. imperial mission in Panama but also to a modernist culture of science and to the workings of mosquito ecology as they understood them. (shrink)

There were two ways for the solicitor general of the United States to litigate the constitutional challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 brought by twenty‐six states and the National Federation of Independent Business. One path, which the solicitor general pursued, was to cautiously navigate judicial precedents, claim the barest increment of new congressional authority, and give the Supreme Court as many hooks as possible on which to hang a favorable decision.The road not traveled was to (...) offer a full‐throated defense of federal authority to comprehensively regulate the U.S. health care system, a multitrillion dollar commercial and social enterprise that represents the largest component of federal expenditure after national defense. The ACA has three cornerstones. First, make health insurance coverage as widespread as possible. Second, improve the quality and efficiency of health care delivery. Third, make individuals and communities healthier. The second and third pillars are sometimes overlooked because so much attention is paid to expanding coverage, but the hallmark of the ACA is that it combines major changes to health insurance, health care delivery, and health in a single piece of federal legislation.The Obama administration's timidity echoes what is strikingly absent from the new law. Although the ACA represents the successful culmination of a decades‐long struggle to universalize coverage, its structure and text never convey the intent that all Americans have a common stake in the health care system. This lack of shared national identity is the missing fourth pillar of the ACA. (shrink)

AI (ethics) initiatives are essential in bringing about fairer, safer, and more trustworthy AI systems. Yet, they also come with various drawbacks, including a lack of effective governance mechanisms, window-dressing, and ‘ethics shopping.’ To address those concerns, hard laws are necessary, and more and more countries are moving in this direction. Two of the most notable recent legislations include the Biden Administration’s Executive Order (EO) on AI and the E.U.’s AI Act (AIA). While several scholarly articles have evaluated the (...) strengths and weaknesses of the AIA and proposed reform measures that could help strengthen the Act, only a couple of papers do the same for the EO or compare the two regulatory initiatives. The following sections try to close this research gap by providing an in-depth comparative analysis of the EO and AIA. They offer, in particular, a critical computer-ethical evaluation of the EO’s and AIA’s pros and cons and similarities and differences and discuss possible ways to improve both legislations. (shrink)