The ultimate challenge with which we are presented in connection with social investing is no more and no less than this: enhancing the function of conscience in the modern global business corporation. As with individual conscience, however, corporate conscience can be influenced in two ways: from the inside and from the outside. Investment decisions provide external influences, while management values provide influence from the inside.

Social screening of investments calls not only for investment policy and criteria, but also for information about companies, their policies, practices and performance. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and its June 2000 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines have the potential to significantly improve the usefulness and quality of information reported by companies about their environmental, social and economic impacts and performance. The GRI aims to develop a voluntary reporting framework that will elevate sustainability reporting practices to a level equivalent (...) to that of financial reporting in rigour, comparability, auditability and general acceptance. This will be a welcome and efficient supplement to the questionnaires, interviews, press releases, media reports and other sources of information traditionally used for screening in investment decision making - social/ethical and mainstream. The Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index, the Jantzi Social Index and the Innovest EcoValue'21 analytical platform, together with the SRI community, are all likely to benefit from GRI-style sustainability reports. One of the GRI's key challenges is to accommodate the broad variety of disclosure needs and expectations of a wide range of report users and company stakeholders. To maximize the usefulness of the GRI Guidelines, report users, including the SRI community, need to be engaged in the process of developing and refining the Guidelines over time. The GRI Guidelines are emerging as an important instrument in enabling companies to communicate with their stakeholders about performance and accountability beyond just the financial bottom line. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Coping with Genetic Disorders. By John C. Fletcher. Genetics, Ethics and Parenthood. Edited by Karen Lebacqz. Screening and Counseling for Genetic Conditions: The Ethical, Social, and Legal Implications of Genetic Screening, Counseling, and Education Programs. A report of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

For theorists interested in screen cultures and the digital economy, looking beyond Facebook and YouTube prompts a more refined conceptualization of participation and monetization on social networks. This paper examines YY as representative of Chinese platforms that monetize spectacles of social inequality. I first discuss why these financially successful platforms have eluded the attention of media and cultural critics, and then explain how these social network platforms blend subversive texting with streaming through a format called ‘bullet screen’. (...) This format collapses social inequality into a spectacle of money flowing and vanishing on screen. This investigation contributes to the theoretical discussion of mixed-semiotics, reorients several Marxian neologisms and explains what texting means on screen in both semiotic and economic terms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Terministic Screens," Social Constructionism, and the Language of Experience:Kenneth Burke's Utilization of William JamesPaul StobKenneth Burke's influence on various academic disciplines is clear in the number of books and articles published annually on his thought. It is also clear insofar as academics continue to turn to his work for insights on handling scholarly problems. That is to say, not only do we explore the dimensions of his work, (...) we also bring it to bear on current disputes in the hopes of clarifying or moving past the issues we face. His thought, in short, has a currency that transcends its historical period. "As we meet new challenges that echo the past," writes Ross Wolin, "Burke's inquiries into meaning, orientation, faction, communication, and rhetoric are as urgent today as when Burke raised them long ago and for decades after."1By bringing the terms of Burke's work to bear on current disputes, we connect him to the vocabularies and discourses that surround us. His thought becomes familiar through the lenses we employ, as we intermix his ideas with our own terminology and see his work through the language of our discussions. One example of this phenomenon is the way scholars have been describing Burke's philosophical outlook. Burke's thought, we are told, is that of a social constructionist. Edward Schiappa, for example, concludes that Burke gives us a view of the world as intersubjectively created: "Our understanding is social in the sense that our concepts are human-made and are part of a shared language. Our understanding is [End Page 130] constructed in the sense that our claims, interpretations, and orientations constitute 'conceptual fabrics' that weave together contingent sets of beliefs and social practices."2 Paul Jay turns the sentiment into a more explicitly epistemological point: "The most radical aspect of Burke's evolving theory of language at this time is his recognition that language—inherently metaphorical—constructs rather than reflects knowledge."3 James Chesebro highlights social constructionism as one of the hallmarks of Burke's dramatism: "For Burke, the realm of symbol-using is unique to the human being. Symbol-using is a solely conventional, arbitrary, and social process. It allows human beings to become self-conscious, create motives independently of physical phenomena, and ultimately to create social constructions of reality."4 Dennis Ciesielski argues that Burke's "terministic screens" define "base reality into truth-systems unique to each respective discourse community and impl[y] a neo-pragmatic, social constructionist pattern for the making of meaning."5 Finally, Robert Wess characterizes Burke's entire career as the evolution from a materialist, biological-essentialist view of the human self to a social constructionist view.6Generally speaking, "social constructionism" is a metaphor that attempts to capture the way Burke viewed the nature of the world and the function of language therein. It suggests that symbols, terms, and language form the building blocks, the bricks and mortar, of the structures of our collective life. We employ symbols that construct our social realities, similar to the way a contractor employs the materials and labor that construct a house. Consequently, the realities we face are not inherent in nature but are built up discursively and can therefore be reconstructed as we alter our discursive practices.7The social construction metaphor positions Burke's philosophical out-look in terms that are familiar to us, though not necessarily familiar to him. That is to say, the label of social constructionist is recent, and it comes not from Burke's work but from intellectual developments after he wrote the bulk of his corpus.8 We apply it to him retroactively, meshing together his intellectual milieu with our own. And as Ian Hacking reminds us, "The phrase has become code. If you use it favorably, you deem yourself rather radical. If you trash the phrase, you declare that you are rational, reasonable, and respectable."9Labeling Burke a social constructionist wraps his thought in a current metaphor, merging his perspective with a vocabulary that was not part of his project. While such a merger is not necessarily a bad thing—to some degree the process is inevitable10—a certain danger... (shrink)

