Employing the qualitative method of literature review of primary and secondary sources, this paper sets out to reconstruct Hannah Arendt’s thought on the relation between politics and freedom. Freedom, in Arendt’s view, is not an objective nor result of politics, but rather something inherent in it. Action, speaking, and the public sphere are the three aspects and prerequisites for politics to be regarded as harboring freedom. Action and speaking presuppose plurality. Both involve not only one person, but the multitude, that (...) inhabit the world. When many people act and speak, they are always free and inhabit the realm of politics. The public sphere makes it possible for the people to act, speak, and interact in freedom, and thus also to do politics. Arendt endorses the interactions in the Ancient Greek Agora as a model of the public sphere. Research on Arendt’s thought can significantly contribute to understanding politics. Politics is a never-ending action and speaking; it is a process. It never has an ending as through action, communication, and interaction, people can produce something new. For action, speaking, and interaction to be possible, the public sphere is a necessary condition. Keywords: Arendt, politics, freedom, plurality, action, speaking, public sphere. Abstrak Melalui pendekatan kualitatif, yakni telaah literatur baik primer maupun sekunder, tulisan ini hendak merekonstruksi pemikiran Hannah Arendt tentang hubungan antara politik dan kebebasan. Kebebasan, menurut Hannah Arendt, bukanlah tujuan dan hasil dari politik, melainkan sesuatu yang inheren dalam politik. Tiga aspek sekaligus kondisi agar politik dapat disebut mengandung kebebasan adalah tindakan, berbicara, dan ruang publik. Tindakan dan berbicara mengandaikan adanya pluralitas. Keduanya melibatkan bukan hanya satu orang, melainkan banyak orang, yang menempati dunia. Ketika banyak orang bertindak dan berbicara, mereka selalu bebas dan berada dalam konteks politik. Ruang publik memungkinkan manusia untuk bertindak, berbicara, dan berinteraksi dalam kebebasan, dan dengan demikian juga berpolitik. Arendt menjadikan interaksi di Agora pada zaman Yunani kuno sebagai model dari ruang publik. Penelitian tentang gagasan Arendt memberikan kontribusi signifikan untuk memahami politik. Politik adalah tindakan dan pembicaraan yang kontinu; ia adalah sebuah proses. Ia tidak pernah mencapai hasil akhir karena melalui tindakan, komunikasi, dan interaksi, manusia memiliki kemampuan untuk menghasilkan sesuatu yang baru. Untuk bisa bertindak, berbicara, dan berinteraksi, ruang publik adalah sebuah keharusan. Kata-kata Kunci: Arendt, politik, kebebasan, pluralitas, tindakan, berbicara, ruang publik. (shrink)

Objective: A deep understanding of the relationship between a scarce drug's dose and clinical response is necessary to appropriately distribute a supply-constrained drug along these lines. Summary of key data: The vast majority of drug development and repurposing during the COVID-19 pandemic – an event that has made clear the ever-present scarcity in healthcare systems –has been ignorant of scarcity and dose optimisation's ability to help address it. Conclusions: Future pandemic clinical trials systems should obtain dose optimisation (...) data, as these appear necessary to enable appropriate scarce resource allocation according to societal values. (shrink)

This manuscript describes the institutional and clinical considerations that apply to the question of whether to mandate opioid dose reduction in patients who have received opioids long-term. It describes how a calamitous rise in addiction and overdose involving opioids has both led to a clinical recalibration by healthcare providers, and to strong incentives favoring forcible opioid reduction by policy making agencies. Neither the 2016 Guideline issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor clinical evidence can justify or (...) promote such policies as safe or effective. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present a succinct overview, from a clinician’s perspective, of the importance and implications of research on heart failure in African Americans. It first gives a brief outline of the rationale and results of the African-American Heart Failure Trial, which showed evidence for the effectiveness of fixed-dose combination of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine, marketed as BiDil, in this population. Finally, it underscores the necessity of treating African Americans with evidence-based medicine given that humanistic (...) physicians and other clinicians strive to provide holistic treatment to their patients.Most researchers and clinicians recognize the difficulty with utilizing race as a category for inclusion in trials. While race lacks any true biologic definition, it is potentially beneficial as a consideration in clinical studies, based on prior evidence of certain potential differences across self-identified racial/ethnic groups in morbidity and mortality and responses to medicine. Even though use of race as a classification is a problematic distinction, it should not be ignored. If clinical trials demonstrate significant improvement with targeted treatment in African Americans, clinicians should not withhold life-saving drugs that result from such studies. (shrink)

