This article leverages saliency theory to explore how regimes may use state-controlled media to intensify nationalism and gain legitimacy. I explore mainstream news coverage in Russia and Ukraine with a particular emphasis on how political leadership frames nationalist rhetoric in the two countries to emphasize certain issues over others. I focus on relevant media content that contains nationalist rhetoric before and after the invasion of Russia into Ukraine’s territory in the spring of 2014. Content analysis suggests that political leaders in both countries have focused on political issues, while largely ignoring economic issues in their nationalist rhetoric. The analysis also shows that state leaders can successfully promote nationalism by emphasizing cultural issues and concerns.

This article analyzes Russian aspectual usage in the imperative by combining Šatunovskij’s (2009) approach with Dickey’s (2018) cognitive linguistic theory of Russian aspect. It argues that the contrasting use of perfective and imperfective imperatives in mands for the completion of a single action can be explained in terms of the pragmatic mechanisms proposed by Šatunovskij (2009): perfective imperatives signal a request on the part of the speaker for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action, whereas imperfective imperatives make no such signal, because the decision has already been made. The latter occurs when the speaker knows or infers that the listener has already made the decision (or will do so if given the chance), or when the speaker has suspended the listener’s decision-making role and has gone ahead and made the decision. Various contextual uses of affirmative and negated imperatives and analyzes them in terms of the request or lack thereof for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action. The functions of the perfective and imperfective aspects in imperatives are argued to be instantiations of temporal definiteness and temporal indefiniteness (respectively). Inasmuch as this is true, Russian aspect codes alternative construals of time in non-finite usage as well as finite usage.

This paper claims that palliative care (PC) is a suitable approach for offering comprehensive support to patients with life-threatening illness and unavoidable asthenia, to enhance their quality of life in aging and chronic illness. There are however some conceptual barriers to accessing that care on the Chinese Mainland: (1) Death-denying culture and society; (2) Misguidance and malpractice derived from the biomedical model; (3) Prejudice against PC and certain deviant understandings of filial piety culture. To counter these obstacles, the study introduces the philosophy of Chinese Taoist Chuang-tze to enlighten the public from ignorance and remove some illusions about death and dying; inspire people to face and accept illness and death calmly, and keep harmony and inner peace of mind to alleviate suffering, with the aim of providing wisdom and a shift of attitude toward life and death. Chuang-tze’s thoughts are consistent with the provision of palliative care, and to a certain degree, can promote its acceptability and delivery, and the conception of good death in practice.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal law prohibiting physician assisted death in Canada. In 2016, Parliament passed legislation to allow what it called ‘medical assistance in dying (MAID).’ The authors first describe the arguments the Court used to strike down the law, and then argue that MAID as legalized in Bill C-14 is based on principles that are incompatible with a free and democratic society, prohibits assistance in dying that should be permitted, and makes access to medically-assisted death unnecessarily difficult. They then propose a version of MAID legislation (‘Ideal MAID’) that gives proponents and opponents of MAID everything they can legitimately want, contend that it is the only way to legalize MAID that is compatible with a free and democratic society, and conclude that it is the way to legalize MAID in Canada and other similarly free and democratic societies.

Open-uterine surgery to repair spina bifida, or ‘fetal surgery of open neural tube defects,’ has generated questions throughout its history—and continues to do so in a variety of contexts. As clinical ethics consultants who worked (Mark J. Bliton) and trained (Virginia L. Bartlett) at Vanderbilt University—where the first successful cases of open-uterine repair of spina bifida were carried out—we lived with these questions for nearly two decades. We worked with clinicians as they were developing and offering the procedure, with researchers in refining and studying the procedure, and with pregnant women and their partners as they considered whether to undergo the procedure. From this experience in the early studies at Vanderbilt, we learned that pregnant women and their partners approach the clinical uncertainty of such a risky procedure with a curious and unique combination of practicality, self-reflection, fear, and overwhelming hope. These early experiences were a major contributing factor to the inclusion of an ethics-focused interview in the informed consent process for the Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS) trial study design.

This paper examines and critiques the ethical issues in postmortem sperm retrieval and the use of postmortem sperm to create new life. The article was occasioned by the recent request of the parents of a West Point cadet who died in a skiing accident at the Academy to retrieve and use his sperm to honor his memory and perpetuate the family name. The request occasioned national media attention. A trial court judge in New York in a two-page order authorized both the retrieval and use of the postmortem sperm.

Many legal systems have an insanity defense, which means that although a person has committed a crime, she is not held criminally responsible for the act. A challenge with regard to these assessments is that forensic psychiatrists have to rely to a considerable extent on the defendant's self-report. Could neuroscience be a way to make these evaluations more objective? The current value of neuroimaging in insanity assessments will be examined. The author argues that neuroscience can be valuable for diagnosing neurological illnesses, rather than psychiatric disorders. Next, he discusses to what extent neurotechnological 'mind reading' techniques, if they would become available in the future, could be useful to get beyond self-report in forensic psychiatry.