We investigate the performance and risk of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) equity funds in the Australian market and find no significant difference between the returns of SRI and conventional funds. In an extension to prior literature, we examine the impact of the number of positive, negative and total screens funds impose on performance and risk. We find little evidence of positive or negative screening impacting total return, but find weak evidence that funds with more screens overall provide better risk-adjusted (...) performance. Positive screening significantly reduces funds’ risk. However, negative screening significantly increases risk and reduces funds’ abilities to form diversified portfolios. (shrink)

Screening for unsuspected disease has both possible benefits and harms for those who participate. Historically the benefits of participation have been emphasized to maximize uptake reflecting a public health approach to policy; currently policy is moving towards an informed choice approach involving giving information about both benefits and harms of participation. However, no research has been conducted to evaluate the impact on health of an informed choice policy. Using psychological models, the first aim of this study was to describe (...) an explanatory framework for variation in screening uptake and to apply this framework to assess the impact of informed choices in screening. The second aim was to evaluate ethically that impact. Data from a general population survey of beliefs and attitudes towards participation in diabetes screening indicated that greater orientation to the present is associated with greater social deprivation and lower expectation of participation in screening. The results inform an explanatory framework of social patterning of screening in which greater orientation to the present focuses attention on the disadvantages of screening, which tend to be immediate, thereby reducing participation. This framework suggests that an informed choice policy, by increasing the salience of possible harms of screening, might reduce uptake of screening more in those who are more deprived and orientated to the present. This possibility gives rise to an apparent dilemma where an ethical decision must be made between greater choice and avoiding health inequality. Philosophical perspectives on choice and inequality are used to point to some of the complexities in assessing whether there really is such a dilemma and if so how it should be resolved. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethics of paternalism. (shrink)

