Artificial gametes, the unnatural and the artefactual

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 404-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Smajdor ◽  
Daniela Cutas ◽  
Tuija Takala
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Fertility Treatments ◽  
Important Impact ◽  
Moral Relationship ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Artificial Gametes

In debates on the ethics of artificial gametes, concepts of naturalness have been used in a number of different ways. Some have argued that the unnaturalness of artificial gametes means that it is unacceptable to use them in fertility treatments. Others have suggested that artificial gametes are no less natural than many other tissues or processes in common medical use. We suggest that establishing the naturalness or unnaturalness of artificial gametes is unlikely to provide easy answers as to the acceptability of using them in fertility medicine. However, we also suggest that we should be cautious about repudiating any relationship between nature and moral evaluation. The property of being natural or man-made may not per se tell us anything about an entity’s moral status, but it has an important impact on the moral relationship between the creator and the created organism.

Readdressing Our Moral Relationship to Nonhuman Creatures: Commentary on “A Dialogue on Species-Specific Rights: Humans and Animals in Bioethics”

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Strangers ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
Moral Relationship ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Negative Tone

Community discourse about the moral status of animals is critical to the future of bioethics and, indeed, to the future of modern society. Thomasma and Loewy are to be commended for sharing thoughts and trying to attain some common ground. I am grateful to them for fostering discussion and allowing me to respond. I cannot endorse the negative tone of the end of their conversation, however. They end with serious concerns about the possibility of any agreement between themselves. Even though I perceive some moral differences between them, I do not believe that they are moral strangers. In this commentary I review the ways in which I agree and disagree with Thomasma and Loewy and conclude with some thoughts about the kind of broad ethical thinking we need to do to address our moral relationship to nonhuman, living creatures.

scholarly journals Should We Ascribe Capabilities to Sentient Animals? A Critical Analysis of the Extension of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Melin ◽  
David Kronlid
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Normal Adult ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
Moral Relationship

Originally, the Capabilities Approach had a strong anthropocentric orientation because of its focus on the entitlements of individual humans. However, as a part of the interest to employ it within animal and environmental ethics, it has been discussed whether the Capabilities Approach should consider also non-human life forms for their own sake. The most influential and elaborated contribution to this debate is Martha Nussbaum’s extension of the Capabilities Approach to include sentient animals. In this article, we argue that Nussbaum’s ascription of capabilities to animals is problematic, since the concept of a capability normally denotes an opportunity to choose between different functionings. When Nussbaum ascribes capabilities to animals, the concept seems to simply denote specific abilities. Such a use is problematic since it waters down the concept and makes it less meaningful, and it may obscure the fact that normal, adult humans, in contrast to sentient animals, can act as conscious moral agents. The aim of granting moral status to sentient animals can be achieved more convincingly by describing our moral relationship to animals in terms of the functionings we should promote, instead of ascribing capabilities to them. Originally, the Capabilities Approach had a strong anthropocentric orientation because of its focus on the entitlements of individual humans. However, as a part of the interest to employ it within animal and environmental ethics, it has been discussed whether the Capabilities Approach should consider also non-human life forms for their own sake. The most influential and elaborated contribution to this debate is Martha Nussbaum’s extension of the Capabilities Approach to include sentient animals. In this article, we argue that Nussbaum’s ascription of capabilities to animals is problematic, since the concept of a capability normally denotes an opportunity to choose between different functionings. When Nussbaum ascribes capabilities to animals, the concept seems to simply denote specific abilities. Such a use is problematic since it waters down the concept and makes it less meaningful, and it may obscure the fact that normal, adult humans, in contrast to sentient animals, can act as conscious moral agents. The aim of granting moral status to sentient animals can be achieved more convincingly by describing our moral relationship to animals in terms of the functionings we should promote, instead of ascribing capabilities to them.

scholarly journals War and Global Public Reason

Utilitas ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEREMY WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Public Forum ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
Normative Standard

This article offers a new critical evaluation of the Rawlsian model of global public reason (‘GPR’), focusing on its ability to serve as a normative standard for guiding international diplomacy and deliberation in matters of war. My thesis is that, where war is concerned, the model manifests two fatal weaknesses. First, because it demands extensive neutrality over the moral status of persons – and in particular over whether they possess equal basic worth or value – out of respect for the beliefs of inegalitarian yet ‘decent’ societies, or ‘peoples’, Rawlsian GPR renders calculations of proportionality in war impossible. Second, because its content is provided by a conception of global justice (the so-called ‘Law of Peoples’) whose injunctions are addressed exclusively to peoples, as corporate agents, Rawlsian GPR pushes the moral evaluation of the independent wartime choices of individuals off the agenda of the global public forum altogether.