The concept of zero and no-effect plays a major role in toxicology. Issues discussed in this chapter include the nature of the adverse responses produced at the level of the organism and population. Humans and animals evolved in an environment bathed in all sorts of chemicals. Some compounds were toxic and others beneficial and even essential, serving as nutrients and medicines. Even vitamins at low doses can be severely toxic at excessive doses. The historical transition of toxicology from the science (...) of poisons to today’s focus on safety is the source of semantic confusion over interpreting terms ranging from poisonous, hazardous, having zero effect, and nothing happens. How serious must an adverse effect be to be considered toxicologically significant? The chapter follows the development of Paracelsus’ dictum “Dose makes the poison.” Different approaches to quantitating a toxicologic response are presented, paying particular attention to the difference between a no effect dose, and one that produces a mild effect that defines the metrics we use for safe limits of exposure, versus a maximum tolerable dose. Detection of a biological effect no different than seen in control animals, or the normal population, should not be of concern. Chemical exposure does not equate to toxicity. (shrink)

The use of transcranial Electrical Stimulation in the modulation of cognitive brain functions to improve neuropsychiatric conditions has extensively increased over the decades. tES techniques have also raised new challenges associated with study design, stimulation protocol, functional specificity, and dose-response relationship. In this paper, we addressed challenges through the emerging methodology to investigate the dose-response relationship of High Definition-transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, identifying the role of negative valence in tinnitus perception. In light of the neurofunctional testable framework and (...) tES application, hypotheses were formulated to measure clinical and surrogate endpoints. We posited that conscious pairing adequately pleasant stimuli with tinnitus perception results in correction of the loudness misperception and would be reinforced by concurrent active HD-tDCS on the left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex. The dose-response relationship between HD-tDCS specificity and the loudness perception is also modeled. We conducted a double-blind, randomized crossover pilot study with six recruited tinnitus patients. Accrued data was utilized to design a well-controlled adaptive seamless Bayesian dose-response study. The sample size and optimum interims were anticipated for adaptive decision-making about efficacy, safety, and single session dose parameters. Furthermore, preliminary pilot study results were sufficient to show a significant difference within the longitudinally detected self-report tinnitus loudness between before and under positive emotion induction. This study demonstrated a research methodology used to improve emotion regulation in tinnitus patients. In the projected method, positive emotion induction is essential for promoting functional targeting under HD-tDCS anatomical specificity to indicate the efficacy and facilitate the dose-finding process. The continuous updating of prior knowledge about efficacy and dose during the exploratory stage adapts the anticipated dose-response model. Consequently, the effective dose range to make superiority neuromodulation in correcting loudness misperception of tinnitus will be redefined. Highly effective dose adapts the study to a standard randomized trial and transforms it into the confirmatory stage in which active HD-tDCS protocol is compared with a sham trial. Establishing the HD-tDCS intervention protocols relying on this novel method provides reliable evidence for regulatory agencies to approve or reject the efficacy and safety. Furthermore, this paper supports a technical report for designing multimodality data-driven complementary investigations in emotion regulation, including EEG-driven neuro markers, Stroop-driven attention biases, and neuroimaging-driven brain network dynamics. (shrink)

In order to investigate the relationship between scientific evidence and social commitments this article addresses three questions: does low dose ionizing radiation cause cancer? Is the answer to this question different in a social setting than in a scientific context? What are the consequences of the answers of 1 and 2 for the relationship between epistemology and ethics as played out in radiation protection? Conceptual analysis with basis in the philosophy of science, in particular traditional theories of causality. Whether (...) low dose ionizing radiation causes cancer deeply depends on what we mean by causality. According to traditional scientific conceptions of causality it is not warranted to say that low dose ionizing radiation causes cancer. Standard approaches in radiation protection, however, imply that there is a causal connection, which is due to the strong social commitment in the field. There is a close relationship between social and scientific conceptions of causality, posing a series of challenges: one being that scientists covertly become moral experts, another one that the general public can be misinformed. There is a difference between causality in science and in policy making. Mixing these conceptions, as sometimes is done in radiation protection, can be misleading. Whether low dose ionizing radiation causes cancer is a social and not only a scientific issue. As such those who are warranted to have a say. (shrink)

