Bioethics and natural law: the relationship in Catholic teaching.

In the discipline of Catholic moral theology, bioethics (traditionally described as medical ethics) has held a major place. The systematic development of bioethics has drawn principally upon a natural law ethic, supported by broader religious arguments. The purpose of this essay is to examine the status and role of natural law in Catholic teaching as it bears upon bioethics.     

现时代的生命伦理问题

结合现时代临床,提出医疗要回归“初心”,“初心”就是“人命贵”,这是医学伦理起点,也是医学的最高宗旨;而要贯彻“初心”,又应讲究医疗科技和医学人文及伦理之间形成合力。分析认为：现时代医学伦理可能以“生态伦理”更为合适;应区分重大疫情、急性抢救、慢性病纠治等不同情况,考虑“合力”所涉及的不同方面之轻重缓急;并针对生命伦理的有利原则,指出“有利”只是动机及出发点,还需深入思考,确立动机的基线和起点;就基线而言,要搞清楚是本然“有利”,还是科学“有利”,并做出一定区分;应在科学“有利”和本然“有利”之间保持适度的张力与平衡。

     

Bioethics after the terror

Bioethics as a field has been fortunate that its values and concerns have mirrored the values and concerns of society. In light of the September 11th attacks, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition in American culture, one fraught with implications for bioethics. The emphasis on autonomy and individual rights may come to be tempered by greater concern over the collective good. Increased emphasis on solidarity over autonomy could greatly alter public response to research abuses aimed at defense from bioterrorism, to privacy of genetic information, and to control of private medical resources to protect the public health.     

Honoring the Bios in Lutheran Bioethics

Abstract:  A Lutheran bioethic honors the body by being anti‐Gnostic (and finding moral wisdom in the body's limits), by being anti‐Pelagian (and requiring the reshaping of our disordered desires), and by being anti‐Sadducean (in affirming that the new creation, though continuous with and fulfilling the old, also transforms and perfects it in ways that go beyond the earthly life we know). Such an approach to bioethics is illustrated here through discussion of the way in which new reproductive technologies may distort our understanding of the relation between the generations, thereby losing sight of the bios in bioethics.     

Adverse implications for university teaching concealed in economically driven policies

Modern universities represent large economic operations fueled by funds that are increasingly derived from student tuition as government subsidies shrink. Student recruitment and retention are now mainly driven by the need for the dollars that students pay into the system. Policy that is responsive to these pressing economic realities, promulgated at all institutional levels, promotes professional behavior that encourages student retention while allowing this to occur through subtle sacrifice of the traditional essence of the university. A multiphase analysis relates the institution's economically driven policies on retention to their classroom implications and to other effects on the behavior of the teaching faculty.     

Student and faculty gender in ratings of university teaching quality

The aim of this study is to test the assertion that student and faculty gender, together with their possible interaction, have little or almost no real effect on student ratings of university teaching quality, taking into account the diversity of academic disciplines as a modulating variable. A sample of 1,304 student ratings from a university in Madrid, Spain, was selected out of a total of 236,862. The Complutense University Teachers Evaluation Questionnaire was administered to students at the Complutense University of Madrid for assessing teaching quality. This instrument operationalizes two main dimensions in evaluation of teaching in higher education: Teaching Competence and Motivational and Interactive Skills. When the results were analyzed, taking into consideration both possible statistical significance and effect size, they supported the proposed assertion. These results may have implications on certain areas of higher education.     

Research about the university teaching performance evaluation under the data envelopment method

How to take active and effective measures to evaluate the university scientifically and rationally has been an eternal topic that the educational circles are constantly exploring. Based on the principle of index construction, the current educational performance evaluation index system is improved and a more reasonable evaluation index system is formed. On this basis, taking the sample data in 2017 as an example, the principal component analysis method is used to reduce the dimension of input and output indicators and eliminate the correlation between indicators, and three principal components of input and three principal components of output are obtained. Secondly, data envelopment analysis model is established, and the data processed are analyzed with the help of MATLAB and DEAP2.1 operation software. The efficiency of these 24 colleges and universities is compared to understand the efficiency and differences of each college. Moreover, projection analysis of non-DEA effective DMU is completed and the direction of improvement and the specific adjustment value are pointed out.     

优巴斯关于国际生命伦理学的宣言

生命科学和医学科学提出了许多有关教育、伦理、法律和社会的重要问题,这些问题需要从本地、本国、国际等不同层面加以考虑。在第七次及以前历次筑波国际生命伦理学圆桌会议的讨论结束之后,在《优巴斯亚洲及国际生命伦理学杂志》陈述了其目标之后,在该杂志上的不同观点争论了十年之后,优巴斯伦理研究所和在本宣言上签名的人士,希望对国际生命伦理学强调下述原则：     

Collectivizing Rescue Obligations in Bioethics

Bioethicists invoke a duty to rescue in a wide range of cases. Indeed, arguably, there exists an entire medical paradigm whereby vast numbers of medical encounters are treated as rescue cases. The intuitive power of the rescue paradigm is considerable, but much of this power stems from the problematic way that rescue cases are conceptualized—namely, as random, unanticipated, unavoidable, interpersonal events for which context is irrelevant and beneficence is the paramount value. In this article, I critique the basic assumptions of the rescue paradigm, reframe the ethical landscape in which rescue obligations are understood, and defend the necessity and value of a wider social and institutional view. Along the way, I move back and forth between ethical theory and a concrete case where the duty to rescue has been problematically applied: the purported duty to regularly return incidental findings and individual research results in genomic and genetic research.     

Bioethics in a Global Village

One goal of the transplant community is to seek ways to increase the number of people who are willing and able to donate organs. People in states between life and death are often medically excellent candidates for donating organs. Yet public policy surrounding organ procurement is a delicate matter. While there is the utilitarian goal of increasing organ supply, there is also the deontologic concern about respect for persons. Public policy must properly mediate between these two concerns. Currently the dead donor (dd) rule is appealed to as an attempt at such mediation. I argue that given the lack of consensus on a definition of death, the dd rule is no longer successful at mediating utilitarian and deontologic concerns. I suggest instead that focusing on a particular person's history can be successful.     

死后生殖问题的生命伦理学思考

生物科学和医疗技术的发展使死后生殖成为可能,但是,面对世界不同地域所发生的死后生殖案例,伦理和法律的争议层出不穷。试图从生命伦理学的基本原则入手,以尊重人、行善以及公平原则为基点,结合相关问卷调查结果,探讨争议的焦点及成因,希望可以引发各个层面对相关问题的关注和讨论。