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Issues Surrounding (issues + surrounding)
Selected AbstractsLetter to the Editor: Conceptual and Analytic Issues Surrounding a Report on Domestic Salt Fluoridation in MexicoJOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH DENTISTRY, Issue 2 2009Armando E. Soto-Rojas DDS No abstract is available for this article. [source] Reefer Madness: Legal & Moral Issues Surrounding the Medical Prescription of MarijuanaBIOETHICS, Issue 1 2000R. Eric Barnes California, Arizona, and several other states have recently legalized medical marijuana. My goal in this paper is to demonstrate that even if one grants the opponents of legalization many of their contentious assumptions, the federal government is still obligated to take several specific steps toward the legalization of medical marijuana. I defend this claim against a variety of objections, including the claims: that marijuana is unsafe, that marijuana cannot be adequately tested or produced as a drug, that the availability of synthetic THC makes marijuana superfluous, and especially that legalizing medical marijuana will increase recreational use by ,sending the wrong message '. I then go on to argue that given the intransigent position of the federal government on this issue, state governments are justified in unilaterally legalizing medical marijuana as an act of civil disobedience. A large portion of this paper consists of an extensive response to the objection that legalizing medical marijuana will ,send the wrong message ', which I take to be the primary impediment to legalization. This objection basically claims that the consequences of withholding legalization (especially preventing increased recreational use) are superior to those of legalizing medical marijuana. I argue that legalization is justified even if one were to grant both that the harms of legalization outweighed its benefits and that utilitarianism is true. This requires a subtle and somewhat extended discussion of utilitarian moral and political theory. [source] Pinpointing users with location estimation techniques and Wi-Fi hotspot technologyINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2008Kevin Curran Location awareness is becoming an important capability for mobile computing; however, it has not been possible until now to provide cheap pervasive positioning systems. Wide area coverage is most famously achieved by using global positioning systems (GPS). A constellation of low-orbit satellites cover the earth's surface. Unfortunately GPS does not work indoors and has limited success in big cities because of the ,urban canyon' effect. PlaceLab is a research project that attempts to solve the ubiquity issues surrounding 802.11-based location estimation. PlaceLab, like RADAR, uses a device's 802.11 interface; however, it does not require the area to be pre-calibrated. It predicts location via the known positions of the access points detected by the device. Commonly used systems have a number of drawbacks, including cost, accuracy and the ability to work indoors. PlaceLab is a piece of open source software developed by Intel Research that can pinpoint a user within a Wi-Fi network. We set out here to investigate whether PlaceLab can be used as a means of establishing a user's position. This type of investigation could, if successful, pave the way for the development of other location-based applications. This report documents the efforts to answer the above question. PlaceLab was found to work, but only in ideal locations where factors such as the number of floors and the lack of available APs did not affect its use. It was concluded that these factors prevent the system from being effective as a means of establishing a user's position in most locations on campus. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A Puzzle about Consent in Research and in PracticeJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2010ERIC CHWANG abstract In this paper, I will examine a puzzling discrepancy between the way clinicians are allowed to treat their patients and the way researchers are allowed to treat their subjects: in certain cases, researchers are legally required to disclose quite a bit more information when obtaining consent from prospective subjects than clinicians are when obtaining consent from prospective patients. I will argue that the proper resolution of this puzzling discrepancy must appeal to a pragmatic criterion of disclosure for informed consent: that what needs to be disclosed in order for consent to be valid depends on what the patient/subject needs to know in order to make a decision. I will then use this pragmatic criterion of disclosure to argue that when obtaining consent researchers should be permitted to omit the same information clinicians are, given certain qualifications. I will also examine how this puzzle forces us to confront some perhaps surprising truths about valid consent. My broader aim in this paper is to examine, not so much the puzzle itself, but rather what this particular puzzle can teach us about more theoretical issues surrounding informed consent. [source] The Oxford International Diabetes Summit: Implications of the DAWN studyPRACTICAL DIABETES INTERNATIONAL (INCORPORATING CARDIABETES), Issue 6 20028 April 200, Oxford The DAWN (Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes and Needs) study was instigated by Novo Nordisk in order to assess the perceptions and attitudes of people with diabetes and health care providers to the management and care of diabetes. The study was conducted between August 2000 and September 2001 in 11 countries or regions: Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and the USA, with the focus on drivers of effective self-management amongst over 5400 people with diabetes and over 3800 diabetes health care providers (specialist doctors, GPs and nurses). The objective of the DAWN study was to provide information of value in improving diabetes care and the well being of diabetic patients and to enhance and complement data derived from other reported psychosocial studies. To this end, the first Oxford DAWN International Summit met to consider its implications and resolve ways in which the findings of the DAWN study could be implemented. The interactive nature of the summit was enhanced by the use of computer-linked individual keypads, so that delegates could participate interactively and vote on a range of issues. Following presentations on the key issues surrounding DAWN, a series of participant workshops considered the issues that had been raised and produced their recommendations for future action. Opening the Summit, Chairman Dr David Matthews (Chairman of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Oxford, UK) commented on its multi-national and multi-disciplinary nature and how this was bringing together different stakeholder perspectives. Use of the keypads showed that Denmark, USA, Germany and the UK (in that order) were the best represented. Delegates included diabetologists, nurses, behavioural scientists, GPs, patients and health payors. These different perspectives would be important in arriving at conclusions. The DAWN study had endeavoured to discover the person behind the patient and to establish to what degree self-care management truly involved a partnership between patient and health care provider. Dr Matthews emphasised the psychosocial nature of the survey and the ways in which this aspect of care had perhaps been somewhat neglected in the past. DAWN represented an opportunity for change; this challenge should be welcomed. He hoped that the outcome of the summit would have a long lasting effect over the coming years. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | |||||||||||||