Perspectives on the Fairness of Lotteries

When there are equally strong claimants for a scarce good, lotteries are often argued to be a fair method of allocation. This paper reproduces four of the views on the fairness of lotteries that have been presented in the literature: the distributive view; the preference view; the actual consent view; and the expressive view. It argues that these four views cannot offer plausible explanations for the fairness of lotteries. The distributive view is argued to be inadequate because, even though receiving expectations to a good is of value to the participants, this value cannot plausibly make a contribution to the satisfaction of a participant’s claim. Both the preference and actual consent views are argued to be implausible because they lead to accepting procedures as legitimate that fail to correspond with what a claim is. Finally, it is contended that the expressive view identifies a value that is relevant to respecting equal claimants, but that cannot plausibly be related to a procedure’s fairness. The paper concludes by maintaining that an equal treatment view can accept all the valid insights from these four views without needing to accept their untenable implications.     

Anti-Poverty,Development, and the Limits of Progress

In this paper I critically engage with Hennie Lötter’s impressive book, Poverty, Ethics and Justice. I discuss his conception of poverty, and offer an interpretation of his claim that poverty is a uniquely human scourge. I exam the various harms of poverty that Lötter discusses. I consider two reasons that he offers for why we have a moral duty to end poverty, and I argue that the reason based on what we can justify to others if we take their human dignity seriously is most compelling. Finally, I argue that Lötter overemphasizes of the moral importance of aid and downplays in the importance of the justice of institutional and structural change. I close by considering the prospects for social equality given our experience of capitalist development as a means for poverty eradication. I consider the moral importance of limits to the achievement of robust equality.     

Clinical Trial Application in Europe: What Will Change with the New Regulation?

The European framework surrounding clinical trials on medicinal products for human use is going to change as demonstrated by the large debate at European institutional level. One of the major challenges is to overcome the lack of harmonisation of clinical trial procedures among countries. This aspect is gaining more and more importance, considering the increasing number of multicentre and multinational studies. In this work, the actual European rules governing the Clinical Trial Application have been analysed throughout the different steps including the registration of the trial in the European database; the preparation of documents to be submitted and their contents; the preparation of documents related to the information and consent process; the submission to competent bodies. Specific issues related to paediatric research and trials involving non EU/EEA countries have been addressed as well. Results reveal that the European legislation offers a well defined set of European rules covering different aspects of a Clinical Trial Application. However, these are not suitable to meet the challenges from multicentre and multinational clinical studies. A stronger set of rules, such as is available in a composite European Regulation has been adopted and is expected to harmonise practices and enable sponsors to carry out well conducted trials. But will the new regulation overcome the existing criticisms of Directive 2001/20/EC?     

Scientific Misconduct in India: Causes and Perpetuation

Along with economic strength, space technology and software expertise, India is also a leading nation in fraudulent scientific research. The problem is worsened by vested interests working in concert for their own benefits. These self-promoting cartels, together with biased evaluation methods and weak penal systems, combine to perpetuate scientific misconduct. Some of these issues are discussed in this commentary, with supporting examples and possible solutions.     

Enabling Ethical Code Embeddedness in Construction Organizations: A Review of Process Assessment Approach

Several researchers have identified codes of ethics (CoEs) as tools that stimulate positive ethical behavior by shaping the organisational decision-making process, but few have considered the information needed for code implementation. Beyond being a legal and moral responsibility, ethical behavior needs to become an organisational priority, which requires an alignment process that integrates employee behavior with the organisation’s ethical standards. This paper discusses processes for the responsible implementation of CoEs based on an extensive review of the literature. The internationally recognized European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model (EFQM model) is proposed as a suitable framework for assessing an organisation’s ethical performance, including CoE embeddedness. The findings presented herein have both practical and research implications. They will encourage construction practitioners to shift their attention from ethical policies to possible enablers of CoE implementation and serve as a foundation for further research on ethical performance evaluation using the EFQM model. This is the first paper to discuss the model’s use in the context of ethics in construction practice.     