Nearly 30 years ago, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons published a now- popular article that combines Hilary Putnam’s Twin Earth scenario with G.E. Moore’s open question argument in an effort to show that moral naturalism – the view that moral facts are at bottom ordinary, natural facts of some sort – is probably false. Responses to Horgan and Timmons’s “revised open question argument” have been legion, but surprisingly, no one has attempted to test the core assumption upon which the argument (...) is based; namely, that competent language users univocally treat natural kind-terms as rigid designators. Here, I present evidence that the intuitions of competent English speakers are not as univocal as Horgan and Timmons need them to be to ground their argument against moral naturalism. I also briefly sketch a way that the moral naturalist can respond even if competent language speakers do treat natural-kind terms in the way that Horgan and Timmons suggest. (shrink)

The discussion about complementary and alternative medicine is sometimes rather heated. “Quackery!” the cry goes. A large proportion “of unconventional practices entail theories that are patently unscientific.” “It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride. There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work.” “I submit that (...) if these treatments cannot withstand the test of empirical research, … then we have wasted a lot of time and effort. The time has been wasted on all the people who have spent years learning falsehoods about acupuncture points and the principles of homeopathy. And the patients have wasted their time, money, and efforts receiving treatments that were not what they were represented to be or were harmful.”. (shrink)

The normativity of mental content thesis appears to have been the most influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. Paul Boghossian (2003, 2005) has developed an argument for the normativity of mental content on the basis of two premises, i.e. firstly, the normativity of the notion of belief and secondly, the priority of the notion of belief to the notion of desire. In his recent article Alexander Miller (2008) has criticised Boghossian’s argument for the normativity of mental content. To make the (...) objection against the normativity of content, Miller has argued that the second premise of Boghossian’s argument is since belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. My purpose in this paper is to show that content normativity thesis prevails Miller's attack. In order to establish the claim I will argue that content is normative even if belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. (shrink)

Placebos are often used by clinicians, usually deceptively and with little rationale or evidence of benefit, making their use ethically problematic. In contrast with their typical current use, a provocative line of research suggests that placebos can be intentionally exploited to extend analgesic therapeutic effects. Is it possible to extend the effects of drug treatments by interspersing placebos? We reviewed a database of placebo studies, searching for studies that indicate that placebos given after repeated administration of active treatments acquire medication-like (...) effects. We found a total of 22studies in both animals and humans hinting of evidence that placebos may work as a sort of dose extender of active painkillers. Wherever effective in relieving clinical pain, such placebo use would offer several advantages. First, extending the effects of a painkiller through the use of placebos may reduce total drug intake and side effects. Second, dose-extending placebos may decrease patient dependence. Third, using placebos along with active medication, for part of the course of treatment, should limit dose escalation and lower costs. Importantly, provided that nondisclosure is pre-authorized in the informed consent process and that robust evidence indicates therapeutic benefit comparable to that of standard full-dose therapeutic regimens, introducing dose-extending placebos into the clinical arsenal should be considered. This novel prospect of placebo use has the potential to change our general thinking about painkiller treatments, the typical regimens of painkiller applications, and the ways in which treatments are evaluated. (shrink)

Few data exist regarding treatment with antipsychotics in forensic psychiatric patient populations with high social dangerousness. We performed a secondary analysis of 681 patients treated with at least one antipsychotic, extracted from a 1-year observational retrospective study, conducted on 730 patients treated in the Italian Residencies for Execution of Security Measures. We aimed at investigating antipsychotic polypharmacy and high dose/very high-dose antipsychotics, as well as the possible factors associated with such therapeutic regimens. High dose/very high-dose antipsychotics (...) were defined as a prescribed daily dose to WHO-defined daily dose ratio greater than 1.5 or 3.0, respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis was used in three models to test possible predictors of antipsychotic polypharmacy, high-dose antipsychotics, and very high-dose antipsychotic prescription. Antipsychotic polypharmacy resulted in n = 308 of the patients, n = 346 received high-dose antipsychotics, and n = 96 very high-dose antipsychotics. The multivariate analysis disclosed an association between antipsychotic polypharmacy and male gender : 2.75 and 95% CI: 1.34–5.65), long-acting injectable antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. High-dose antipsychotics were also associated with male gender, LAI antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. The use of antipsychotic polypharmacy and high-dose antipsychotics is frequent in the REMS population. These results might depend on regulatory and organizational aspects of the REMS system, including variability in structures, lack of a common model of care, and lack of stratified therapeutic security. (shrink)

