Soldiers as subjects of medical research: Comments on Hassidim et al. on ethical standards of the Israel Defense Force.

In 2008 a group of former soldiers of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) sued the Ministry of Defense and others, claiming they had suffered from medical problems that resulted from an IDF medical experiment in which they had participated in the 1970s. There was no compelling medical evidence with respect to causal relationships between their participation in the experiment and their later medical problems. The President of the District Court, Justice Hila Gerstl, appointed me, with the consent of the parties, to write a deposition with respect to the ethical aspects of the case. My comments in the sequel rest on my deposition, applying not only to the case that had been under discussion but also to each and every case of experimentation. My arguments, strictly confined to the ethical aspects of the case, as opposed to the legal aspects and the debated facts, were not in favor of either party. As a result the state and the former soldiers reached an agreement approved by the court. One of the major points made in that deposition is that the Nuremberg and Helsinki principles follow from those of medical ethics in general, except for the requirement to have an Institutional Review Board (IRB). A second major point is that under very strict conditions, more than what is usually required, soldiers may participate in medical experiments administered by their military force. However, new conscripts during their first months of their service should not take part in medical experimentation within their military force.

[New possibilities resulting from oocyte banking].

Oocyte cryopreservation solves the legal and ethical problems associated with the cryopreservation of embryos in patients undergoing in vitro fertilization procedures. Furthermore, it may also offer the possibility of extending the reproductive capability of young women with malignant diseases in cases where the treatment may compromise the ovarian reserve. Moreover, it may also offer alternatives for infertile patients who are subject to ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome or premature ovarian faiLure or who require oocyte donation. The creation of banks for cryopreserved oocytes avoids the need for cycle synchronization or the formation of an over-supply of embryos destined for cryopreservation. If a Large number of oocytes is obtained it could possibly enable women and couples the opportunity to postpone childbirth according to their wishes. This paper reviews the revolution obtained by oocyte vitrification, reports on ethical issues and discusses the pros and cons of oocyte banking and its potential effects on society.

At the edge of viability: moral and ethical guideline proposals.

The paper proposes moral and ethical guidelines for medical treatment at the edge of viability. The proposed principles are defended on the grounds of a general conceptual framework presented by elucidating the notions of viability, the edge of viability, person, sanctity of human life, dignity, and the slope of dignity protection, as well as the distinction between ethics and morality.

Attitudes of social science students in Israel and Austria towards the belated twins scenario--an exploratory study.

This article discusses results of a questionnaire survey of 156 university students in Israel and Austria examining reactions towards the Belated Twins scenario, which entails the artificial twinning of embryos of which one is immediately carried to term while the other one is born later. The scenario resembles a case of human reproductive cloning in terms of result (the creation of genetically identical individuals in a time-delayed manner) but it involves gamete fusion like "natural" reproduction. By means of qualitative text analysis we discuss the core themes mobilized both in support and opposition to the scenario. While Israeli and Austrian respondents held similar general attitudes (about half were in favour of legalizing Belated Twins, while about a third opposed it), they drew partly on different arguments to arrive at their conclusions. In both groups, uncertainty stemming from "novel" elements in the scenario was regularly interpreted as negatively exacerbating existing issues.

Processing of basic speech acts following localized brain damage: a new light on the neuroanatomy of language.

We examined the effect of localized brain lesions on processing of the basic speech acts (BSAs) of question, assertion, request, and command. Both left and right cerebral damage produced significant deficits relative to normal controls, and left brain damaged patients performed worse than patients with right-sided lesions. This finding argues against the common conjecture that the right hemisphere of most right-handers plays a dominant role in natural language pragmatics. In right-hemisphere damaged patients, there was no correlation between location and extent of lesion in perisylvian cortex and performance on BSAs. By contrast, processing of the different BSAs by left hemisphere-damaged patients was strongly affected by perisylvian lesion location, with each BSA showing a distinct pattern of localization. This finding raises the possibility that the classical left perisylvian localization of language functions, as measured by clinical aphasia batteries, partly reflects the localization of the BSAs required to perform these functions.

Professional ethics and collective professional autonomy: a conceptual analysis.

In the first section, it is argued that a professional activity involves systematic knowledge and proficiency, a form of continuous improvement of the related bodies of knowledge and proficiency, as well as two levels of understanding: a local one, which is the ability to justify and explain professional acts, and a global one, which involves a conception of the whole profession and its ethical principles. The second section is devoted to a conceptual analysis of professional ethics. It is argued that it consists of a general conception of professionality, a particular conception of the profession under consideration, and a conception of the normative requirements made by the societal envelope of the professional activity, in particular basic norms of democracy. The third section draws conclusions with respect to the nature and limits of professional autonomy. It is shown that such autonomy is much more restricted than its apparent extent. Examples from engineering and other professions are provided.

Language performance in chronic schizophrenia: a pragmatic approach.

In this study, the authors examined the language of 43 participants with chronic schizophrenia under the basic assumption that a paradigmatic shift is needed in the methodology used to investigate the language of schizophrenia. The pragmatic protocol (C. Prutting and D. Kirchner, 1987) was chosen as the method of analysis to attain a general profile of pragmatic abilities. The results showed that the participants with schizophrenia exhibited a high degree of inappropriate pragmatic abilities compared to participants with mixed anxiety-depression disorder and participants with hemispheric brain damage, as previously assessed by Prutting and Kirchner. Statistical methods for clustering analysis yielded 5 distinct parameter clusters: Topic, Speech Acts, Turn-Taking, Lexical, and Nonverbal. Group clustering analysis of the 43 participants with schizophrenia produced 3 distinct groups with different profiles: minimal impairment, lexical impairment, and interactional impairment. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications in the area of pragmatics, the diagnosis of schizophrenia, and other goals.