Persons and humans: refashioning ourselves in a better image and likeness

Abstract. This article argues that there are neither moral considerations that in principle forbid the development or use of recom-binant DNA technology, nor grounds to hold that its application is likely to cause more harm than good. A defensible moral position would enjoin a prudent assessment of consequences, rather than an absolute prohibition. The technology may remain controversial because it presupposes the difference between being a person, an entity who can evaluate and manipulate its own biological structure, and human-ness as a biological structure likely to be the subject of engineering over the long-range future.     

Good looks and good practice: the attitudes of career practitioners to attractiveness and appearance

Empirical evidence attests the impact that career image has on objective career success, yet little is known of how career practitioners conceptualise and operationalise this information. This article presents the quantitative findings of an online survey of career practitioners (n?=?399, 74% female, 89% white and 75% from the U.K.) exploring their attitudes and practices towards issues of appearance and attractiveness. Career practitioners who participated in this survey acknowledged that beauty, self-presentation and interpersonal skills influence career success, and 96% of them considered conversations about career image as part of their professional remit. The career practitioners felt relatively comfortable and well informed in their discussions in this arena, but would welcome further guidance and training to inform their practice. Ethical and practical implications for the profession are considered.     

Development of a parent training program for children with pervasive developmental disorders

Parent delivered interventions based on applied behavior analysis (ABA) for children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs) have been evaluated using primarily single‐subject design methodology or small case series. While the results of these evaluations are encouraging, an important next step is to standardize the interventions to allow for replication across sites, in studies with large samples and measures of long‐term, clinically meaningful outcomes such as improvements in children's functioning and their relationships with parents. Accordingly, the Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Psychosocial Interventions (RUPP Autism Network) assembled a detailed manual for a structured behavioral parent training (PT) program, developed treatment fidelity and training procedures, and conducted a pilot, feasibility study. The PT program is part of a large scale, multisite study intended to determine the efficacy of combined pharmacological treatment and behavioral intervention to improve behavior and adaptive functioning in children with PDD. This paper discusses the rationale for this project. A companion paper provides the results of our feasibility study on the PT program. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Suffering, meaning, and bioethics.

Suffering evokes moral and metaphysical reflection, the bioethics of suffering concerns the proper ethos of living with suffering. Because empirical and philosophical explorations of suffering are imprisoned in the world of immanent experience, they cannot reach to a transcendent meaning. Even if religious and other narratives concerning the meaning of suffering have no transcendent import, they can have aesthetic and moral significance. This understanding of narratives of suffering and of their custodians has substantial ecumenical implications: chaplains can function as general custodians of narratives and sustainers of a generic religious meaning. This understanding is contrary to traditional Christianity, which discloses a transcendent significance of human suffering found in a very particular history involving particular persons: Christ as the second Adam through the submission of the second Eve has taken on our nature so that we can be united with God. Human suffering is tied to human sin, not simply as a punishment for sin, much less as an opportunity to discharge a supposed temporal punishment due to sin. Human suffering is the result of our rebellious free choices. It provides an opportunity for humility and submission, so that, united to the cross of Christ, sin can be forgiven and suffering set aside in the Resurrection. Knowledge of this framing context for all human suffering is accessible not through rational argument. It is a knowledge garnered through repentance, purification of the heart, illumination by God's grace, and unification with God. Christian bioethics is embedded in the narrative of suffering, which is part of the history of salvation and which encompasses and places all of medicine in its terms.     

平等之后:一些关于医疗保健筹资的批判性反思

一系列复杂的思想意识、财政、社会和道德的危机正威胁着西欧和美国医疗保健筹资的可持续性。本文致力于罗尔斯原初境况的解释策略,以期论证一个根本上不同与约翰.罗尔斯的道德观,以及不同于驱动当代西方社会福利国家包含医疗保健提供在内的道德和政治承诺的道德观。     

Bioethics in the third millennium: some critical anticipations

Its promises to the contrary notwithstanding, bioethics is plural. There is a diversity of content-full moral undertandings of the good and the right. Moreover, there is no secular means in principle to set this diversity aside without begging the question. This moral diversity exists both as a sociological condition and as a moral epistemological constraint. Without succumbing to a metaphysical scepticism or moral relativism, the bioethics of the future, if it is to be honest, should learn how to live with robust moral diversity.     

Genetic enhancement and theosis: two models of therapy.

The author argues that to think theologically about genetic enhancement is to think prayerfully about how to locate all one's uses of medicine, recognizing that they must all be lodged in the Christian struggle to holiness. He is critical of the essays in this issue because they often appear to take on a scholastic life of their own outside of the all-consuming struggle to salvation of Christians across the millennia.