Within-family reproductive technologies as a solution to childlessness due to infertility: Psychological issues and interventions

Patients choosing new reproductive technologies benefit from psychological consultation as they face unforeseen emotional and interpersonal sequalae from these procedures. This paper focuses on those patients who choose family members or close friends (i.e., known donors) to donate sperm or eggs or uteri in order to conceive and produce their babies. Medical family therapy offers these patients and families a framework from which to examine the biological, psychological, and interpersonal issues involved in these within-family solutions to childlessness due to infertility.This paper is a revision of a talk, Medical Family Therapy, Infertility, and the New Reproductive Technologies, given at the 1994 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association on August 4 in Los Angeles, CA, as part of the Mini-convention on Families panel on Clinical Issues in Families and Health.     

Sweet Gifts: A Jewish Response to Gilbert Meilaender

Judaism, like Gilbert Meilaender, analogizes food and sex. Traditionally, Judaism saw the primary purpose of sex as procreation, the fulfillment of a Biblical mandate. It did not, however, link sex to the Garden of Eden story, and it acknowledged that sex was also important for couples' bonding. While Meilaender sees bonding as a value co-equal with procreation, Judaism traditionally kept procreation as the primary goal. Couples were encouraged to have sex when infertile and were permitted contraception when pregnancy endangered life, but whenever possible, they were directed to also have sex for procreation. Many modern rabbis, in agreement with Meilaender, permit contraception in order to foster bonding as a separate goal of sex. However, reproductive technology is seen, in Judaism, as partnership with God, allowing for a process of birth that is as natural as the process of producing food by farming. Last, when sex is permitted, Judaism celebrate the joy attendant to sex as a Divine gift.     

适宜技术与诊疗最优化临床应用患者方面的影响因素

从诊疗中的认识论和辩证法的角度,通过实际案例分析医生及患者对选择适宜技术实现诊疗最优化的消极和积极的影响;阐述了患者自身的经济状况在很大程度上影响着适宜技术的应用;患者的心理因素和家人的态度在一定程度上也影响着适宜技术的应用及实现诊疗最优化。医生要提高自己的综合素质,患者要充分发挥自己的主观能动性,消除消极的影响,增强积极的影响,共同促进适宜技术的临床应用及实现诊疗最优化。     

Reconstructing with trace information: Does rapid identification information lead to better crime reconstructions?

Currently, promising new tools are under development that will enable crime scene investigators to analyze fingerprints or DNA‐traces at the crime scene. While these technologies could help to find a perpetrator early in the investigation, they may also strengthen confirmation bias when an incorrect scenario directs the investigation this early. In this study, 40 experienced Crime scene investigators (CSIs) investigated a mock crime scene to study the influence of rapid identification technologies on the investigation. This initial study shows that receiving identification information during the investigation results in more accurate scenarios. CSIs in general are not as much reconstructing the event that took place, but rather have a “who done it routine.” Their focus is on finding perpetrator traces with the risk of missing important information at the start of the investigation. Furthermore, identification information was mostly integrated in their final scenarios when the results of the analysis matched their expectations. CSIs have the tendency to look for confirmation, but the technology has no influence on this tendency. CSIs should be made aware of the risks of this strategy as important offender information could be missed or innocent people could be wrongfully accused.     

Security Technologies Versus Citizen Roles?

The idea of securitization holds that perceived threats and the ensuing need for security measures are mobilized in speech acts to legitimate bypassing of normal practices of democratic politics and justification. Citizens, as members of the political community, are thus effectively deprived of their agency. Attempts at securitization gain clout from the severity of the mobilized threat: the more convincingly a threat is argued to cause disruptions in the functioning of society and ultimately the loss of human life, the more acceptable it will become to bypass democratic governance in order to prevent the threat. Accordingly, security technologies can be conceived of as those technologies that are constructed and mobilized in such attempts at securitization and depoliticization. However, security technologies can also be thought of as technologies that are mobilized in face of existential threats more generally, regardless of whether their mobilization has a depoliticizing effect or not. Yet, as case studies on airport security scanners and security in smart grids show, not all implementations of security, even against existential threats, show this tendency of depoliticization as essential in securitization and in technologies of security. This article further demonstrates that the agency of citizens in the governance of these technologies importantly depends on whether or not the threat is perceived as internal or external to the referent object of the security programme.