Caffeine, a known CNS stimulant is given as an adjunct component in most abused drugs which could be fatal with repeated administration in many circumstances. This paper presents a study to investigate the effect of repeated administration of caffeine at high dose on rat liver, and discusses ethical and policy issues of caffeine use. Long Evans rats were treated with pure caffeine solution in distilled water through intragastric route once daily for consecutive 56 days. Three groups of rats recognized (...) as low dose, high dose and control group received 6mg caffeine / kg BW, 12mg caffeine / kg BW and distilled water, respectively. Rat plasma was examined for liver transaminases and alkaline phosphatases concentrations which were significantly increased in plasma as compared to the control. Both rat plasma and liver homogenate were subjected to estimate malondialdehyde, advanced oxidation protein product, nitric oxide, antioxidant enzyme catalase, glutathione and superoxide dismutase activity. MDA, AOPP, NO levels increased and SOD activity decreased significantly in both plasma and liver as compared to those of control where as CAT and GSH activity remain unchanged. Rat liver tissues were studied histochemically with Hematoxylin and Eosin, and Picro Sirius Red staining. Significantly increased infiltration of inflammatory cells and progressive deposition of collagen fibre were visible in liver tissue of caffeine treated both dose groups as compared to the control. Long term administration of caffeine at higher dose, significantly contributes to liver inflammation and consequent fibrogenesis. This raises significant ethical and policy issues. (shrink)

Fenfluramine increases brain serotonin levels soon after injection, followed by chronic serotonin depletions 48–72 h thereafter. Because serotonin content has been implicated in both basal and analgesic nociceptive processes, the present study evaluated fenfluramine’s dose-dependent and time-dependent effects upon pain thresholds in rats as measured by three tests: flinch-jump, tail flick, and liminal escape. Fenfluramine increased all three nociceptive thresholds.5 h following injection. Important test-specific differences were observed, with antinociceptive responses following effective fenfluramine doses of 2.66 mg/kg on the (...) flinch-jump test, 13.3 mg/ kg on the tail-flick test, and 26.6 mg/kg on the liminal escape test, with the last effect apparently due to overall behavioral disruption. In contrast, fenfluramine failed to alter pain thresholds 48 and 72 h after injection but significantly decreased tail-flick latencies 96 h following the lowest dose. Previous reports of morphological abnormalities following fenfluramine administration were not confirmed. While these data confirm previous reports that increases in serotonin levels produce antinociceptive effects, they do not support the contention that serotonin depletion results in hyperalgesia. (shrink)

This article traces disagreements about the genetic effects of low-dose radiation exposure as waged by James Neel, a central figure in radiation studies of Japanese populations after World War II, and Yuri Dubrova, who analyzed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. In a 1996 article in Nature, Dubrova reported a statistically significant increase in the minisatellite DNA mutation rate in the children of parents who received a high dose of radiation from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting studies that (...) found no significant inherited genetic effects among offspring of Japanese A-bomb survivors. Neel’s subsequent defense of his large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to explain how the Hiroshima/nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies, contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic science during the Cold War. (shrink)

