Towards a paradigm shift in environmental health decision-making: a case study of oxybenzone

Background Technological advancements make lives safer and more convenient. Unfortunately, many of these advances come with costs to susceptible individuals and public health, the environment, and other species and ecosystems. Synthetic chemicals in consumer products represent a quintessential example of the complexity of both the benefits and burdens of modern living. How we navigate this complexity is a matter of a society’s values and corresponding principles. Objectives We aimed to develop a series of ethical principles to guide decision-making within the landscape of environmental health, and then apply these principles to a specific environmental chemical, oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a widely used ultraviolet (UV) filter added to personal care products and other consumer goods to prevent UV damage, but potentially poses harm to humans, wildlife, and ecosystems. It provides an excellent example of a chemical that is widely used for the alleged purpose of protecting human health and product safety, but with costs to human health and the environment that are often ignored by stakeholders. Discussion We propose six ethical principles to guide environmental health decision-making: principles of sustainability, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, community, and precautionary substitution. We apply these principles to the case of oxybenzone to demonstrate the complex but imperative decision-making required if we are to address the limits of the biosphere’s regenerative rates. We conclude that both ethical and practical considerations should be included in decisions about the commercial, pervasive application of synthetic compounds and that the current flawed practice of cost-benefit analysis be recognized for what it is: a technocratic approach to support corporate interests.

Philosophy in the Narrative Mode

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.The aim of this contribution is to apply the approach to narratives as a mode of debating ethical or moral principles to biographies of Alexander the Great. More than any other figure of the classical world, Alexander was religiously validated in the Islamic tradition due to his quasi-prophetic status as the ‘man with the two horns’ in the Qur’an. He appears prominently in the larger orbit of Arabic and Islamic philosophy as interlocutor and disciple of Aristotle and is adduced anecdotally in philosophical literature as an example to teach larger lessons of life. As a world conqueror, he provided an attractive model for those who sought to reconcile philosophical insight with worldly ambition.Focusing on biographies of Alexander, this article explores ethical principles which are inscribed in this body of literature and thus reads the texts as a narrativized form of philosophy. The analysis is comparative in two ways. Biographies of different periods and regions of the Islamicate world will be discussed, but comparisons with pre-Islamic biographies of Alexander (notably Roman biographies and the Alexander Romance) are included as well.

Justice: what is it and how can you ensure your patients receive it?

This article discusses the important concept of justice, one of the four ethical principles developed by Beauchamp and Childress (2019) . Gillon (1994) divided justice into three categories: distributive justice, rights-based justice and legal justice. Justice also forms an important part of British values regarding democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. Following an introduction defining what is meant by the term ‘justice’, the relevant parts of the Nursing Midwifery Council code ( NMC, 2018a ) will be identified and presented. There will then follow a discussion on the three categories of justice as laid out by Gillon (1994) and how justice fits in with British values. Finally, this discussion will point towards how justice can be achieved for the patients in your care and the colleagues you work alongside.

Promise and peril-defining ethical telehealth practice from the clinician and patient perspective: A qualitative study

Objectives We undertook a qualitative study to examine and compare the experience of ethical principles by telehealth practitioners and patients in relation to service delivery theory. The study was conducted prior to and during the recent global increase in the use of telehealth services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 telehealth practitioners and patients using constructionist grounded theory methods to collect and analyse data. Twenty-five axial coded data categories were then unified and aligned through selective coding with the Beauchamp and Childress (2013) framework of biomedical ethics. The groups were then compared. Results Thirteen categories aligned to the ethical framework were identified for practitioners and 12 for patients. Variance existed between the groups. Practitioner results were non-maleficence 4/13 or (31%), beneficence 4/13 (31%), professional–patient relationships 3/12 (22%), autonomy 1/13 (8%) and justice 1/13 (8%). Patient data results were non-maleficence 4/12 (33%), professional–patient relationships 3/12 (33%), autonomy 2/12 (18%), beneficence 1/12 (8%) and justice 1/12 (8%). Conclusions Ethical principles are experienced differently between telehealth practitioners and patients. These differences can impact the quality and safety of care. Practitioners feel telehealth provides better care overall than patients do. Patients felt telehealth may force a greater share of costs and burdens onto them and reduce equity. Both patients and practitioners felt telehealth can be more harmful than face-to-face service delivery when it creates new or increased risk of harms. Building sufficient trust and mutual understanding are equally important to patients as privacy and confidentiality.

