The case for compulsory surgical smoke evacuation systems in the operating theatre

Perioperative staff are frequently exposed to surgical smoke or plume created by using heat-generating devices like diathermy and lasers. This is a concern due to mounting evidence that this exposure can be harmful with no safe level of exposure yet identified. First, I briefly summarise the problem posed by surgical smoke exposure and highlight that many healthcare organisations are not sufficiently satisfying their legal and ethical responsibilities to protect their staff from potential harm. Second, I explore the ethical case for compulsory smoke evacuation systems using the principlist framework and its four ethical principles – autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. I then consider some objections and argue that surgical smoke evacuation systems – when indicated – should be made compulsory.

Ethical Considerations for Humanizing Refugee Research Trajectories

This paper argues that ethical responsibilities in refugee studies have focused on fieldwork, yet ethics ought to be applied to the research problematic—the aims, questions, and concepts—as potentially implicated in the production of harm. Using an example from Tanzania, I argue that policy has largely shaped the language, categories investigated, and interpretive frames of refugee research, and this article advocates greater attention to historical and contemporary processes underpinning humanitarian principles and practices, and how they might contribute to exclusion and ontological anxieties among refugees in the Global South. By expanding our conceptualization of ethical responsibilities, researchers can better explore the suitability, and the implications for the refugee communities, of the approach that they have adopted and whether they contribute or challenge the and dehumanization of people seeking refuge.

A theoretical exploration: Zone of Proximal Development as an ethical zone for teaching mathematics

For decades, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) has been utilized as an important theoretical framework for exploring and analysing the concept of learning, but its implications for teachers remain much less explored. In this article, I conceptualise some of the roots of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of learning and, on this basis, I explore the ZPD as an ethical and powerful zone for teaching. Together with providing a thorough description of some key aspects of Vygotsky’s theoretical concepts, the major question stated, What are the ethical responsibilities of teachers to guide students do mathematics that is beyond their independent ability? intends to open up an original line of inquiry. I first give an overview of this learning theory, as it stemmed from Marxism, my means of supporting examples from mathematics education research literature. It follows a discussion on the issue of ethics and responsibility to more explicitly highlight the ethical responsibilities and power of teachers that are implicit in the concept of ZPD.

Documentary filmmakers confront trauma: An interview with Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner

The article features an interview with Copenhagen-based filmmakers Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner, directors of Songs of Repression (2020), the latest documentary film to tackle Colonia Dignidad, a sectarian German enclave founded in Chile in 1961. The dialogue revolves around the film, but it also illuminates some general problems documentarians must face when encountering trauma, among them ethical responsibilities towards protagonists and narrative strategies to employ. The interview is preceded by an introduction that sketches background information on the notorious colony, explains how the film originated, examines the role of music – a central motif of the film – for Colonia’s functioning and situates the work in a wider context of documentaries that confront human rights abuses. The political, religious and moral complexities of Colonia Dignidad are salient because they point to the way the inadequacy or total absence of processes of redress and reconciliation may ultimately prompt the re-emergence or re-establishment of sinister practices.