The use of Ritalin and other stimulant drug treatments for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) raises distinctive moral dilemmas for parents; these moral dilemmas have not been adequately addressed in the bioethics literature. This paper draws upon data from a qualitative empirical study to investigate parents' use of the moral ideal of authenticity as part of their narrative justifications for dosing decisions and actions. I show that therapeutic decisions and actions are embedded in valued cultural ideals about masculinity, self-actualization and success, (...) as well as in moral conceptions of authenticity and personal freedom. I argue that this investigation of parents' moral justifications and dosing dilemmas raises questions about the validity of authenticity as a transcendent moral principle. Moreover, this study demonstrates that in order to be relevant, bioethical analysis of neurocognitive enhancement must engage with ground-up studies of moral principles and decision-making in context. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the formulation and analysis of an epidemic model of COVID-19 governed by an eight-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations, by taking into account the first dose and the second dose of vaccinated individuals in the population. The developed model is analyzed and the threshold quantity known as the control reproduction number R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {R}_{0}$$\end{document} is obtained. We investigate the equilibrium stability of the system, and the (...) COVID-free equilibrium is said to be locally asymptotically stable when the control reproduction number is less than unity, and unstable otherwise. Using the least-squares method, the model is calibrated based on the cumulative number of COVID-19 reported cases and available information about the mass vaccine administration in Malaysia between the 24th of February 2021 and February 2022. Following the model fitting and estimation of the parameter values, a global sensitivity analysis was performed by using the Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient (PRCC) to determine the most influential parameters on the threshold quantities. The result shows that the effective transmission rate (α)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\alpha )$$\end{document}, the rate of first vaccine dose (ϕ)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\phi )$$\end{document}, the second dose vaccination rate (σ)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\sigma )$$\end{document} and the recovery rate due to the second dose of vaccination (η)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\eta )$$\end{document} are the most influential of all the model parameters. We further investigate the impact of these parameters by performing a numerical simulation on the developed COVID-19 model. The result of the study shows that adhering to the preventive measures has a huge impact on reducing the spread of the disease in the population. Particularly, an increase in both the first and second dose vaccination rates reduces the number of infected individuals, thus reducing the disease burden in the population. (shrink)

This paper presents a clinically orientated illustration of the doctrine of double effect. The case of an elderly gentleman with advanced cancer is discussed, with particular emphasis on two dilemmas encountered during the terminal phase of his illness. The author describes how the doctrine of double effect was applied to help the team make some complex management decisions.

Les tests d’imagerie diagnostique médicale qui produisent des rayonnements ionisants utilisent désormais une technologie qui permet de connaître la dose de rayonnement cumulée d’un patient. Cela soulève la question de savoir s’il est impératif que les autorités sanitaires régionales divulguent ces informations aux médecins, qui peuvent alors faire participer leurs patients à la décision de savoir si les inconvénients potentiels valent les avantages de l’imagerie diagnostique ultérieure. Actuellement, les organismes professionnels qui fournissent des normes de pratique pour l’imagerie diagnostique (...) médicale conseillent de ne pas divulguer ces informations aux médecins. Ils craignent que les informations sur les doses cumulées soient difficiles à évaluer en termes de risque pour les patients individuels, qu’elles ne soient pas facilement applicables à la prise de décision clinique sur l’opportunité d’un examen d’imagerie ultérieur, et que les cliniciens référents se sentent obligés de proposer à un patient un test non ionisant moins efficace, ce qui pourrait avoir un impact négatif sur les soins prodigués au patient. Nous présentons une analyse critique de plusieurs hypothèses qui sous-tendent la position de non-divulgation. Travaillant à l’intersection de la physique médicale, de l’anthropologie médicale et de l’éthique clinique, nous proposons une autre formulation du discours sur le risque qui a façonné le récent débat scientifique sur la divulgation de la dose de rayonnement cumulée individuelle. Nous postulons qu’il est possible de présenter un argument convaincant contre la position des organismes professionnels et en faveur d’une politique de divulgation – à condition qu’une telle politique donne la priorité à la décision partagée centrée sur le patient. (shrink)

For decades, Christiane Northrup has been helping women navigate their lives with grace and joy. This elegant, compact volume offers her trademark wisdom in a fresh form, filled with pointed reminders "to help you develop a deeper respect for, and connection to, your own body and its exquisite guidance system [to] create a vibrantly healthy body, mind, and spirit." Each beautifully designed black-and-white page carries a quote that touches on a topic of deep significance: everything from heart-listening to epigenetics to (...) the importance of knowing that your decisions about medical treatment are not irreversible. Examples include:You are an ever-renewing, ever-changing, ever-growing being, born with an inner guidance that helps you create and maintain vibrant health and happiness. / When faced with a dilemma, take a moment to sit with the issue. Don't rush to decide what to do. Intend to let Divine inspiration flow to you, and it will be so! The next time you get an ache or a pain, soften the area around it with compassion. Ask your body what it needs. Listen deeply for the answer. (shrink)

