Equality in health care: Christian engagement with a secular obsession.

A frenetic search for equality lies at the center of much secular and even "Christian" bioethics. In a secular world, if one does not believe in God, if this life is one's whole existence, it would seem that one could not settle for less than equal approbation, especially equality before the risks of suffering and death, which medicine promises to ameliorate. Yet, the concern for equality in health care is puzzling. After a modest level of access to health care there is little difference in average life expectancy. Are concerns for equality in health care even vaguely Christian? The pursuit of Christian perfection has never been correctly equated with state-imposed egalitarianism. Furthermore, an all-encompassing, secular, egalitarian health care system may provide equal access to significantly immoral medical treatments. In contrast to secular thought, the call of Christianity is a call to holiness, not a call to an egalitarianism that superficially resonates with certain elements of Christian thought.     

炎症性肠病的基因学诊断

炎症性肠病（IBD）是一种涉及多基因的复杂疾病,传统的IBD的诊断方法是依靠病史和临床表现、结肠镜检、钡剂灌肠、病理检查及实验室检查等综合性诊断,但难以满足病因学及亚型分类,随着IBD易感基因的发现,采用血清免疫学和基因标志物来诊断和鉴别IBD与其他疾病以及评估临床病程及预后等成为可能。现将IBD易感基因以及临床应用作一综述。     

Mental Causation is Not Just Downward Causation

According to a popular model of mental causation, an irreducible mental cause M1 brings about an irreducible mental effect M2 by bringing about M2's supervenience base (ground, realizer, etc.), P2. Call this ‘the Downward Causation View’. This paper raises doubts about the Downward Causation View on grounds that M1 does not cause M2 immediately and there is no causal chain from M1 to M2. Prima facie, then, M1 does not cause M2 on this view. But a theory of mental causation ought to account for how some mental phenomena cause other mental phenomena; so rival theories are to be preferred. After setting out the problem, I consider replies; all fail. 1     

Executive function and intelligence in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity: an individual differences investigation

In the current study, we examined the role of intelligence and executive functions in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity using an individual differences approach. Data were collected from 174 adolescents and adults who completed a battery of cognitive tests as well as a sentence comprehension task. The critical items for the comprehension task consisted of object/subject garden paths (e.g., While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute played in the crib), and participants answered a comprehension question (e.g., Did Anna dress the baby?) following each one. Previous studies have shown that garden-path misinterpretations tend to persist into final interpretations. Results showed that both intelligence and processing speed interacted with ambiguity. Individuals with higher intelligence and faster processing were more likely to answer the comprehension questions correctly and, specifically, following ambiguous as opposed to unambiguous sentences. Inhibition produced a marginal effect, but the variance in inhibition was largely shared with intelligence. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their impact on syntactic ambiguity resolution.     

Why ecumenism fails: taking theological differences seriously.

Contemporary Christians are separated by foundationally disparate understandings of Christianity itself. Christians do not share one theology, much less a common understanding of the significance of sin, suffering, disease, and death. These foundational disagreements not only stand as impediments to an intellectually defensible ecumenism, but they also form the underpinnings of major disputes in the culture wars, particularly as these are expressed in healthcare. There is not one Christian bioethics of sin, suffering, sickness, and death. In this article, the character of the moral-theological visions separating the various Christianities and thus their bioethics is examined. Particular emphasis is placed on the differences that set contemporary Western theology at odds with the theology of the Christianity of the first millennium. As is shown, the ground for this gulf lies in the divide between traditional and post-traditional views of the appropriate role of philosophy in theology, a difference rooted in disparate understandings of the meaning of church and of the meaning of the logos, the Son of God.     

Towards a Christian bioethics.

Rather than revealing itself as a single, unified, ecumenical faith, Christianity is sundered with Christians united neither in one communion nor in one baptism. Christian Bioethics seeks to examine the traditional content-full moral commitments which the Christian faiths bring to life, sexuality, suffering, illness and death within the contexts of medicine and health care. Seeking to understand the differences which separate the bioethics of Roman Catholics, Protestants, and the Orthodox, Christian Bioethics explores the manners in which the faiths diverge. The failure of the Enlightenment project to disclose a content-full communality that would bind mankind has left much to be reconsidered by Christians who face new ethical dilemmas in the novel guise of advances in health care technologies.     

Physician-assisted death: doctrinal develoment vs. Christian tradition.

Physician-assisted suicide offers a moral and theological Rorschach test. Foundational commitments regarding morality and theology are disclosed by how the issue is perceived and by what moral problems it is seen to present. One of the cardinal differences disclosed is that between Western and Orthodox Christian approaches to theology in general, and the theology of dying and suicide in particular. Confrontation with the issue of suicide is likely to bring further doctrinal development in many of the Western Christian religions, so as to be able to accept physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.