Ethics and Extraterrestrials

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-208
Author(s):  
Adam Potthast
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Extraterrestrial Life ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Ethical Obligations

This chapter examines how classical ethical theory might apply to the kind of alien life humans are most likely to encounter: nonrational, nonsentient life. Humans are unlikely to have basic ethical obligations to extraterrestrial life because it is very unlikely that extraterrestrial life could have moral status, by the lights of leading moral theories. Furthermore, even if extraterrestrial life did have moral status, consistency with moral practices on Earth would suggest that humans have very few basic ethical obligations to this life. However, it does not follow that humans could treat extraterrestrial life in any matter human beings see fit, because extraterrestrial life may require protection as humans follow through on basic ethical obligations to themselves. In sum, humans would not have ethical obligations to such life per se but the obligations people clearly do have to their fellow humans entail that people cherish, promote, and protect extraterrestrial life.

Origin of Hepatic Nuclear Inclusion Bodies

1973 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 426-427
Author(s):  
F. G. Zaki ◽  
J. A. Greenlee ◽  
C. H. Keysser
Keyword(s):  
Inclusion Bodies ◽  
Storage Disease ◽  
Glycogen Storage ◽  
Nutritional Deficiencies ◽  
Nuclear Inclusion ◽  
Electron Microscopic ◽  
Human Liver Cells ◽  
Microscopic Studies ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Experimental Liver

Nuclear inclusion bodies seen in human liver cells may appear in light microscopy as deposits of fat or glycogen resulting from various diseases such as diabetes, hepatitis, cholestasis or glycogen storage disease. These deposits have been also encountered in experimental liver injury and in our animals subjected to nutritional deficiencies, drug intoxication and hepatocarcinogens. Sometimes these deposits fail to demonstrate the presence of fat or glycogen and show PAS negative reaction. Such deposits are considered as viral products.Electron microscopic studies of these nuclei revealed that such inclusion bodies were not products of the nucleus per se but were mere segments of endoplasmic reticulum trapped inside invaginating nuclei (Fig. 1-3).

The Eleventh Circuit Holds that Agreements in which Pharmaceutical Companies Pay Generic Companies Not to Compete May be Valid

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-184
Author(s):  
Amy Garrigues
Keyword(s):  
Pharmaceutical Companies ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Patent Holder ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Us ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Appeals Court ◽  
Two Sides

On September 15, 2003, the US. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that agreements between pharmaceutical and generic companies not to compete are not per se unlawful if these agreements do not expand the existing exclusionary right of a patent. The Valley DrugCo.v.Geneva Pharmaceuticals decision emphasizes that the nature of a patent gives the patent holder exclusive rights, and if an agreement merely confirms that exclusivity, then it is not per se unlawful. With this holding, the appeals court reversed the decision of the trial court, which held that agreements under which competitors are paid to stay out of the market are per se violations of the antitrust laws. An examination of the Valley Drugtrial and appeals court decisions sheds light on the two sides of an emerging legal debate concerning the validity of pay-not-to-compete agreements, and more broadly, on the appropriate balance between the seemingly competing interests of patent and antitrust laws.

Fusion and Fission Processes in Exocytosis: Possible Roles for Synexin and Osmotic Lysis in the Two Events

1980 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 594-597
Author(s):  
H.B. Pollard ◽  
C.E. Creutz ◽  
C.J. Pazoles ◽  
J.H. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Small Molecules ◽  
Chromaffin Cells ◽  
Adrenal Glands ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Extracellular Calcium ◽  
Large Protein ◽  
Granule Membrane ◽  
Osmotic Lysis ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Chemical Evidence

Exocytosis is a general concept describing secretion of enzymes, hormones and transmitters that are otherwise sequestered in intracellular granules. Chemical evidence for this concept was first gathered from studies on chromaffin cells in perfused adrenal glands, in which it was found that granule contents, including both large protein and small molecules such as adrenaline and ATP, were released together while the granule membrane was retained in the cell. A number of exhaustive reviews of this early work have been published and are summarized in Reference 1. The critical experiments demonstrating the importance of extracellular calcium for exocytosis per se were also first performed in this system (2,3), further indicating the substantial service given by chromaffin cells to those interested in secretory phenomena over the years.

The importance of physical training for preventive care in the elderly

2002 ◽  
Vol 59 (7) ◽  
pp. 323-327
Author(s):  
Baum
Keyword(s):  
Preventive Care ◽  
Körperliche Aktivität ◽  
Physical Training ◽  
Ältere Menschen ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Per Se

Der mit zunehmendem Alter beobachtbare Verlust an Kraft, Koordination, Ausdauer und Flexibilität ist nur zum Teil als Alterungsprozess per se zu verstehen. Ein wesentlicher Einflussfaktor ist die körperliche Aktivität, d.h. die impliziten oder expliziten Trainingsreize. Denn alle körperlichen Leistungsmerkmale sind noch bis ins höchste Alter unter der Voraussetzung trainierbar, dass die Trainingsintensität und die Reizdichte hinreichend hoch sind. Bei Trainingsangeboten für ältere Menschen kommen der Kraft und der Koordination eine besondere Bedeutung zu, da sie die Basis für eine selbständige Lebensführung darstellen. Um das Krafttraining aus kardio-vaskulärer Sicht möglichst sicher zu gestalten, wurde von uns eine Trainingsform entwickelt und erprobt, bei der es im Gegensatz zu herkömmlichen Methoden zu signifikant geringeren Blutdruckanstiegen kommt.

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