Online audiovisual interaction (AVOI), though minimal, constitutes a form of embodiment. This implies that empathy can be fostered even in non-co-located individuals through online platforms. To address both the limitations and potential of online embodied interaction the article develops a framework for comprehending and cultivating empathy in the virtual realm. It argues that empathy is a skill that is fundamentally tied to our physical and sensory experiences, and therefore, dismisses the Theory of Mind (ToM) model for reducing empathy to mere (...) mental constructs with inherent limitations. Instead, it draws upon Embodied Cognitive Science (ECS) to show that the feeling of disembodiment experienced in AVOI can be conceptualised as a “shrinking of” the social space. With the aim of both widening and deepening this space, the article introduces concrete guidelines that can help enrich the embodied and interactive experience in AVOI. Thereby, highlighting ways of integrating spatiality and physical engagement in the audiovisual online sphere, in addition to nurturing awareness and digital tact. (shrink)

It is not clear whether breast cancer screening is a public health intervention or an individual clinical service. The question is important because the concepts best suited for ethical reasoning in public health might be different to the concepts commonly employed in biomedical ethics. We consider it likely that breast screening has elements of a public health intervention and used an empirical ethics approach to explore this further. If breast screening has public health characteristics, it is probable (...) that policy and practice experts will employ socially embedded concepts when reasoning about it. We gathered data on whether and how these concepts existed in the discussion and reasoning of Australian breast screening experts. We found that experts employed these concepts when talking about the purpose and practices of breast screening, and the behaviour of breast screening professionals and consumers. Experts gave varied judgements about breast screening based on reasoning with these concepts, considering it to be more or less successful in contributing to the public interest and in incorporating socially embedded concepts into its operational agenda. Our findings are compatible with breast screening having public health characteristics. We advocate for the incorporation of socially embedded concepts in breast screening policy and practice. (shrink)

Despite evidence that social factors can result in poor health outcomes, and the emergence of payment models that encourage the use non-medical interventions to improve health, many health care providers do not identify the social determinants of health within patient populations through routine screening. This Article explores the possible reasons for this inconsistency by considering screening practices in medical-legal partnerships, the health care approach most concerned with identifying and treating the social determinants of health. Through (...) an analysis of the results of a national survey and qualitative interviews with MLPs, we discovered that screening is not operationalized or consistent within many MLPs. We conclude that although health care providers may recognize the value of screening, they are not yet embracing the practice, perhaps because of an unspoken fear that fulsome screening identifies so many unmet social and legal needs that community-based resources cannot satisfy demand. This fear is unfounded. Approaches such as MLP demonstrate that social and legal needs can be efficiently treated through collaboration with other professionals, often within the health care setting. Nevertheless, providers must first operationalize screening to truly understand the scope of the need in their patient populations and collaborate to address those needs. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to test the measurement invariance of the baby pediatric symptom checklist across gender and age as a means to provide for valid comparisons in point estimates across groups. A secondary goal involved confirming the earlier identified factor structure and re-examining the presence of differentially item functioning in the BPSC across grouping variables. Participants were 601 children aged below 1 year and 1 year to 12 months. Data were collected as part of the National (...) Health Interview Survey in 2020. Results related to gender indicated satisfying all five levels of measurement and structural invariance. When testing measurement invariance across age groups, a few modifications were necessary. Specifically, partial metric invariance was satisfied after freeing slope estimates of items 1 and 2, partial scalar after freeing intercept terms of items 6 and 10, and partial residual invariance through freeing error terms of items 2 and 12. These non-invariant estimates, however, provide support for partial invariance and do not invalidate the comparison of latent means. The BPSC can be used for the valid assessment of social–emotional skills in infants up to the age of 18 months. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of negative screening on the investment universe as well as on financial performance. We come up with a novel identification process and as such depart from mainstream socially responsible investing literature by concentrating on individual firms’ conduct and by studying a much wider range of issues. Firstly, we study the size and financial performance of fourteen potentially controversial issues: abortion, adult entertainment, alcohol, animal testing, contraceptives, controversial weapons, fur, gambling, genetic engineering, meat, nuclear power, (...) pork, stem cells, and tobacco. We investigate an international sample of more than 1,600 stocks for more than twenty years. We then analyze the impact of applying negative screens to a market portfolio. Our findings suggest that the choice for negative screening strategies does matter for the size of the investment universe as well as for risk-adjusted return performance. Investing in controversial stocks in many cases results in additional risk-adjusted returns, whereas excluding them may reduce financial performance. These findings suggest that there are opportunity costs to negative screening. (shrink)