The Need for Governance by Experimentation: The Case of Biofuels

The policies of the European Union concerning the development of biofuels can be termed a lock-in. Biofuels were initially hailed as a green, sustainability technology. However evidence to the contrary quickly emerged. The European Commission proposed to alter its policies to accommodate for these effects but met with fierce resistance from a considerable number of member states who have an economic interest in these first generation biofuels. In this paper I argue that such a lock-in might have been avoided if an experimental approach to governance had been adopted. Existing approaches such as anticipation and niche management either do not reduce uncertainty sufficiently or fail to explicitly address conflicts between values motivating political and economic support for new technologies. In this paper, I suggest to apply an experimental framework to the development of sustainable biobased technologies. Such an approach builds on insights from adaptive management and transition management in that it has the stimulation of learning effects at its core. I argue that these learning effects should occur on the actual impacts of new technologies, on the institutionalisation of new technologies and most specifically on the norms and values that underly policies supporting new technologies. This approach can be relevant for other emerging technologies.     

Research in Emergency and Critical Care Settings: Debates,Obstacles and Solutions

Research is an integral part of evidence-based practice in the emergency department and critical care unit that improves patient management. It is important to understand the need and major obstacles for conducting research in emergency settings. Herein, we review the literature for the obligations, ethics and major implications of emergency research and the associated limiting factors influencing research activities in critical care and emergency settings. We reviewed research engines such as PubMed, MEDLINE, and EMBASE for the last two decades using the key words “emergency department”, “critical care”, “research”, “consent”, and “ethics” as the search terms. Research within emergency settings is slow or non-existent due to time and financial constraints as well as the lack of a research tradition. There are several barriers to conducting research studies in emergency situations such as who, what, when, and how to obtain patient consent. The emergency environment is highly pressurized, emotional, and overburdened. The time taken for research is a particular risk that could delay the desired immediate interventions. Ethical issues abound, particularly relating to informed consent. Research in emergency settings is still in its infancy. Thus, there is a strong need for extensive research in the emergency setting through community awareness, resource management, ethics, collaborations, capacity building, and the development of a research interest for the improvement of patient care and outcomes. We need to establish a well-structured plan to assess and track the decision-making capacity, consider a multistep enrolment and consent strategy, and develop an integrated approach for recruitment into studies.     

The ‘Chasing Amy’ Bias in Past Sexual Experiences: Men Can Change,Women Cannot

An extensive sexual history may deter individuals from committing to a potential romantic partner. However, the reasons for this deterrence may differ between men and women, such that women focus on practical concerns over suitability whereas men focus on reputation. Thus, individuals with extensive sexual histories, who are currently monogamous, should be more acceptable to women than they are to men. Two studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 found that women rated male targets with a sexually experienced past with increased desirability for a long-term relationship if they reported recent shifts towards monogamy. In contrast, men rated sexually experienced female targets, with a recent shift towards monogamy, as least desirable. Study 2 extended the understanding of this effect by demonstrating that one time sexual experiences (i.e., threesome) had no effect on women’s judgments of currently monogamous men, but continued to negatively affect men’s judgments of currently monogamous women. In sum, women seem accepting of lifestyle changes in men, whereas men fixate on women’s previous experiences in spite of shifts towards monogamy.     

Bridging the HIV Divide: Stigma,Stories and Serodiscordant Sexuality in the Biomedical Age

At a time when advances in biomedicine have rendered people with HIV non-infectious under certain conditions, much public discourse on HIV remains stuck in a paradigm of ‘risk’, which does little to lessen the divide between people with and without HIV in society or challenge the way intimate relationships across this divide are typically stigmatised as undesirable and problematic. We rarely hear the stories of couples who live with mixed HIV statuses and how they themselves perceive and manage their so called ‘serodiscordance’. In this article, we examine such stories by mixed-status couples in Australia. In stark contrast to the dominant discourse, these couples invoked narratives of love, the everyday unimportance and manageability of HIV, and recent developments in HIV medicine, thereby challenging the way serodiscordant sexuality has been cast in public health research. Drawing on Ken Plummer’s work on hidden sexual stories, we consider not only the content of their stories, but the broader significance of stories to the world in which they are enacted, of storytelling as a rally for social and political recognition and legitimacy. Reflecting on our own role in the co-production of research stories, we argue that by moving marginalised sexual stories out of silence, stigmatised communities and researchers can conjointly and incrementally shape a new public discourse and new forms of ‘intimate citizenship’.