Predicting moral behavior in physical education classes: an application of the theory of planned behavior

This study aimed to examine the potential of the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict moral behavior in primary school physical education classes. Primary school children (N=611) completed a questionnaire including the Theory of Planned Behavior variables. Also, 21 teachers filled in an adapted version of Horrocks' Prosocial Play Behavior Inventory which assesses five moral behavior facets. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that attitudes toward moral behavior and perceived behavioral control were significant predictors of intention towards moral behavior (54%). Intention and perceived behavioral control predicted teacher-reported moral behavior (41%). The present results indicated that the theory provides a valuable framework for study of primary school children's moral behavior.

A Proposed Stem Cell Research Policy

The aspirations of scientists and patients for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in the U.S. motivate attention to the nitty-gritty of law and regulation and its confluence with such moral consensus as lies within our reach. Federal law and regulation form a tangle. Analysis yields several conclusions not widely appreciated. A legislative enactment is the rate-limiting step of federally funded research, the restriction of research imposed by the previous administration's policy as reprised in current proposals fails to achieve its objective of avoiding complicity in embryo sacrifice, the current administration's policy is another failed noncomplicity scheme under which research cannot be expanded without demolishing its putative justification, and the Food and Drug Administration has already effectively interdicted procreative cloning. While it is not plausible to deny complicity in embryo sacrifice when performing or funding hESC research, one can justify sacrifice of some embryos by an argument whose premises are consistent with a wide range of moral and religious views. This paper proposes a rule of public policy providing for the use of donated embryos barred from the womb. This rule would optimize research while manifesting its moral justification. The rule is suitable for implementation by any government that funds hESC research. The rule's justification provides a cogent argument for such incremental steps toward its implementation as become politically feasible from time to time.

Playing hide-and-seek with the tobacco industry

Despite many peer-reviewed works that draw on tobacco industry documents that have now been made public, questions remain about how complete a picture has emerged. We present a conceptual framework that identifies and evaluates tobacco industry efforts to conceal information. Widespread document destruction like that in recent litigation in Australia is just one of more than a dozen tobacco industry efforts to prevent access, or at least timely access, to documents. Industry efforts range from small, locally employed initiatives to company-wide tactics. Some efforts, such as using "oral only" procedures, scrambling telephone lines, or involving lawyers in scientific projects, are preemptive. Others seek to deal with already existing documents by invoking bogus claims of legal privilege, stipulating "read then destroy" for memos, and rewriting problematic memos. That evidence of concealment has, in fact, been found in tobacco company archives attests to the futility of attempting to control the flow of millions of pieces of paper among tens of thousands of employees. However, researchers have yet to reveal the full story: We know of the industry's failures in concealing information, but not its successes. The industry's objective is not destruction of information per se, but prevention of public disclosure of that information. Exposing the tobacco industry's many approaches to concealment provides greater insight into companies' intentions and potential means for stripping away that concealment.

To Stay or To Go, To Speak or Stay Silent, To Act or Not To Act: Moral Distress as Experienced by Psychologists

The moral distress of psychologists working in psychiatric and mental health care settings was explored in an interdisciplinary, hermeneutic phenomenological study situated at the University of Alberta, Canada. Moral distress is the state experienced when moral choices and actions are thwarted by constraints. Psychologists described specific incidents in which they felt their integrity had been compromised by such factors as institutional and interinstitutional demands, team conflicts, and interdisciplinary disputes. They described dealing with the resulting moral distress by such means as silence, taking a stance, acting secretively, sustaining themselves through work with clients, seeking support from colleagues, and exiting. Recognizing moral distress can lead to a significant shift in the way we perceive moral choices and understand the moral context of practice.

Are patients' decisions to refuse treatment binding on health care professionals?

When patients refuse to receive medical treatment, the consequences of honouring their decisions can be tragic. This is no less true of patients who autonomously decide to refuse treatment. I distinguish three possible implications of these autonomous decisions. According to the Permissibility Claim, such a decision implies that it is permissible for the patient who has made the autonomous decision to forego medical treatment. According to the Anti-Paternalism Claim, it follows that health-care professionals are not morally permitted to treat that patient. According to the Binding Claim it follows that these decisions are binding on health-care professionals. My focus is the last claim. After arguing that it is importantly different from each of the first two claims, I give two arguments to show that it is false. One argument against the Binding Claim draws a comparison with cases in which patients autonomously choose perilous positive treatments. The other argument appeals to considered judgments about cases in which disincentives are used to deter patients from refusing sound treatments.

