Gratuity,Embodiment, and Reciprocity

Protestant Christian ethicist Timothy Jackson and secular feminist philosopher Eva Feder Kittay each explore the relationship between love or care and justice through the lens of human dependency. Jackson sharply prioritizes agape over justice, whereas Kittay articulates a more complex and integrated understanding of the relationship of care and distributive justice. An account of Christian love and its relation to justice must account for the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity that pervade human existence. Such an account must integrate provision for another's basic needs, a feature of agape, with a distributive justice that fairly allocates the material prerequisites of care and the burden of caring labor. Kittay's treatment of care and justice is more adequate to the realities of human embodiment and the social organization of care than Jackson's, but neither offers a fully adequate ground for the moral personhood of all human beings, including deeply dependent persons.     

Characteristics of a French African Caribbean Epidemiological Psychiatric Sample with a History of Suicide Attempt

Research on vulnerability factors among ethnic groups, independent of primary psychiatric diagnosis, may help to identify groups at risk of suicidal behavior. French African Caribbean general psychiatric patients (N = 362) were recruited consecutively and independently of the primary psychiatric diagnosis. Demographic and clinical characteristics and lifetime history of suicide attempts were recorded. Sixty‐five patients (18%) had a history of at least one suicide attempt. Presence of professional qualifications, children, poor social contacts, treatment with benzodiazepine at inclusion, and poor treatment compliance were all associated with a lifetime history of suicide attempts.     

A RESPONSE TO DAVID HOLLENBACH AND SOHAIL H. HASHMI

Irene Oh affirms that religious freedom, faith, and reason, as David Hollenbach suggests, are subject matters that offer promising platforms for interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The need for cross‐cultural understanding is imperative especially given the current political climate, in which world leaders can easily exacerbate existing tensions through the misapplication of such terms. Sohail H. Hashmi addresses the need to discuss women's rights as part of a larger discussion on human rights in Islam. Oh concurs and notes that Sayyid Qutb's remarks on women in the United States serve as a starting point for clarifying women's agency in Islam.     

The Role of Situational Interviews in Fostering Positive Reactions to Selection Decisions

We investigated the effect of interview format and employment equity program strength on perceptions of fairness. We used job seekers and vignettes to test the hypotheses. The participants reported lukewarm support for employment equity programs. The use of a situational interview in the selection process of an organisation that had adopted an employment equity program contributed to higher perceptions of fairness vis‐à‐vis the use of an unstructured interview. The results also showed that the inclusion of a situational interview in the selection process mitigated negative reactions to the selection decision when a strong employment equity program was in place as well as when a female visible minority was hired. Nous avons évalué l'impact sur la perception de justice du style d'entretien et de la rigueur d'une charte d'équité relative à l'emploi. On a fait appel à des demandeurs d'emploi et utilisé un test de jugement situationnel pour éprouver les hypothèses. Les répondants se sont montrés peu enthousiastes en ce qui concerne les chartes d'équité relatives à l'emploi. Le choix d'un entretien structuré dans le processus de sélection d'une organisation qui avait adopté une charte d'équité relative à l'emploi a amélioré la perception de justice portant sur un entretien ordinaire. Il apparaît aussi que la présence d'un entretien structuré dans le processus de sélection atténuait les réactions négatives consécutives au résultat de la sélection quand existait une sérieuse charte d'équité relative à l'emploi et quand était embauchée une minorité féminine non négligeable.     

Re-visioning clinical research: gender and the ethics of experimental design

Since modern medicine is based substantially in clinical medical research, the flaws and ethical problems that arise in this research as it is conceived and practiced in the United States are likely to be reflected to some extent in current medicine and its practice. This paper explores some of the ways in which clinical research has suffered from an androcentric focus in its choice and definition of problems studied, approaches and methods used in design and interpretation of experiments, and theories and conclusions drawn from the research. Some examples of re-visioned research hint at solutions to the ethical dilemmas created by this biased focus; an increased number of feminists involved in clinical research may provide avenues for additional changes that would lead to improved health care for all.