AN INCLUSIVE ETHICS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: IMPLICATIONS FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH

An important contribution of Christian ethics in the pluralistic world of the twenty‐first century is to emphasize inclusivity. Rather than promoting the interests of certain groups at the expense of the most vulnerable, society does well to prioritize ways forward that benefit all. For stem cell research, inclusivity entails benefiting or at least protecting the beneficiaries of treatment, the sources of materials, and the subjects of research. Adult stem cells are already benefiting many ill patients without causing harm, and select adult cells may prove even more beneficial in the future. Other types of stem cells require other bodily materials such as eggs and somatic cells that should be obtained without unduly harming those who provide them. Research subjects, especially the most vulnerable, require protection as well. Should human embryos be included among them? Considerations of location, formation, individuation, and intention are here examined. Ultimately, for safety reasons as well as workability, pluripotency, and compatibility, relatively new types of pluripotent stem cells, especially induced pluripotent stem cells, warrant special priority according to an inclusive ethics.     

The role of occupational standards in workplace religious literacy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the UK National Occupational Standards to identify the breadth of occupations for which it has been determined that workers need some degree of religious literacy. A total of 465 standards documents which mention religion and beliefs relating to a diverse range of occupations were retrieved, of which 13 had a primary focus on religion and beliefs. Approximately 60 percent of these standards noted the need for knowledge about religion and beliefs, though only a quarter of these specified actual performance criteria. With some exceptions, most of the standards were vague as to what is meant by religion and its proxies, with very few attempts to define their terms. A lack of specificity renders the inclusion of references to religion largely tokenistic rather than reflecting a measure of religious literacy which could be practically operationalised.     

Just Win the Game: The Reception of Arab Minorities on Israel’s National Football Team

ABSTRACT

The presence of minorities and immigrants in national sports settings specifically in football, is well documented in many places around the world. The growing presence of Arab ethnic minorities on Israel’s national football team reflects this trend, and, as I will argue, it shows how sports in Israeli society is a gateway for the integration of minorities into Israeli society, yet at the same time, it also exposes the unique and complex tensions between diverse identity groups in Israeli society. The current study examined Jewish-Israeli football fans’ attitudes to the significant presence of Arab-Muslim players on the national team (whose starting eleven includes 4–6 Arab-Muslim players, including its captain since 2018). Based upon an analysis of fan comments posted to social media, related to the 2018–2019 UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Nations League campaign, this study reveals Jewish hegemonic attitudes toward Arab footballers, as well as Arab footballers’ relative autonomy. Admiration and empathy toward minority members are expressed after victories, but in the absence of these well-defined conditions for empathy, as in the cases of team defeats or manifestations of minority pride, Jewish football fans shifted immediately to blatant, derogatory, and patronizing comments that focused on Arab players’ loyalty and expressed patronizing superiority over the Arab players.     

Towards modern post-coma care based on neuroscientific evidence

BackgroundUnderstanding the mechanisms underlying human consciousness is pivotal to improve the prognostication and treatment of severely brain-injured patients. Consciousness remains an elusive concept and the identification of its neural correlates is an active subject of research, however recent neuroscientific advances have allowed scientists to better characterize disorders of consciousness. These breakthroughs question the historical nomenclature and our current management of post-comatose patients.MethodThis review examines the contribution of consciousness neurosciences to the current clinical management of severe brain injury. It investigates the major impact of consciousness disorders on healthcare systems, the scientific frameworks employed to identify their neural correlates and how evidence-based data from neuroimaging research have reshaped the landscape of post-coma care in recent years.ResultsOur increased ability to detect behavioral and neurophysiological signatures of consciousness has led to significant changes in taxonomy and clinical practice. We advocate for a multimodal framework for the management of severely brain-injured patients based on precision medicine and evidence-based decisions, integrating epidemiology, health economics and neuroethics.ConclusionsMajor progress in brain imaging and clinical assessment have opened the door to a new era of post-coma care based on standardized neuroscientific evidence. We highlight its implications in clinical applications and call for improved collaborations between researchers and clinicians to better translate findings to the bedside.     

Remembering,understanding, and representation

Starting with the facts that not everything that is understood is remembered, and that not everything that is remembered is understood. this paper urges that models of language processing should be able to make a distinction between comprehension and memory. To this end. a case is made for a spreading activation process as being the essential ingredient of the comprehension process. It is argued that concepts activated during comprehension not only restrict the search set for candidate concepts to be used in a top-down fashion, they also constitute part of an episodic representation that can come to be p e of long-term memory. The way in which these representations atrophy is discussed, as is the way in which their idiosyncratic components are eliminated in producing representations in semantic memory. Some observations on the comprehension and memory of text are made and arguments are presented to show how intrusions and omissions in recall can be handled. Some existing experimental data is reanalyzed in terms of the proposed model and alternative interpretations consistent with the model are shown to be possible.