 |
|
The History and Implications of Testing Thalidomide on Animals
Ray Greek, Niall Shanks, and Mark J. Rice
The current use of animals to test for potential teratogenic effects of drugs and other chemicals dates back to the thalidomide disaster of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Controversy surrounds the following questions:
- What was known about placental transfer of drugs when thalidomide was developed?
- Was thalidomide tested on animals for teratogenicity prior to its release?
- Would more animal testing have prevented the thalidomide disaster?
- What lessons should be learned from the thalidomide disaster regarding animal testing for teratogenicity?
We review the literature in order to address these questions. More...
|
|
The Modern Olympics & Post-Modern Athletics: A Clash in Values
Randall Mayes
Abstract: While the overwhelming majority of professions do not regulate the use of performance enhancements, athletics has become a lightning rod. Analysis of the current policies regulating athletic enhancements reveals that drawing the line on what is permitted is an ethically and politically arbitrary process, and sport governing bodies hold athletes to a different standard. The World Anti-Doping Agency uses “the spirit of sport” as criteria for banning enhancements while recent findings in genomics reveals the spirit of being human is to take advantage of what is available for survival. These contradictions question the reasoning and validity of the current regulations of athletic enhancements... More...
Knowledge and Mystery: The Impact of
Contemporary Science on
Metaphysics
Pierre Darriulat
The
article, meant to address philosophers and scientists as well as the interested
layman, expresses the views of a physicist on the strong impact that
contemporary science has on the traditional approach to metaphysics, implying
an in-depth revision of many concepts that have been happily used for
centuries... More...
|
|
Scientific Evidence and the Law: An Objective Bayesian Formalization
of the Precautionary Principle in Pharmaceutical Regulation
Barbara Osimani, Federica Russo, Jon Williamson
The paper considers the legal tools that have been developed in German pharmaceutical regulation as a result of the precautionary attitude inaugurated by the Contergan decision (1970). These tools are (i) the notion of “well-founded suspicion”, which attenuates the requirements for safety intervention by relaxing the requirement of a proved causal connection between danger and source, and the introduction of (ii) the reversal of proof burden in liability norms. The paper focuses on the first and proposes seeing the precautionary principle as an instance of the requirement that one should maximise expected utility. In order to maximise expected utility certain probabilities are required and it is argued that objective Bayesianism offers the most plausible means to determine the optimal decision in cases where evidence supports diverging choices..... More...
To read more articles, click here for the archives.
Selected articles are available at the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature.
|
|
 |
|
|