Health charities, unethical research and organizational integrity

Organizations, particularly Catholic hospitals, schools and social service agencies, should re-examine their relationships to health and medical charities promoting unethical research such as human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Part 6 of the Ethical and Religious Directives provides a helpful framework for ethical analysis and action.

A Failed Noncomplicity Scheme

Present U.S. policy on funding embryonic stem cell research evidently rests on the supposition that, because the policy's announcement on August 9, 2001 came as a surprise, no one initiating a stem cell line prior thereto could reasonably have been induced to do so by the government. Hence it has been suggested that without complicity in embryo destruction, the government may fund studies of lines created before that date. The escape from complicity is illusory. The historical facts belie the supposition of noninducement. What is more, if, in order to meet demand for more and newer cell lines, the government stipulates some later date as the creation time of the oldest eligible cell line, that move will explode the policy's purported justification. The policy is as unavailing as a moral position as it is constringent for scientific progress.

Ethical analyses of vaccines grown in human cell strains derived from abortion: arguments and Internet search

The fact that certain vaccines are grown in cell strains derived decades ago from an aborted fetus is a concern for some. To understand such concerns, a standardized search identified internet sites discussing vaccines and abortion. Ethical concerns raised include autonomy, conscience, coherence, and immoral material complicity. Two strategies to analyse moral complicity show that vaccination is ethical: the abortions were past events separated in time, agency, and purpose from vaccine production. Rubella disease during pregnancy results in many miscarriages and malformations. Altruism, the burden of rubella disease, and protection by herd immunity argue for widespread vaccination although autonomous decisions and personal conscience should be respected.

Stem cells: public policy and ethics

Debate on the regulation of human stem cells needs to bring together scientific, ethical and policy considerations if it is to be adequately informed. Scientific issues of importance include the relevance of the environment in appreciating the extent of stem cell plasticity, and the relative potential of embryonic and adult stem cells to produce other cell types. An awareness that blastocysts (early embryos) and stem cells in the laboratory are pluripotential and not totipotential has implications for ethical and policy debate. The regulations on stem cell research are reviewed, showing that four positions have emerged. Position A corresponds to the prohibition of all embryo research, position B confines the use of embryonic stem cells to those currently in existence and therefore extracted prior to some specified date, position C allows for the use and ongoing isolation of embryonic stem cells from surplus in vitro fertilization embryos, and position D approves of the creation of human embryos specifically for research. Position B which has been adopted by the United States, Germany, and Australia (with subtle differences between them) and which is regarded as a compromise position, is critiqued. This is principally on the basis that, in spite of claims made about it, the ongoing destruction of human embryos will continue. This is because these countries allow in vitro fertilization programs, inherent within which is embryo destruction. It is argued that position C would be a more consistent ethical position for these countries. The possibility of moving to position D is also raised.

No Safe Harbor: The Principle of Complicity and the Practice of Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking

In recent years, a number of writers have proposed voluntary stopping of eating and drinking as an alternative to physician-assisted suicide. This paper calls attention to and discusses some of the ethical complications that surround the practice of voluntary stopping of eating and drinking. The paper argues that voluntary stopping of eating and drinking raises very difficult ethical questions. These questions center on the moral responsibility of clinicians who care for the terminally ill as well as the nature and limits of the authority they exercise over them.

The West's dismissal of the Khabarovsk trial as 'communist propaganda': ideology, evidence and international bioethics

In late 1949 the former Soviet Union conducted an open trial of eight Japanese physicians and researchers and four other military servicemen in Khabarovsk, a city in eastern Siberia. Despite its strong ideological tone and many obvious shortcomings such as the lack of international participation, the trial established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Japanese army had prepared and deployed bacteriological weapons and that Japanese researchers had conducted cruel experiments on living human beings. However, the trial, together with the evidence presented to the court and its major findings--which have proved remarkably accurate--was dismissed as communist propaganda and totally ignored in the West until the 1980s. This paper reviews the 1949 Khabarovsk trial, examines the West's dismissal of the proceedings as mere propaganda and draws some moral lessons for bioethics today. As an important historical case, set in the unique socio-political context of the Cold War, the West's dismissal of the trial powerfully illustrates some perennial ethical issues such as the ambivalence of evidence and power of ideology in making (or failing to make) cross-national and cross-cultural factual and moral judgments.