Ethical Principles in Personal Protective Equipment Inventory Management Decisions and Partnerships Across State Lines During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented strain on the personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain. Given the dearth of PPE and consequences for transmission, GetMePPE Chicago (GMPC) developed a PPE allocation framework and system, distributing 886 900 units to 274 institutions from March 2020 to July 2021 to address PPE needs. As the pandemic evolved, GMPC made difficult decisions about (1) building reserve inventory (to balance present and future, potentially higher clinical acuity, needs), (2) donating to other states/out-of-state organizations, and (3) receiving donations from other states. In this case study, we detail both GMPC’s experience in making these decisions and the ethical frameworks that guided these decisions. We also reflect on lessons learned and suggest which values may have been in conflict (eg, maximizing benefits vs duty to mission, defined in the context of PPE allocation) in each circumstance, which values were prioritized, and when that prioritization would change. Such guidance can promote a values-based approach to key issues concerning distribution of PPE and other scarce medical resources in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related future pandemics.

Etika Keuangan Hamba Tuhan: Kajian Eksegetikal Terhadap 1 Timotius 6:3-10

The background of this article was the financial problems that occurred in the context of a clergy's life and ministries institution. There were court cases of clergies and church organizations due to legal disputes and asset issues. This article aimed to get ethical principles from biblical research according to the minister's life and how they related to money matters. The research question tried to answer was, what are the economic ethics principles for the ministers based on 1 Timothy 6:3-10? Method applied in this research was qualitative descriptive with a literature study approach. The authors used the exegetical method for some keywords in the focused text to elaborate and explain the text. The finance ethical principles for the ministers found are: not making a material gain as a purpose of the ministries, living with contentment, developing self-control, warding off materialism.

Bringing ethics into governance: the case of the UK COVID-19 contact tracing app

PurposeIn April 2020, it was announced that NHSX, a unit of the UK National Health Service (NHS) responsible for digital innovation, was developing a contact tracing app that would offer a digital solution to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the urgency with which the app was developed, a clear commitment was made to designing the technology in a way that enshrined key ethical principles, and an ethics advisory board (EAB) was established to provide timely advice, guidance and recommendations on associated ethical issues. Alongside this, there were extensive criticisms of how NHSX adhered to ethical principles in the handling of the app development-criticisms that require empirical exploration. This paper explores how ethics was incorporated into decision-making during governance processes associated with the development of app.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with those involved in the app's development/governance, those with a consulting role associated with the app, or those who sat on the EAB.FindingsThe EAB fulfilled an important role by introducing ethical considerations to app developers. Though at times, it was difficult to accommodate key ethics principles into governance processes, which sometimes suffered from little accountability.Originality/valueWhile several articles have provided overviews of ethical issues, or explored public perceptions towards contact tracing apps, to the best the authors, knowledge this is the first empirical piece analysing ethics governance issues via stakeholder interviews.

Education Ethics

Chapter 11 reflects on what educators owe students in higher education institutions and the broader society when it comes to which knowledge to teach. It points out how utilitarianism and Kantianism naturally ground a cosmopolitan approach to instructing matters of culture, whereas the communal ethic does not. Rightness as friendliness instead supports prioritizing local cultures, an implication that is defended. The chapter also notes how the relational moral theory probably entails that it is right to strive to develop students’ virtue, a view that is not salient in the works of those who adhere to the Western ethical principles. Finally, the chapter considers the question of whether it can be right to instruct some knowledge for its own sake. Doing so seems ruled out by utilitarianism and Kantianism, but the relational moral theory is shown to admit of an interpretation that would permit it.