Through qualitative surveys, a team of law students, law professors, physicians, and residents explored the perceptions of neurology residents towards referral to appropriate legal resources in an academic training program. Respondents reported feeling uncomfortable screening their patients for health-harming legal needs, which many attributed to a lack of training in this area. These findings indicate that neurology residents would benefit from training on screening for social factors that may be impacting their patients’ health.

This article brings a phenomenological perspective to the question of how bodily and inter-bodily experience is involved in interacting via audio-visual media like videoconferencing platforms. Contemporary discussions in interaction studies point to a certain suspension of bodily involvement in these mediated interactions, which leads to a visible loss of function in the case of gestures. Such observations have led phenomenologists to voice concern as to whether phenomenology is indeed still suited to account for the “digital world” in general. The following (...) article addresses these concerns by first making the case for a phenomenological understanding of gestures, which develops Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intercorporeality by drawing from an intersubjective reading of Husserl’s threefold analysis of the body (aesthesiological, kinaesthetic and orientational). Subsequently, these reflections are used to describe the modifications, which occur when interacting “through” the screen in videoconferences, by showing that they are not just privative in nature. (shrink)

Using an international sample of environmental and social firm-level ratings between 2007 and 2019, we form synthetic overlapping region-based equity portfolios to examine the impact of screening stringency on abnormal returns and specific risk. While previous literature analyzes this relationship in a bidimensional setting, inferences made in this study are additionally robust to regional levels of market efficiency. Our results suggest that (1) screening stringency displays an inverted curvilinear relationship with risk-adjusted returns and (2) the impact on (...) specific risk is strictly increasing. Thus, portfolios that employ marginal and substantial screening incur the cost of responsible investing. However, moderate screening has the benefit of increasing performance without the burden of financing the least responsible corporations. (shrink)

The discrepancy between children’s actual amount of viewing time and parents’ accounts of their concerns, rules, and parental mediation choices has been documented in empirical research, and typically interpreted through the lens of the Uses and Gratifications theory – showing how parents change their attitudes towards screen media in order to satisfy their own needs. Based on a qualitative longitudinal research project, including app-based media diaries, with 20 families with at least one child aged eight or younger, we aim to (...) make two contributions to the literature. With regard to theory, we aim to highlight the heterogeneous and contingent ways of balancing the place of digital media in children’s lives that arise from parents navigating screen time discourses, social pressures, and daily schedules. With regard to methods, we argue for the combination of qualitative data and app-based media diaries to contextualise and interpret potential discrepancies between reported screen time and parental anxieties or hopes about digital media. (shrink)

Table 3 of Trinks, P. J., Scholtens, B., 2017. The Opportunity Cost of Negative Screening in Socially Responsible Investing. Journal of Business Ethics, 140, 193–208, reports the four-factor return performance of long–short sin stock portfolios and sin stock-free portfolios.

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as ‘phubbing’, which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone. Using interview data, it (...) is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. (shrink)

