Justice and Third Party Risk: The Ethics of Xenotransplantation

abstract  The question of when it is permissible to inflict risks on others without their consent is one that we all face in our everyday lives, but which is often brought to our attention in contexts of technological innovation and scientific uncertainty. Xenotransplantation, the transplantation of organs or tissues from animals to humans, has the potential to save or improve the lives of many patients but gives rise to the possibility of infectious agents being transferred from donor animals into the human population. As well as being an important ethical issue in its own right it therefore provides a useful vehicle for exploring the more general question of how to balance the benefits of a practice against the risks to third parties. This paper focuses on the Rawlsian, justice-based analysis of the risks of xenotransplantation proposed by Robert Veatch. It argues that Veatch is right to take considerations of distributive justice into account, but that his particular approach is flawed. It is hoped that consideration of Veatch's arguments, and of the underlying assumptions will suggest better ways of executing a justice-based approach.     

The Psychological Battle for Control: A Qualitative Study of Health-care Professionals' Understandings of the Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa

This paper reports a qualitative, idiographic study, which intensively examines a multidisciplinary team of clinicians' subjective understandings and experiences of treating young people with anorexia nervosa. The study employs semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis, these methods enabling individual clinicians' perspectives to be explored in depth and retained within the analysis. The analysis focuses on the salient higher-order theme of control which emerges as central to understanding the treatment of the anorexic child. Three control-related themes are used to illustrate the multiplicity of meanings and experiences which are relevant to this team of health-care professionals. It is suggested that this paper makes three important contributions to the current eating disorder literature: illuminating the multi-faceted nature of the construct control; highlighting the importance of therapists' subjective understandings and experiences; and illustrating the value of qualitative methods for clinically relevant research. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Creativity Through a Lens of Social Responsibility: Implicit Theories of Creativity with Korean Samples

Implicit theories of creativity have been the subject of increased research interest in recent years. These investigations are motivated by the observation that an individual's creative activities are guided by personal definitions rather than professional theories, which may be very different. Cross-cultural studies of implicit creativity theories are rare, yet they can add significantly to our knowledge of how creativity is viewed across cultures. The nature of 428 Koreans' implicit creativity theories were identified in a prestudy, and the structure of 478 Koreans' ratings of the indicated behaviors was analyzed in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, 211 participants evaluated the creativity of 44 hypothetical profiles based on the results of the first experiment. Results provide evidence that Korean conceptions of creativity are similar to Western conceptions, although Koreans may emphasize negative behaviors and personality characteristics (e.g., deviance) to a greater degree. When asked to use their implicit theories to evaluate the creativity of hypothetical profiles, Korean adults strongly emphasized specific cognitive, personality, and motivational aspects of creativity over noncognitive aspects (e.g., perseverance, independence).     

Self‐esteem and caregiving in romantic relationships: Self‐ and partner perceptions

Self‐esteem may be associated with romantic partners' experience of emotional support and caregiving. Using a sample of 6,385 heterosexual couples in committed relationships gathered from the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) data set (see www.relate‐institute.org ), structural equation modeling was used to compare two actor–partner interdependence models examining the associations between both partners' self‐esteem and perceptions of partner caregiving responsiveness (i.e., accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement). Male and female self‐esteem was significantly related to partners' caregiving responsiveness while controlling for family‐of‐origin attachment experiences and relationship stability. Female self‐esteem was also significantly associated with females' caregiving responsiveness. These findings yield important implications, demonstrating that higher self‐esteem may be associated with improved caregiving behaviors between romantic partners. Relevant implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Family Etiology and Remission in a Case of Psychogenic Fugue

A psychogenic fugue lasting six days occurred in a 15-year-old girl living with her mother, sister, and stepfather. The fugue was of the most complete type — the patient assumed a new identity; spoke a foreign language she had studied in school; “regressed” to an earlier period in history; radically altered her dress and grooming; and showed skills, interests, and personality features she had not shown before. Although accounts of fugues are rare and often sketchy, the present case is unique in the amount of detail that was available. The argument between situational and psychodynamic interpretations of fugue is reviewed briefly, and a family systems interpretation of the present case is offered.