Therapeutic versus genuine cloning: what are the real moral issues?

In order to answer the question raised in the title of my paper, I first put forward a general ethical theory, which is based on the traditional maxim neminem laedere. Second, I show how this principle in conjunction with certain assumptions concerning the value of life entails certain fundamental bioethical principles. Thus killing a living being Y is morally wrong whenever the intrinsic value of the life that Y would otherwise live is positive. But procreating a living being Y is prima facie (i.e., with regard to the interests of Y) morally neutral, i.e. neither bad nor good. Third I will argue that the question of moral rights should always be reduced to the question of the morality of certain corresponding actions. In particular, granting Y a right to life should be taken to mean that it would be morally wrong if someone else were to put an end to Y's life. In a similar vein, I suggest answers to some other questions of the reproductive rights issue. Fourth, with respect to the controversial issue of genuine cloning, I do not see any compelling moral reasons against this utopian way of procreating full-grown individuals. Nevertheless, I think there are a lot of other good (pragmatic, rational) reasons not to try to produce a human Dolly. Finally, as regards the use or abuse of human embryos as potential suppliers of stem-cells for the cure of other people's diseases, it seems morally safe to perform experiments at least with those embryos which, like spare embryos that remained from measures of in vitro fertilization, would not have a life anyway. It's more difficult to decide, however, whether it would be morally safe to produce embryos (for instance through cloning) only for the sake of using them in the aforementioned way.     

There is more to anger coping than "in" or "out"

There is growing dissatisfaction with a dichotomized "anger-in" versus "anger-out" view of anger coping. Three studies using student and community adultsamples revealed a broader understanding of the nature of anger coping styles and led to the development of the new Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ). The BARQ is empirically derived and factorially validated and has good psychometrics. Results suggest that dichotomizing anger responses as "in" versus "out" is too coarse and that a 6-factor model may be more appropriate. The 6 factors identified here are Direct Anger-Out, Assertion, Support-Seeking, Diffusion, Avoidance, and Rumination. Women reported use of a wider range of anger coping styles, especially more social support-seeking and more use of anger diffusion strategies than men.     

Persönlichkeitsfragebögen

The influence of defensivity, measured by validity scales of personality inventories (MMPI-K, FPI-R, GIESSEN-Test) on test results and psychotherapy outcome was studied in 309 patients treated with inpatient client-centered therapy. In general, psychotherapy patients exhibited low defensivity. 25% of patients, who denied psychopathology at admission, did so at discharge and to some extent at follow-up, demonstrating an ”especially good outcome” (means). Relative improvement (effect sizes), however, was significantly diminished in psychopathology scales and significantly enlarged in validity scales. – Results are discussed with regard to prior hypotheses about the influence of defensivity.     

Case Report—Loyalty, Legacy, and Ledger: Contextual Therapy in a Patient with a Family History of Ovarian Cancer

A client's emotional experiences and reactions to those experiences are influenced by his/her family of origin and direct or indirect interactions with various family members. Contextual therapists propose that a client's satisfaction with a relationship depends on the equity of his/her emotional interactions with family members. When relationships are inequitable, trust between individuals disintegrates. In order to reestablish trust in a relationship, a balance of interests must be restored. If not, imbalances may be passed down to future generations. A case of a woman with a family history of ovarian cancer is reviewed with the principles of contextual therapy in mind. In her family, several legacies have resulted in unbalanced relationships between family members that lead to difficulty in establishing trust within the genetic counseling session.     

Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia in German

Recent research with English developmental dyslexics comparing the picture naming performance of these children to the picture naming performance of non-dyslexic (‘garden variety’) poor readers, reading age matched controls and chronological age matched controls has suggested that a selective difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand underlies the picture naming deficit found in developmental dyslexia (Swan & Goswami, Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia: the phonological representations hypothesis, Brain and Language, 56 (1997), 334–353). If the underlying causal factors in dyslexia are independent of the orthography that the child is learning to read, then a difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand should also be found in developmental dyslexics who are learning to read other languages. We therefore set out to replicate Swan and Goswami’s study with a group of German developmental dyslexics. We were interested to see whether a phonological deficit is characteristic of dyslexia in all orthographies, even those, such as German, in which high orthographic transparency means that dyslexic children read with considerable accuracy.     

Individualism-collectivism and self-concept: Social or contextual?

The cultural constructs of individualism and collectivism (I-C) have been closely identified with different conceptions of the self. In contrast to autonomous, abstract self-concepts, it has been argued that collectivists have concepts of self which are interdependent with others and connected with particular contexts. This study investigated the extent to which spontaneous social and contextual self-concepts were connected to each other and to individual-level I-C measures. Questionnaires were administered to adult employee samples in Australia and South-East Asia (N = 581). Although closely intertwined, social and contextual statements were able to be independently tested in relation to I-C. I-C was primarily related to the social-autonomous dimension of self. Controlling for social self-responses, contextual self-concepts were not independently related to any of the measures of I-C.     

Zur Boltzmannschen Theorie des zweiten Hauptsatzes

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Motivational reserve: motivation-related occupational abilities and risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease

Midlife motivational abilities, that is, skills to initiate and persevere in the implementation of goals, have been related to mental and physical health, but their association with risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has not yet been directly investigated. This relation was examined with data from the German Study on Ageing, Cognition, and Dementia in Primary Care Patients (AgeCoDe). A total of 3,327 nondemented participants (50.3% of a randomly selected sample) aged 75-89 years were recruited in primary care and followed up twice (after 1.5 and 3 years). Motivation-related occupational abilities were estimated on the basis of the main occupation (assessed at follow-up II) using the Occupational Information Network (O* NET) database, which provides detailed information on worker characteristics and abilities. Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the relative risk of developing MCI and AD in relation to motivation-related occupational abilities, adjusting for various covariates. Over the 3 years of follow-up, 15.2% participants developed MCI and 3.0% developed AD. In a fully adjusted model, motivation-related occupational abilities were found to be associated with a reduced risk of MCI (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.64-0.92). Motivation-related occupational abilities were associated with reduced risk of AD in ApoE ε4 carriers (HR: 0.48; CI: 0.25-0.91), but not in noncarriers (HR: 0.99; CI: 0.65-1.53). These results suggest that midlife motivational abilities are associated with reduced risk of MCI in general and with reduced risk of AD in ApoE ε4 carriers. Revealing the mechanisms underlying this association may inform novel prevention strategies for decelerating cognitive decline in old age.     

Fehldiagnose Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit- und Hyperaktivit?tssyndrom?

Although it is assumed both by healthcare professionals as well as by public opinion that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is widely overdiagnosed, so far there is little empirical evidence to support this presumption. However, the presented study shows clear evidence for an overdiagnosis of ADHD. Furthermore, the data demonstrate that based on identical symptoms, boys more often receive a diagnosis for ADHD than girls. A false ADHD diagnosis also correlates with a recommendation for medical and psychotherapeutic treatment. One explanation for misdiagnosis is the fact that therapists in the course of diagnosis, as with other everyday decision-making processes, are influenced by heuristics. The most common heuristics that can lead to misdiagnosis are the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic. Such mistakes could be avoided by clearly following diagnostic criteria and the use of structural interviews.