The 20th century eugenics movement in the USA and contemporary practices involving prenatal screening (PNS), prenatal diagnosis (PND), abortion and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) share important morally relevant similarities. I summarise some features of the 20th century eugenics movement; describe the contemporary standard of care in the USA regarding PNS, PND, abortion and PGD; and demonstrate that the ‘old eugenics’ the contemporary standard of care share the underlying view that social resources should be invested to prevent the birth (...) of people with certain characteristics. This comparison makes evident the difficulty of crafting moral arguments that treat some uses of PNS, PND, abortion and PGD as licit and others as illicit. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the problem of communist power in so called totalitarian regimes. Inspired by strategies of explanation in contemporary science studies and by the ethnomethodological conception of social order, we suggest that the power of communists is not to be taken as an unproblematic source of explanation; rather, we take this power as something that is itself in need of being explained. We study personal narratives on political screenings that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1970 and (...) analyze how the power of communists obtained its strength from ordinary and “unremarkable” interactions between participants. The screenings are interpreted, in the terms of Bruno Latour, as “trials of strength.” We show that it was crucial for all the participants that associations, translations or mobilizations involved in making the regime real, remained partial and multiple, and not exclusive and “total” as is often assumed within dominant discourses on totalitarianism. (shrink)

Analysis and comparison of genetic screening programs shows that the extent of development of programs varies widely across Europe. Regional variations are due not only to genetic disease patterns but also reflect the novelty of genetic services. In most countries, the focus for genetic screening programs has been pregnant women and newborn children. Newborn children are screened only for disorders which are treatable. Prenatal screening when provided is for conditions for which termination may be offered. The only (...) population screening programs for adults are those for thalassaemia carrier status in Cyprus, Greece and Italy. Social responses to genetic screening range from acceptance to hostility. There is a fundamental tension between individual and communi ty in the debates in various European countries about implementation of screening programs. Opposition to genetic screening is frequently expressed in terms of arguments about "eugenics" with insufficient regard to the meaning of the term and its implications. Only a few countries have introduced explicit legislation on genetic screening. Legislation to address discrimination may provide more safeguards than legislation protecting genetic information itself. (shrink)

Social scientists have documented some recent, dramatic changes in the nature of our social lives. Many scholars have thought that our reliance on technology to communicate with others is in large part responsible for that loss. However, there is also data to support the opposite conclusion—it might be the case that social networking technologies have helped, rather than hindered our social interactions. What I would like to propose is a philosophical argument, which I hope will offer (...) a different sort of answer to the questions about whether we know people in the same ways, or perhaps more or less well, than we once did, in the days before Facebook, email, and such. Whether or not technology has enhanced our social lives, it is worth considering whether coming to know another person is a different sort of exercise than it used to be, when face-to-face interactions with others were the preferred way to find out what was going on in someone else’s life. What is different in sharing my thoughts, beliefs, feelings, desires, and such with another over the Internet versus in person? Is there any kind of knowledge that is available only in a face-to-face context? If so, what is the nature of that knowledge? In philosophical terms, what I want to examine is how our knowledge of others’ minds changes with various technologies that we use to communicate the contents of our mental states. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Autistic adults suffer from an alarmingly high and increasing unemployment rate. Many companies use pre-employment personality screening tests. These filters likely have disparate impacts on neurodivergent individuals, exacerbating this social problem. This situation gives rise to a bind. On the one hand, the tests disproportionately harm a vulnerable group in society. On the other, employers think that personality test scores are predictors of job performance and have a right to use personality traits in their decisions. It is difficult (...) to say whether these negative disparate impacts are a case of wrongful discrimination. Nevertheless, we will show that pre-employment personality tests prey on several features of autism in an unfair way, and for this reason, we suggest the contours of some regulation that we deem necessary. (shrink)

Social scientists have documented some recent, dramatic changes in the nature of our social lives. Many scholars have thought that our reliance on technology to communicate with others is in large part responsible for that loss. However, there is also data to support the opposite conclusion—it might be the case that social networking technologies have helped, rather than hindered our social interactions. What I would like to propose is a philosophical argument, which I hope will offer (...) a different sort of answer to the questions about whether we know people in the same ways, or perhaps more or less well, than we once did, in the days before Facebook, email, and such. Whether or not technology has enhanced our social lives, it is worth considering whether coming to know another person is a different sort of exercise than it used to be, when face-to-face interactions with others were the preferred way to find out what was going on in someone else’s life. What is different in sharing my thoughts, beliefs, feelings, desires, and such with another over the Internet versus in person? Is there any kind of knowledge that is available only in a face-to-face context? If so, what is the nature of that knowledge? In philosophical terms, what I want to examine is how our knowledge of others’ minds changes with various technologies that we use to communicate the contents of our mental states. (shrink)