Viewing difficulty as an opportunity for learning runs counter to the common view of difficulty as a source of frustration and confusion. The aim of this article is to focus on the idea of difficulty as a stepping-off point for learning. The literature on difficulty in reading texts, and its impact on thinking and the interpretive process, serve as a foundation for the use of poetry in healthcare ethics education. Because of its complexity and strangeness compared to the usual scientific and clinical texts health science students encounter, poetry is an excellent means to achieve the aim of thinking through difficulties in ethics. Specific examples of teaching and learning strategies for turning difficulty into opportunities for learning are presented, including the difficulty paper and the triple mark-up method. Both methods require students to examine their process of working through difficulties, reflect on how they make sense of difficult texts and then share their process and interpretations in a collaborative manner with peers. The importance of framing difficulties as a public, visible, collaborative process rather than a personal process is emphasized. Working together to hypothesize reasons for difficulty and map out plans to come to terms with difficulty are equally relevant for reading text as they are for reading complex ethical situations. Finally, I argue that transference of this kind of personal and collaborative learning about difficulties benefits interprofessional clinical practice, particularly when dealing with ethical issues.

Authors writing about the history of the “coolie trade” in Cuba have generally focused on the multinational effort to halt the trafficking of Chinese workers. Little has been written about either the role of consuls as middlemen or of Spanish participation in the traffic in treaty ports. Yet, several sources indicate that many officials at Spanish consulates in coastal China were intensely involved in the shipment of Chinese emigrants to Cuba and other coolie trade destinations, and were also at the centre of international scandals. These consular officers frequently used their authority to obtain a monopoly over the trade. In this article, I argue that the coolie trade was the main objective of Spain's consular deployment in China, and that the involvement of these consular officials was crucial in developing an abusive migratory system and sustaining the mistreatment of Chinese immigrant workers throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.

This paper challenges the long-standing and widely accepted view that medical ethics is nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters. It argues against Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’s four principles; Bernard Gert, K. Danner Clouser and Charles Culver’s ten rules; and Albert Jonsen, Mark Siegler, and William Winslade’s four topics approaches to medical ethics. First, a negative argument shows that common morality does not provide an account of medical ethics and then a positive argument demonstrates why the medical profession requires its own distinctive ethics. The paper also provides a way to distinguish roles and professions and an account of the distinctive duties of medical ethics. It concludes by emphasizing ways in which the uncommon morality approach to medical ethics is markedly different from the common morality approach.

There is a long history of women being underrepresented in biomedical and health research. Specific women’s health needs have been, and in some cases still are, comparatively neglected areas of study. Concerns about the health and social impacts of such bias and exclusion have resulted in inclusion policies from governments, research funders, and the scientific establishment since the 1990s. Contemporary understandings of foregrounding sex and gender issues within biomedical research range from women’s rights to inclusion, to links between human rights, women’s health and sustainable development, and the increasing scientific and funding expectation for studies to consider the sex (biological) and gender (cultural) implications of research design, results and impact. However, there are also exploitation issues to consider when foregrounding the inclusion of women as research participants, especially for research ethics committees and institutional review boards. A hidden risk is that exploitative research designs and practices may be missed, particularly by reviewers who may not have a nuanced understanding of gender-based harm. Utilizing contemporary case studies of ethics dumping, this paper highlights some of the concerns, and makes recommendations for IRBs/research ethics reviewers to help ensure that essential research is undertaken to the highest ethical standards.

When talking about decisionmaking for children with a life-threatening condition, the death of children with brain tumors deserves special attention. The last days of the lives of these children can be particularly harsh for bystanders, and raise questions about the suffering of these children themselves. In the Netherlands, these children are part of the group for whom a wide range of end-of-life decisions are discussed, and questions raised. What does the end-of-life for these children look like, and what motivates physicians and parents to make decisions that may affect the life and death of these children? This article highlights the story of the parents of the sisters Roos and Noor. When both their daughters were diagnosed with a hereditary brain tumor, they had to make similar decisions twice. Their story sheds light on the suffering of children in the terminal phase, and how this suffering may motivate parents and physicians to make decisions that influence the end of life of these children’s lives.

We argue that complete knowledge about suffering in the terminal phase of children with brain tumors is impossible. However, by collecting experiences like those of Roos and Noor, we can move toward an experienced-based understanding and better guide parents and physicians through these hardest of decisions.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia has been decriminalized. Termination of life on request and assisted suicide are criminal offences under Dutch law; but if physicians comply with the due care requirements of the Euthanasia Act and report their actions in the manner prescribed by law, they will not be prosecuted. One of the requirements relates to the act of euthanasia itself. If this is to be performed with due medical care, the physician relies on the services of a pharmacist. However, the responsibilities of the pharmacist with respect to euthanasia are not laid down in law. At present, Dutch pharmacists have to make do with professional rules that do not offer adequate solutions for the problems that may arise when euthanasia is performed.

In “Medical Ethics: Common or Uncommon Morality,”1 Rosamond Rhodes defends a specialist view of medical ethics, specifically the ethics of physicians. Rhodes’s account is specifically about the ethics of medical professionals, rooted in what these professionals do. It would seem to follow that other healthcare professions might be subject to ethical standards that differ from those applicable to physicians, rooted in what these other professions do, but I leave this point aside for purposes of this commentary. Rhodes’s view includes both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that precepts in medical ethics—understood as the ethics of physicians—cannot be derived from principles of common morality. The positive thesis is two-fold: that precepts in medical ethics must be derived from an account of the special nature of what physicians do, and that this account is to be understood through an overlapping consensus of rational and reasonable medical professionals. While I agree emphatically with, and have learned a great deal from, Rhodes’s defense of the negative thesis, I disagree with both claims in Rhodes’s positive thesis, for reasons I will now explain after a brief observation about the negative thesis.