If scientists rely on assumptions rather than logic, empirical confirmation, and falsification, they are no longer doing science but ideology – which is, by definition, unethical. As a recent US National Academy of Sciences report put it, “bad science is always unethical.”1 This article discusses several ways in which toxicologists can fall into ideology – bad, therefore unethical, science. In part because of the increasing expense of pollution control, some toxicologists have been reexamining pollution dose-response curves that are non-monotonic, (...) that is, curves in which the direction of some response changes with increasing or decreasing dose.2 Ethanol is a classic example of a non-monotonic dose-response curve because moderate drinking is associated with lower risks of heart disease, whereas heavy drinking is associated with higher risks.3,4 If some low-dose pollutants exhibit adaptive or “beneficial effects,”5 this might suggest re-thinking pollution regulations which presuppose linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response curves. (shrink)

With vaccination against COVID-19 well underway, providers in the United States (U.S.) found that vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines contained more doses than listed. Because of limited vaccine shelf life, vaccine-providing institutions have thrown extra doses away or quickly distributed them using ad-hoc allocation schemes (drawing names from waiting lists or administering doses to whomever happened to be nearby). This Viewpoint argues that these practices are ethically inadequate and proposes an alternate distribution scheme based on the system in (...) the U.S. to allocate donated organs. The proposal allows for the allocation of unanticipated doses in a way that maximizes societal benefits, is fair, and considerate of the sensitive time constraints for preserving vaccine effectiveness. (shrink)

Predictions about the health risks of low level radiation combine two sorts of measures. One estimates the amount and kinds of radiation released into the environment, and the other estimates the adverse health effects. A new field called health physics integrates and applies nuclear physics to cytology to supply both these estimates. It does so by first determining the kinds of effects different types of radiation produce in biological organisms, and second, by monitoring the extent of these effects produced by (...) given levels of exposure. This essay examines the interplay between evidential constraints and external, contextual interests and values in studying the biological hazards of radiation. By analyzing the debate over linear vs. quadratic dose response models, the essay focuses on problems of developing quantitative, rather than qualitative, estimates of the risks of increased cancer incidence in an exposed population. (shrink)

Wardrope argues against my proposed non-consequentialist policy for the distribution of scarce influenza vaccine in the face of a pandemic. According to him, even if one accepts what he calls my deontological ethical theory, it does not follow that we are required to agree with my proposed randomised allocation of doses of vaccine by means of a lottery. He argues in particular that I fail to consider fully the prophylactic role of vaccination whereby it serves to protect from infection more (...) people than are vaccinated. He concludes that: ‘The benefits and burdens of vaccination are provided impartially and far more effectively by targeted vaccination than impartial lotteries.’ He has shown convincingly that this conclusion can be established in the case of his particular envisaged scenario. However, Wardrope gives no reason to suppose that, in the circumstances that we actually face, targeted vaccination would constitute impartial treatment of citizens in the UK. I readily agree with Wardrope that if it should treat its citizens justly and impartially, it does not necessarily follow that the state should distribute vaccinations of the basis of a lottery. That will be a reasonable thing to do only if certain assumptions are made. These assumptions will not always be reasonable. However, they are reasonable ones to make in the actual circumstances that currently apply. (shrink)

The biological effects of low doses of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals are currently a matter of significant scientific controversy. This paper argues that philosophers of science can contribute to alleviating this controversy by examining it with the aid of a novel account of scientific anomaly. Specifically, analysis of contemporary research on chemical hormesis (i.e., alleged beneficial biological effects produced by low doses of substances that are harmful at higher doses) suggests that scientists may initially describe anomalous phenomena in terms of (...) multiple distinct "characterizations," each of which is compatible with current empirical evidence. By focusing attention on this feature of scientific anomalies, philosophers of science can alleviate the controversy over low-dose chemical effects in at least two ways: (1) they can pinpoint the significant ways in which particular characterizations frame the controversy, and (2) they can identify the methodological value judgments at stake in researchers' choice of characterizations. (shrink)