A historical and theoretical investigation of the unexpected ways screen-based media protect and excite viewers' fears and anxieties of the worldIn this brilliant contribution to contemporary media studies, acclaimed theorist Francesco Casetti advances a provocative hypothesis: instead of being prostheses that expand or extend our perceptions, modern screen-based media are in fact apparatuses that shelter and protect us from exposure to the world. Rather than bringing us closer to external reality, dominant forms of visual media function as barriers or enclosures (...) that defend against the apparent threats and dangers that seem increasingly to surround us. Working with an original historical overview that begins with the Phantasmagoria of the late eighteenth century, then the shared interior spaces of the movie theater in the early to mid-twentieth century, and finally the solitary digital milieus of the present, Casetti traces the outlines of the protective "bubbles" that disconnect us from our immediate surroundings. To be provided with a shield of immunity to the hazards and uncertainties of the world while experiencing them at a safe remove might seem a positive development. But, he asks, what if these media, instead of providing invulnerability, ensnare individuals in a suffocating enclosure? What if, in their effort to keep reality under control, they exercise a violence equal to that of the dangers they resist? In a dialectical exercise, and through a vivid range of cultural artifacts, Screening Fears traces the emergence of modern protective media and the way they changed our forms of mediation with the world in which we live. (shrink)

The practice of screening potential users of reproductive services is of profound social and political significance. Access screening is inconsistent with the principles of equality and self-determination, and violates individual and group human rights. Communities that strive to function in accord with those principles should not permit access screening, even screening that purports to be a benign exercise of professional discretion. Because reproductive choice is controversial, regulation by law may be required in most jurisdictions to (...) provide effective protection for reproductive rights. In Canada, for example, equal access can, and should be, guaranteed by federal regulations imposing strict conditions on the licences of fertility clinics. (shrink)

Social investing, though not yet fully mainstream, has the potential to obtain such status. Questions relating to the future of social investing include the following. (1) What properly falls within the ambit of social investing? Assuming that no single definition of social responsibility is feasible, what then are the limits? (2) What do we need to know about investor psychology concerning social investing? What motivates people to buy socially screened investments and why do they sometimes (...) act inconsistently? (3) How can we improve the measures of social performance? Is it possible to develop GAAP and GAAS equivalents for social reporting? (4) Should social reports by firms be audited? If so, how? (5) What sorts of public policies are necessary to support the social screening of investments? (shrink)

This article explores how the TV series Black Mirror is evidence that entertaining TV series can provide us with highly elaborated critical thinking about crime and punishment. Based on the premise that society owns social imaginaries to guide our individual orientation, we explore the connection between screen technologies and our criminal imaginaries in this TV series. The article relates the aims of punishment according to criminal theory – prevention, retribution and rehabilitation – with two images that appear in episode (...) 2.2 ‘White Bear’: the monster and its lynching. (shrink)

Beginning from the standpoint that technologically mediated education is widely prescribed for developing countries, the author first probes the nature, meaning, and impact of this agenda through its economic and political context. He argues that this context produces and shapes the rush to technology. He then examines the notion of education and the nature of the claimed technological mediation of this process, concluding that the constraints of technological mediation, and its destructive impact on teaching, show its inability to provide for (...) adequate educational development (which is necessarily grounded in a concrete human relationship in a real—not virtual—dynamic social and cultural context). He closes with recommendations for a critical rather than a wholesale adoption of technology and encourages resistance to the present press for mindless adoption. (shrink)

