从细胞凋亡看生命的选择

随着医学科学的发展人们逐渐认识到:细胞凋亡是细胞在基因控制下生理性、主动性的死亡方式,对维持整个生命有重要的作用,是生命的自主选择.这一认识改变了人们对死亡的传统理解.死亡不只是生命的终结现象而是伴随着整个生命的始终.细胞凋亡的理论为某些疑难疾病的防治提供了可能.     

人类基因组伦理：问题与前景

人灰基因组计谋（HGP）试图在分子层次上更深入、更全面的认识人体,为战胜疾病增进健康提供科学依据。从而造福人类。这是人类认识生命、认识自身的自然而又必然的结果。必须反对“基因决定论”,保护基因隐私,防止基因歧视,警惕“优生运动”死灰复燃。HGP与生老病死密切相关,对伦理特别敏感,尤其要强调伦理的规范和引导作用,而不能把科技与伦理对立起来。     

关于“精准医学先导队列项目”的更名

2016年10月12日,美国国立卫生研究院将"精准医学先导队列项目"更名为"我们所有人的研究项目",从2015年提出精准医学开始,对此的争议就一直不断。此次项目的更名,反映了项目的策划者对疾病、健康的认识有了较大的变化,他们意识到疾病、健康不仅主要取决于基因,而且与环境、社会、心理诸多因素密切相关,名称的更改意味着将基因的作用置于人体生命和健康整体全方位因素中思考,是从基因与环境、心理、社会因素结合的视域看待疾病与健康,是从生物医学迈向生物心理社会医学的重要一步。     

生命文化视域中我国生命伦理学建构的定位

创建以我国传统生命文化为特征的内在生命伦理学,而不局限于应对生命科学技术前沿问题的外在生命伦理学,需要借鉴中外生命伦理思想传统,并重新定位研究方式。本文倡导的逻辑基于四个维度:自然生命实体系统、生命文化系统、中国优秀传统文化中的生命伦理尺度与非线性复杂性科学理论提供的判据,以及对上述两个系统进行内在选择和外在选择的机制。由此将生命伦理从狭义扩展到广义,揭示新视野中的生命伦理学思想范畴,回答我国生命伦理学如何"本土化"和如何"适应时代发展"的难题,为构建生命文化视阈中的我国生命伦理学,提供一种建构论的认识框架和思维方式。     

探讨傣医四塔五蕴学说中的平衡观

傣医以四塔五蕴学说为核心内容来认识人的生、长、壮、老生命过程,将四塔五蕴之间的动态平衡关系看作是生命存在的前提和基础.探讨四塔五蕴学说中的平衡观,对于认识生命本质、疾病终极原因、病机本质及诊疗法度的确立等傣医理论的完善有着重要指导意义.     

人类基因组计划实施与人类文明考查

人类基因组计划实施以来正在取得巨大的成就,它将逐步提示生命的本质,增进对生物进化、人类发展和未来的认识,并促进对人类疾病的诊断和防治;与此同时,也将伴随产生一些涉及价值、文明与伦理道德的社会问题。因此,人类在享有研究成果的同时,还必须通过法律、伦理与科学家的责任及义务来调整、降低这些负面效应。     

中医学的传统优势与现代发展的思考

利用古代哲学思想、有限的人体解剖观察、反复临床实践基础上建立的中医学理论体系蕴藏着深厚的文化内涵和民族感情;尽管中、西医学各有其认识方法和逻辑思维特点,但不可否认的共性是研究同一对象(人体)和致力于从不同角度揭示生命规律及维护人类健康;中医学应在保持传统优势的基础上,充分利用现代科学技术的成就,特别是后基因时代的先进理论和高科技手段,为加速揭示生命规律的奥秘和服务人类而与时俱进.     

个体性与康吉莱姆的生命哲学——读《正常与病态》有感

《正常与病态》一书通过对正常与病态关系的研究,提出病态并不是正常的量变,所谓科学地区分正常与病态的方法是不存在的,只有通过病态才能认识正常,才能认识生命的本质。病态不仅仅具有负性的价值,亦有积极的创造性价值,生命通过病态的创造性价值主动适应变化的环境。从本体论上看,生命个体是一种关系的存在;从认识论上看,生命具有创造性;从价值论上看,生命亦是一种规范性的存在,生命本质即个体性。医学治疗应尊重生命的个体性。     

