Rights and freedoms > Unclassified

Ethics in the context of disability

Author / Source : Margaret Somerville Published on : Thematic : Rights and freedoms / Unclassified Studies Temps de lecture : 26 min.

Ethics in the context of disability

Ethics is about values, especially shared values, in particular those we adopt as our basic societal values – they are sometimes called norms.  The nature of a value is not easy to define.   The Oxford English Dictionary defines it within the context of ethics as: “That which is worthy of esteem for its own sake; that which has intrinsic worth”.  Another way to describe values might be as “ethical organising principles” – they are principles that we can use to guide us in deciding what is ethi...

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Life Sciences or Death Sciences

Author / Source : Ronald M. Atlas and Margaret Somerville Published on : Thematic : Rights and freedoms / Unclassified Studies Temps de lecture : 37 min.

To successfully reduce the threat of bioterrorism and biowarfare, and to protect public health, especially on a global level, we all will need to engage across boundaries that have separated us in the past. Only by doing so can we seek to ensure that the promise of our unparalleled discoveries of new knowledge in the life sciences is fulfilled and it's potential for unprecedented harm averted. Certainly, no one measure will be sufficient to ensure that science is not misused, or public...

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Ethics: a weapon to counter bioterrorism

Author / Source : Margaret A. Somerville and Ronald M. Atlas Published on : Thematic : Rights and freedoms / Unclassified Studies Temps de lecture : 9 min.

The code we propose is built on ethically relevant facts and the substantive and procedural principles of ethics that must govern its interpretation and application. They include nonmaleficence; beneficence; respect for life, especially human life; maintaining trust; embedding ethics in science; establishing a high ethical tone in institutions; acknowledging individual and collective responsibilities; and recognizing and fulfilling needs for ethics review and monitoring, notification of...

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