New-born screening programs for congenital disorders and chronic disease are expanding worldwide and children “at risk” are identified by nationwide tracking systems at the earliest possible stage. These practices are never neutral and raise important social and ethical questions. An emergent concern is that a reflexive professionalism should interrogate the ever earlier interference in children’s lives. The Flemish community of Belgium was among the first to generalize the screening for hearing loss in young children and is an (...) interesting case to study the public justification of early interventions for families with deaf children. This article uses a critical lens to study the archive of the government child healthcare organization in Flanders in order to uncover underlying constructions of childhood, deafness, and preventive health. We focus on two interrelated themes. The first is the notion of exclusion of the human factor through the mediation of technology. The second is the idea of deafness as endangering a healthy development, an impairment that can nevertheless be treated if detected early enough. It is argued that, since deafness cannot be viewed as a life-threatening condition, the public interest which is implicitly defended is not the rescue of deaf children rather the exclusion of otherness. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the special symposium section entitled Prevention of antisocial behaviour in children and adolescents: Ethical, social and philosophical aspects.

This paper illustrates a role that bioethics should play in developing and criticizing protocols for breast cancer genetic screening. It demonstrates how a critical bioethics, using approaches and reflecting concerns of contemporary philosophy of science and science studies, may critically interrogate the normative and conceptual schemes within which ethical considerations about such screening protocols are framed. By exploring various factors that influence the development of such protocols, including politics, cultural norms, and conceptions of disease, this paper and the (...) critical bioethics' approach it endorses illuminate and critically assess some of the competing worldviews informing protocol development. One of the frequently neglected worldviews in traditional bioethics' treatment of protocols concerning breast care is constituted by women's own views of their breasts and breast cancer, both within the technologically-oriented social practice of American medicine and in light of the social construction of their breasted experience in American society. This paper attempts to redress and critically assess this neglect on the part of traditional bioethics. Finally, in contrast to traditional bioethics, critical bioethics critically interrogates its own normative and conceptual commitments. In this final capacity, a critical bioethics' approach makes a valuable contribution to the evolution of bioethics. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the problem of communist power in so called totalitarian regimes. Inspired by strategies of explanation in contemporary science studies and by the ethnomethodological conception of social order, we suggest that the power of communists is not to be taken as an unproblematic source of explanation; rather, we take this power as something that is itself in need of being explained. We study personal narratives on political screenings that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1970 and (...) analyze how the power of communists obtained its strength from ordinary and “unremarkable” interactions between participants. The screenings are interpreted, in the terms of Bruno Latour, as “trials of strength.” We show that it was crucial for all the participants that associations, translations or mobilizations involved in making the regime real, remained partial and multiple, and not exclusive and “total” as is often assumed within dominant discourses on totalitarianism. (shrink)

Norway’s liberal abortion law allows for abortion on social indications, yet access to screening for fetal abnormalities is restricted. Norwegian regulation of, and public discourse about prenatal screening and diagnosis has been exceptional. In this study, we wanted to investigate whether the exceptional regulation is mirrored in public attitudes. An electronic questionnaire with 11 propositions about prenatal screening and diagnosis was completed by 1617 Norwegian adults (response rate 8.5%). A majority of respondents supports increased access to (...) prenatal screening with ultrasound (60%) and/or full genome sequencing of fetal DNA (55%) available for all pregnant women. Significant minorities indicate, however, that a public offer of prenatal screening for all pregnant women would signal that people with Down syndrome are unwanted (46%) or could be criticized for contributing to a ‘sorting society’ (48%). Results indicate deeper ambivalences and a cultural sensitivity to the ethical challenges of prenatal screening and subsequent abortions. The specific diagnosis of Down syndrome and the fear of becoming a ‘sorting society’ which sorts human life due to diagnoses, appear to play prominent roles in citizen deliberations. The low response rate means that a non-response bias cannot be excluded, yet reasons why results are still likely to be of value are discussed. (shrink)