论“基因编辑婴儿”对人的尊严的挑战

人们对"基因编辑婴儿"事件的反对大多基于基因编辑技术的安全隐患。但安全性问题本质上属于技术问题。人的尊严才是"基因编辑婴儿"所涉及的重要伦理问题。从人的尊严出发,认为"基因编辑婴儿"的尊严遭到贬损,具体来说,基因被编辑个体存在被工具化状况,其"人性尊严"被贬损;基因被编辑个体的生命被操控,其"生命尊严"被贬损;基因被编辑个体对自我及外界评价的感知无法预测,其"人格尊严"被贬损。因此,基因编辑技术应当在充分尊重人的尊严及相关生命伦理的前提下才可应用,以严防"基因编辑婴儿"之类事件再次发生。     

跳出死亡恐惧的漩涡

正如任何美好的乐章都有终曲一样,死亡是生命历程的终结。讨论死亡,认识死亡,正视死亡,会使我们更加全面地认识生命,珍惜生命。 哲学家和心理学家把死亡理解为生命的一个自然阶段,死亡只是生命有机体的自然变化,其本身并没有什么可怕之处。人到晚年或身罹疑难险症时,便会感到自己是“西     

Contributions of Behavioral Systems Science to Leadership for a New Progressive Movement

We argue in this paper that we are in the midst of a period in which fundamental global change will be required if societies and many species, perhaps even our own, are to survive. The realities are inescapable, and the potential implications are likely to affect nearly every dimension of human life in the USA and globally. Current trends are discouraging and will be extraordinarily difficult to shift, given global structural realities. It is hard to imagine a time when effective leadership is more necessary or will be more challenging. Our thesis here is that behavioral systems science can contribute in meaningful ways to shaping and sustaining such leadership, leadership required to advance a new progressive movement.     

Neurological basis of language and sequential cognition: evidence from simulation,aphasia, and ERP studies

The current research addresses the hypothesis that certain aspects of sequential cognition have made substantial contributions to the human language processing capability, from a functional neurophysiology perspective. We first describe a cognitive sequence processing model that was developed based on the functional neuroanatomy of primate cortex and basal ganglia. We demonstrate how this model is capable of simulating the behavior of human infants in extracting serial, temporal and abstract structure from language-like sound sequences as revealed in recent psycholinguistic experiments. We then demonstrate how, through training, this model can perform adult level syntactic comprehension, based on dissociated processing streams for open vs. closed class words. The model subsequently predicts: (1) that impaired syntactic processing (as in agrammatic aphasia) will be associated with impairments in corresponding non-linguistic cognitive sequencing tasks, and (2) that neurophysiological processes (as revealed by ERPs) involved in syntactic processing should also be involved in the corresponding non-linguistic cognitive sequencing tasks. Data confirming these predictions are reviewed. We conclude that the study of sequential cognition will provide a new paradigm for the investigation of the neurophysiological bases of language.     

基于时空变化的步态识别算法研究

本文提出了一种八椭圆人体模型,并在此基础上提出了基于变化信息的步态识别算法。对每个视频序列,采用基于贝叶斯规则的检测算法检测出目标人体区域;将目标人体区域按比例划分为八个区域并分别用椭圆拟合,建立人体椭圆模型;用人体姿势的时空变化——相邻帧间的模型参数的差值作为特征,用归一化后的Mahalanobis距离和Euclidean距离分别进行相似性度量,NN和KNN技术用于最终的分类。实验结果表明,该算法拥有较高的识别率和较低的计算代价。     

BIOTECHNOTHEOLOGY AND DEMYTHOLOGIZATION OF STEM‐CELL RESEARCH

Biotechnology deals not only with new types of therapies for preventing and curing diseases but also with the creation of new technologies for the production of human flesh. Its ultimate aim is to create a new human body, a new person. Biotechnology wears the cloak not only of a new scientific paradigm but also of a kind of messianic religion. To develop new therapies, to destroy illnesses, to transform the human body into a nonmortal one—these are some of the promises it makes. In time, many of these promises will undoubtedly prove to be illusory, but they will nevertheless continue to have a significant impact on the way people think. Through a process that I call biotechnotheological analysis I show that biotechnology could eventually become not only a type of secular religion but even a type of mythic para‐Christian religion, one that incorporates the two most significant processes at work in every mythical religion: the process of mimesis and the ritual of the scapegoat. The essay is an attempt to understand biotechnological achievements, especially in stem‐cell research, in this new biotechnotheological way.     

Elemental operations in vision

Many cognitive tasks are serial in that they require several steps that have to be carried out in a sequence. Here, I outline a new theory of how these processing steps are implemented in vision by networks of neurons that span several areas of the cerebral cortex. The theory explains how individual neurons can contribute to the elementary processing steps, and also how several processing steps can be arranged in a sequence to form more complex visual routines, just as computer programs can be composed of sequences of instructions. Evidence in support of the theory comes from recent neurophysiological findings in monkeys engaged in complex visual tasks. It is likely that future work will allow these ideas to be generalized to other sensory modalities and cognitive functions.     

A dilemma for wolterstorff’s theistic grounding of human dignity and rights

In a number of recent works, Nicholas Wolterstorff defends the claim that human rights inhere in the dignity of every human. He further contends that the explanation of this dignity cannot be found in the intrinsic features of humans; rather, the only plausible explanation for human dignity is that it is bestowed upon humans by God’s love. In this paper, I argue that Wolterstorff’s theory concerning the ground of human dignity falls prey to something quite similar to the classic Euthyphro dilemma: either God must love every existing human in a dignity-bestowing manner or he need not, and either option is problematic. If the former, then whatever it is about humans that ensures God’s love can reasonably be thought to be the independent source of human dignity and/or rights, thereby leaving us without cause to appeal to God’s love for the explanation of this dignity. If the latter, the implication is that moral statements which appear to be necessarily true are only contingently so. Wolterstorff’s theory will thus require substantial modification, or else abandonment.     

Free Will,Determinism, and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise

I argue that free will and determinism are compatible, even when we take free will to require the ability to do otherwise and even when we interpret that ability modally, as the possibility of doing otherwise, and not just conditionally or dispositionally. My argument draws on a distinction between physical and agential possibility. Although in a deterministic world only one future sequence of events is physically possible for each state of the world, the more coarsely defined state of an agent and his or her environment can be consistent with more than one such sequence, and thus different actions can be “agentially possible”. The agential perspective is supported by our best theories of human behaviour, and so we should take it at face value when we refer to what an agent can and cannot do. On the picture I defend, free will is not a physical phenomenon, but a higher‐level one on a par with other higher‐level phenomena such as agency and intentionality.     

人脑的奥秘能否由人脑自身揭示--浅谈神经科学现代研究方法

神经科学研究是学科、多层次的。神经科学的每一次飞跃几乎都与某种研究方法的出现有关。从形态学的束路追踪法、组织化学法、原位杂交法、其聚焦激光扫描显微镜,到生理学的脑内微透析术、脑片、微电泳及行为学方法;从电生理的电压钳、膜片和脑电波,到生物化学的层析法、放射免疫法、免疫印迹法等;从种类繁多的分子生物学方法到各种脑成像技术。每种新方法的出现都打开了一扇门,引入一个新领域。实践证明,人脑即使不能彻底了解人脑的奥秘,也可无限地逼近。     

Observer‐relative chances and the doomsday argument

Suppose various observers are divided randomly into two groups, a large and a small. Not knowing into which group anyone has been sent, each can have strong grounds for believing in being in the large group, although recognizing that every observer in the other group has equally powerful reasons for thinking of this other group as the large one. Justified belief can therefore be observer‐relative in a rather paradoxical way. Appreciating this allows one to reject an intriguing new objection against Brandon Carter's ‘doomsday argument’. Carter encourages us to doubt that we are among only the first hundredth, say, or first millionth, of all humans who will ever have existed. He thereby reinforces whatever reasons we may have for suspecting that, unless we take great care, the human race will not survive long. Admittedly his argument is weakened if our world is indeterministic, so that there is no suitably guaranteed ‘fact of the matter’ of how many humans will ever have existed. But even then, it can caution us against believing that a lengthy future for humankind ‘is as good as determined’. Of all the objections the argument has yet faced, the new one is the most interesting.     

Catholic Reflections for an Updated Donum Vitae Instruction: A New Catholic Challenge in a Post-Christian Europe

On February 22, 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of theFaith published the Donum Vitae Instruction. Twenty years later,on February 22, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI asked for an updateof this Instruction. According to the Donum Vitae Instructionof 1987, the principle of the holiness of life imposes respectfor human persons from the very beginning of human life. Inthese past 20 years, new medical techniques have raised freshethical issues that are to be addressed by the Roman CatholicChurch Magisterium. The Roman Catholic Church, in its updateof the Instruction planned for 2007, will have to explain howcivil law is to be regulated according to the fundamental normsof the moral law. The moral message of the new Donum Vitae (justas in the 1987 version) will be to affirm the substance of humanjustice: respect for human life, as expressed in the resolvenot to infringe on, or to protect such life. Even in a post-ChristianEurope, this theological message can be understood if it istrue that Europe is marked by the principle of the absoluteprotection of human life.